Are municipal wards and boundaries local democracy or just political sideshows?
This was the hot topic discussed at the Critical Thinking Forum held by The Mail & Guardian together with the Municipal Demarcation Board (MDB) at Glenhove Conference Centre in Johannesburg last week.
“I would like to put on the table this evening to The Demarcation Board that, as much as it is good what we have done to this point, should we not start exploring how effective are the larger municipalities that have larger wards?” asked Timothy Nast, Executive Mayor of Midvaal Municipality.
Nast, together with Lindiwe Mahlangu, chairperson of the MDB, Masotho Maepya from the Independent Electoral Commission and Humphrey Mmemezi, Gauteng MEC for Local Government and Housing, formed a panel to discuss the topic while political analyst Dr Xolela Mangcu was the moderator.
Nast was questioning the effectiveness of the system where at larger municipalities like the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality (CJMM) a councillor who is “probably part time” is serving 14 000 residents. “This is the concern: are our local governments local?”
The larger municipal wards are mostly found in metro municipalities across the country and according to Mahlangu the municipal wards and boundaries are changed before local government elections because of a rise in registered voters and population growth giving birth to bigger wards.
He said they, as the board, have to ensure that each municipal ward in a single municipality has a similar number of people represented by one councillor. Mahlangu says this year’s upcoming elections will see the highest number of wards being contested countrywide.
The number has risen by 512 from the previous 3 795 to 4 307 and the CJMM has the highest increase. Also, it will be the first time since the year 2000 that all municipalities will have wards, which means a growth in the size of municipal wards is expected in most municipalities around the country after the local government elections.
The elections are expected to be contested in May, and political parties across the country are busy finalising their candidates’ lists. However if Nast’s view, to keep local municipalities small and local, were to happen it would mean an increased number of municipalities with smaller wards — a view which was strongly opposed by Mmemezi.
In fact Mmemezi’s view is to make municipalities bigger to counter, among other things, the risk of having them bailed out by provincial governments. Mmemezi says [in Gauteng] they have realised that smaller municipalities “cannot deliver services”.
As a result, the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality will merge with Metsweding District Municipality after the elections. “They are finding it difficult, so from time to time, as provincial government we have to bail them out. So the best way we have resolved that — there will be one big municipality that will be able to give services to the people,” Mmemezi said.
However, Maepya neither supported nor opposed the idea of having larger municipalities. He said the elections should be about the “representivity of those local communities and ensuring that their voices are heard and that their needs in that local community are represented in their local council”.
However, Nast questioned whether local communities are actually represented in council in larger municipalities. “Do you, as a resident in the City of Johannesburg 14 000 people, feel close to your ward councillor? Do you see your ward councillor and do you feel that your local government is responsible?”
He asked if residents feel they are being taken seriously when they phone in to a large municipality and are being looked at as customers. Using CJMM as an example, Nast asked if residents feel that local government is indeed local or “are you a resident living in Orange Farm and having to travel to Braamfontain to sort out the bills?”
However, Nast said that he is not criticising the council or the people in it but the structure that they have to work in. The MDB has come under criticism in the past from residents who accused the board of not consulting the community enough during the demarcation process.
A member of the audience, living in Dobsonville, went as far as calling the demarcation in his area a “fragmented demarcation” after he accused the board of not doing proper consultation with the community. But Mahalangu, responding to concerns made by the members of the audience, said the majority of the changes on ward boundaries came from “the communities themselves.”
He, however, conceded that the issue of Dobsonville might have “escaped” them in numerous meetings the board held with the CJMM while busy with the ward demarcations but he promised to look at it further.
While speaking to the M&G, Mahlangu said some of the complaints from residents come because “there is always a desire to keep things [the wards] as they are”.
He added: “[That] is only possible if nothing else changes, if for instance there is no increase in the registered voters and there has been no change by way of growth of population of that municipality.”