Date: 13/12/2005
Source: Ministry for Provincial and Local Government
Title: Mufamadi: Cross-Boundary Municipalities Laws and Related Matters Repeal Bill


  Remarks by the Minister for Provincial and Local Government, Mr FS Mufamadi, on the occasion of the National Assembly’s consideration of the Cross-Boundary Municipalities Laws and Related Matters Repeal Bill

Madame Speaker and Honourable Members:

The House has convened to consider the Cross-Boundary Municipalities Laws and Related Matters Repeal Bill. This watershed development will set the scene for the reconstruction of our developmental landscape. As we speak, the National Council of Provinces is also getting ready to convene tomorrow in order to consider the Constitution Twelfth Amendment Bill – a Bill that was referred to the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) by this House, for concurrence.

Today’s event has the effect therefore, of bringing us to the penultimate stage towards the finalisation of the legislative programme. Thus, confirming the country’s preparedness to hold local government elections on 1 March 2006.

Madame Speaker, the need for the geographical reordering of provinces and for the modification of the local government structure was accentuated by the realisation that cross-boundary municipalities are among those municipalities which, in the last five years, registered a relatively weak performance. Indeed, these particular areas were trapped in a structural design which is inappropriate to the task of universalizing access to the basic services, as well as cultivating conditions for sustainable local economic development.

For the government, the task of redressing the problem does not end with the redrawing of boundaries, for we are talking here of millions of people who are resident in municipal areas which by law, suffered statutory expulsion from the national economy. As Honourable Members are aware, from August 2004, we have been rolling out the last quarter of the programme of intervention aimed at bringing about system-wide improvements within the local government sphere. These include fiscal interventions directed at lifting investment in infrastructure and accelerating the pace of redressing service-delivery backlogs.

We will soon be announcing concrete measures which are intended to enable erstwhile cross-boundary municipalities to tap into the ever-expanding veins of municipal fiscal power. This is necessary because a disproportionately high number of people who live in the cross-boundary municipalities survive on social grants of various kinds. The only sustainable way by which those areas can be lifted out of wretchedness and poverty is to ensure that we craft a more even spatial pattern of socio-economic development and that we increase the absorptive capacity of those municipalities who have hitherto been battling to carry out their developmental obligations.

This Bill promises to make a substantial contribution in that regard. For that reason, I commend the bill to the House.

I thank you.

Issued by: Ministry for Provincial and Local Government
13 December 2005