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“On the issue of amalgamations…our research to date is indicating that, in most cases, these amalgamations are not working quite well. Because then, for lack of a better word, you would have burdened a well performing municipality (with a non-functional municipality).” – Municipal Demarcation Board Chairman Thabo Manyoni

The ANC’s underhanded attempt to gerrymander municipal boundaries and force an amalgamation of the DA-run uMngeni municipality with dysfunctional ANC municipalities in KZN, through the Municipal Demarcation Board (MDB), was not only exposed yesterday when the MDB appeared before the Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Committee in Parliament, it elicited a complete rebuke of the idea of amalgamation from no less than the Chairperson of the MDB, Thabo Manyoni.

Although the MDB pointed that they won’t be releasing the identities of the external parties who made proposals to change municipal outer boundaries, prompting the ongoing public consultation process, the idea to merge uMngeni with the ANC-run Mpofana and Impendle municipalities has the ANC’s dirty hands written all over it.

After losing power in uMngeni and scared about the emergence of an oasis of good governance in KZN under the DA, amid a sea of broke and dysfunctional ANC municipalities, the ANC has resorted to the dark arts of gerrymandering to capture uMngeni and return it back into the embrace of ANC misgovernance and corruption.

Returning uMngeni back into the orbit of the ANC would be spiteful to the residents of uMngeni who voted overwhelmingly for the DA in 2021 and rejected the ANC’s poor governance record in the municipality. Under DA Mayor, Chris Pappas, uMngeni has settled its municipal debts, extended the basket of free services to the poor and vulnerable, and improved service delivery outcomes. It is this functionality that the ANC wants to collapse through a cynical amalgamation with dysfunctional ANC municipalities.

Because the MDB is legally bound to consider all proposals from external parties, it has now called for public input on the proposed changes to municipal boundaries. We urge the residents om uMngeni to download the objection form to this merger, fill it in and to send it to the demarcation board at registry@demarcation.org.za and to copy in saveumngeni@da.org.za

Help us to send a very clear message to the demarcation board namely that South Africans will not tolerate this kind of political manipulation. The closer we get to the elections next year, the more the ANC will come up with all kinds of tricks to try to prevent their inevitable beating at the ballot box.

Issued by Eleanore Bouw-Spies - DA Shadow Deputy Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs