South Africa to hold local poll in Dec.

By M.S. Prabhakara

CAPE TOWN, OCT. 14. South Africa is to hold its second democratic local government elections on December 5.

A little over 18 million voters registered in the national common voters roll will be voting to elect new local government structures in six metropolitan municipalities, the so- called megacities (Johannesburg, Pretoria and East Rand, all in Gauteng province, Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth), 241 smaller municipalities and 52 new district councils. The restructuring of local government structures since the last such elections in November 1995 has substantially reduced their number, which five years ago was 843. The announcement of the election date, which was widely expected to be November 29 and which date the Government favoured, was postponed several times.

This was because of the unresolved differences between the Government and the ``traditional leaders'' over the powers of the latter in respect of the local government structures. Specifically, the ``traditional leaders'' complain that the newly demarcated boundaries of the municipalities overlapped areas under their authority and so eroded their ``traditional powers''.

These issues were once again ``re-visited'' by a joint technical task team comprising representatives of the Government and the ``traditional leaders''. It was only after the task team submitted a report to the President, Mr. Thabo Mbeki earlier in the morning that the date was announced, though the Minister for Provincial and Local Government, Mr. Sydney Mufamadi, with his patience exhausted, had threatened that he would announce the date unilaterally.

The issues raised admit no solution since they posit, in a broad sense, a culture of democracy against a culture of feudalism where concepts like ``African royalty'' are taken seriously. The authority and powers exercised by the so-called ``traditional leaders'' were considerably augmented during apartheid by investing them with powers of patronage as part of the tactics of the regime to strengthen alternate authorities in rural areas with a view to weakening the liberation movement.

The approach was derived from the perception that it was only the ``de-tribalised'' African in the urban areas who was opposed to the apartheid regime while the ``simple African masses'' in the rural areas were quite happy with the policy of ``separate development'', the regime's euphemism for apartheid. Though this fiction is no more advanced - for it is indeed hard to find in new South Africa anyone who supported apartheid - the problems inherited from this policy remain.

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Section  : International
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