AN EXPANDED GAUTENG COULD LEAD TO MORE SERVICE DELIVERY PROBLEMS SAYS DA
The Gauteng province may expand through the inclusion of municipalities from adjacent provinces. This was revealed yesterday in a reply to an oral question I posed to the MEC for Local Government and Housing, Humphey Mmemezi, in the Gauteng Legislature.
Options are currently being considered to include the Dipaleseng Municipality, which includes the towns of Balfour and Greylingstad, into Gauteng. Balfour is well known for its violent service delivery protests earlier in the year. The MEC also indicated that consideration is being given to the inclusion of municipalities from the Free State into Gauteng as part of this process.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) is concerned by the possible inclusion of cross border areas into the province. The illusion exists that Gauteng is better resourced and therefore communities would benefit from being included in Gauteng rather than remain in their current provinces.
The MEC indicated that such inclusions would require a constitutional change and as such the process will have to be driven by the national government. However, he did indicate that the people of Balfour wanted to be included into Gauteng and that the ANC supports such a move. He also said that Gauteng cannot support such re-demarcation without a grant of at least R1 billion to address development backlogs. Should Dipaleseng be included in Gauteng it is likely to form part of the Ekurhuleni municipality.
Gauteng already struggles to fund its own backlogs and due to urbanisation and in-migration, the province is experiencing increased strain to deliver housing and municipal services to all its new residents. Municipalities in the province also struggle to make ends meet and the inclusion of new areas will place undue strain on these municipalities. Therefore there is no guarantee that these communities will be better off in Gauteng.
The recent merger of Kungwini (Bronkhorstpruit) and Nokeng Tsa Taemane (Cullinan) proved that residents are not better off after being included in a metro. These residents experienced property rates tax increases of hundreds of percent and are struggling to access services from the larger municipality. Such side effects could cause renewed violent protests.
Careful consideration needs to be given to the possible inclusion of cross border municipalities into Gauteng. The neighbouring provinces should rather utilise their resources more effectively to promote service delivery in these areas to mitigate such a move.
Statement issued by Fred Nel, DA member of the Gauteng provincial legislature, November 23 2011
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