Despite the King Sabata Dalindyebo municipality boasting the third-largest economy in the Eastern Cape, it has been branded “currently financially and administratively dysfunctional”.
The municipality also has a low population density and limited economic development and comprises about 90% traditionally rural areas.
This is according to the Municipal Demarcation Board which in January 2024 shot down an application by KSD to be upgraded to a rural metropolitan municipality, or Category A municipality.
The proposal to incorporate Elliotdale, or Xhora, now under the Mbhashe municipality, and several municipal wards from the neighbouring Mhlontlo and Nyandeni local municipalities into KSD to form a category A municipality failed to convince the board.
Addressing councillors and officials at the end of a three-day strategic planning session last week, KSD mayor Nyaniso Nelani said the board had also found that the municipality was dominated by one economic node and the proposed incorporation would worsen already large service delivery backlogs.
“Service delivery backlogs in a proposed area can only be expected to increase with the inclusion of traditional areas as proposed,” the board said in a letter to KSD
“This [proposed] new metro will rely, as is currently the case with KSD, on trade and community services with very small industrial and manufacturing sectors.
“KSD is already experiencing financial viability problems.
“Therefore [it] will have difficulty to sustain a larger population and area with large developmental backlogs comprising mainly indigent communities.”
Metropolitan municipalities, the board added, were “expected to perform all local government powers and functions”.
Nelani, meanwhile, said the municipality needed to up its game in light of the demarcation board’s scathing letter regarding its shortcomings.
“I needed to bring everyone to a reality check and issue a challenge to all leaders at KSD to rethink as to whether the resolutions we have taken here are also addressing the expectations of the demarcation board.
“We need to continue even after this [strategic planning] exercise to apply our minds and try to address how we are viewed, whether we like it or not. There’s an additional responsibility.”
KSD municipal manager Ngamela Pakade, while giving an administrative overview of the municipality, said achieving metro status remained an important objective of the municipality.
He said metro status would have ensured that KSD received greater allocations from national government infrastructure grants.
He said apart from the planned Wild Coast special economic zone near the Mthatha Airport and other projects in Mthatha, millions of rand were being invested to turn Mqanduli into a modern town to enable it to attract large investments, with the assistance of the office of premier Oscar Mabuyane as part of the small-town revitalisation programme..
The developments included a R60m four-storey office complex to house government departments, a R29m driver’s licence testing centre and a R17m project to tar the town’s internal roads.
Plans were also afoot to turn KSD’s third town, Coffee Bay, into a thriving coastal town.
Former KSD municipal public accounts committee chair and councillor Pasika Nontshiza previously told the Dispatch the proposal was bound to fail as one of the fundamental requirements for metro status was that the municipality should be able to generate R1bn in revenue.
KSD was reportedly generating far less.
Mthatha businessman Vuyisile Ntlabati had also described the proposal as “too ambitious”.
However, KSD councillor Raymond Knock of the UDM questioned this week why the municipality had been described as dysfunctional despite receiving an unqualified audit opinion from the auditor-general.
He said Xhora had belonged to KSD before it was incorporated into the Mbhashe municipality.
The same thing had happened to the other wards under Mhlontlo and Nyandeni that were included in the proposal KSD sent to the demarcation board.
“Mthatha, with its population of less than 500,000 ... is servicing more than three-million people.
“Those people in areas like Xhora are not serviced there but here in Mthatha, so it does not make sense that the proposal was shot down.”
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