Johannesburg - The proposed merger of Midvaal and Emfuleni municipalities has polarised the communities along racial lines, with each accusing the other of corruption, fraud, nepotism and greed.
Tensions reached boiling point and accusations flew during a public hearing organised by the Municipal Demarcation Board (MDB) to discuss the proposal at the Vereeniging Civic Centre on Thursday.
Midvaal municipality mayor Timothy Nast fired the first salvo. He asked the board not to approve the merger.
He told the board that Emfuleni municipality was not a viable entity of the state.
If the two municipalities merged, a possibility existed that Midvaal would end up going bankrupt because Emfuleni had debt of over R2-billion. Nast also said his municipality was largely rural and did not fall within the constitutional requirement of being a densely populated area to qualify to be part of a metropolitan council.
However, Sedibeng district municipality mayor Simon Mofokeng disagreed. Nast belongs to the DA and Mofokeng to the ANC.
Their differences of opinion were reflected in the audience, and it seemed clear that black people, including members of the ANC, PAC and South African National Civic Organisation, were in favour of the formation of a metro council, while DA members and some ratepayers associations opposed the notion.
The majority at the meeting used their numbers to boo and heckle DA speakers, especially councillor Freddy Peters, of the Sedibeng district municipality.
Mofokeng said any move to keep the two municipalities as separate entities would stifle development. The communities living in the two municipalities had a lot in common and they regularly commuted between the two towns.
There was a need for a single, integrated development plan for all towns that would form part of a metro, he added, instead of there being different municipalities that did things on their own.
After the two mayors spoke, the differences snowballed among the people invited to make oral submissions to the board.
DA councillor Dennis Ryder showed aerial photographs of the country’s eight metro municipalities, showing how densely populated they had been before a decision was taken to declare them category A municipalities.
Ryder and fellow DA members were adamant that the Vaal was a sparsely populated area and did not meet the requirements of a metro council. The DA’s views were supported by Hermene Koorts, of Cope, and Jaco Mulder, of the Freedom Front, both of whom are members of the Gauteng provincial legislature.
The ANC in Sedibeng disagreed with their claims.
ANC regional secretary Bob Mthembu said the DA was opposed to the idea of the merger, saying it was likely to affect their political control over the Midvaal municipality.
The DA made a similar accusation against the ANC, saying the idea of a metro was a “ploy to take over” the Midvaal municipality.
While the political parties battled it out, however, some of the priests at the meeting were hoping for different things from the proposed metro.
One of the clergymen, Archbishop Ndzwane Mali, asked the packed hall to support the formation of the metro, saying it would be useful for their different churches.
He said if all the parties gave it the go-ahead, it would enable the metro council to help different churches send some of their members to Israel “to learn more about the history of Jesus”.
Mandla Nangalembe, who is also known as Abdul Aziz, also spoke at the meeting, and saluted the idea.
Nangalembe was fingered for allegedly being a mastermind of the illegal sale of municipal land in the Vaal region, and he reiterated on Thursday that the disputed land belonged to his “BaTlokwa tribe”.
He assured Mofokeng of his support and berated the DA for allegedly refusing to work with black people.
The board is expected to make a decision in August. - The Star