Residents of Matatiele in the Eastern Cape are calling on Parliament to urgently discuss the Bill related to the demarcation of their area.
A civic group – the Matatiele-Maluti Mass Action Organising Committee handed a memorandum to local authorities during a peaceful march to demand that the issue be discussed before June 30.
The committee says it wants Matatiele and its villages incorporated into KwaZulu-Natal from the Eastern Cape.
Matatiele has never fully enjoyed being with her villages. In 1978 the municipality was placed under the then Natal province, but its villages fell under the Transkei.
In 1995, Matatiele was placed under the new KwaZulu-Natal province but villages fell under the Eastern Cape. It was only in 2005 that Matatiele was reunited with her villages but this was not without problems.
The villages wanted a taste of KwaZulu-Natal.
For the past 13 years, the people of Matatiele have been fighting to be incorporated into KwaZulu-Natal’s Harry Gwala district from the Eastern Cape’s Alfred Nzo district.
The leadership of the Matatiele-Maluti Mass Action Organising Committee, Fundiswa Nyamakazi and Lucky Malusi say service delivery and proximity to KwaZulu-Natal are their motivation for requesting the move.
“Our Taylor Bequest hospital is a disaster. The officials from the municipality and other people who can afford they get health system from KZN. There’s also a lot of corruption in our local municipality. There are no roads under Eastern Cape,” says Nyamakazi.
“People of Matatiele were given a chance in terms of public consultation. They did that with majority. And the results were not published to the people,”says Malusi.
The local African National Congress (ANC) also voiced its concern over the dragging of the process. Secretary of the Ntai Mohlome branch, Motebang Lesapo, blames the Provincial Executive Committee for influencing Alfred Nzo District municipal councillors to confuse communities.
“We are happy with the position of the National Executive Committee of the ANC that Matatiele must be taken to where the majority of the people of Matatiele want it to be which is KZN. We’re also advising to the PEC of the ANC at the Eastern Cape Province that they must listen to the view of the national executive committee when it comes to this.”
However, the mayor of Matatiele Municipality, Momelezi Mbedla, believes the KwaZulu-Natal-Eastern Cape issue is sowing divisions and hindering delivery of basic services.
“It’s not a scientific debate that on the basis that Matatiele is a town that is having proximity with KZN it needs to be moved there. South Africa is a country divided into nine provinces and all the provinces they’ve got borders, they’ve got towns like Matatiele where you find that a particular municipality is sharing a border with a particular municipality in another province. So that is not a scientific debate because we need to have provinces and provinces they need to have boundaries.”
The national government believes these issues need urgent attention. Deputy Director-General of the Energy Department, Thabane Zulu accepted the memorandum from the marchers.
‘This process is in Parliament at the moment. Various submissions have already been made with regard to this matter and many other related issues and Parliament will be paying a very urgent attention into these issues. Some of them date as far back as 2005. So Parliament is currently dealing with this matter as well.”
Meanwhile, residents have vowed to withhold their vote if the matter is still unresolved in 2019.
