The Municipal Demarcation Board is rolling out new municipal boundaries across the country which is likely to affect areas of traditional leaders. These changes will be an ongoing process for the next five years until the next municipal elections. This will have an impact on voters as their names might also be moved into new wards.
The Demarcation Board members met with the Mpumalanga House of Traditional leaders to discuss the changes that will be affecting a number of municipalities in the province.
The demarcation Board provincial co-ordinator, Hester Marais says their engagements with stakeholders are to prevent unhappiness and confusion from the areas of traditional leaders.
“We would be embarking on re-looking at voter municipal boundaries and based on those changes and change registered voters. We would then look at the wards configuration of wards specifically, my purpose was to indicate to them some cases that have been submitted to the demarcation board that might affect the traditional leaders, they have indicated to us there’s a community of Stanford Madras between City of Mbombela and Bushbuckridge they would like us to address because it effects from a lot of issues,” explains Marais.
Meanwhile, the House of Traditional leaders in Mpumalanga says the engagements with the Demarcation Board have helped to defuse the tension which comes with the changes in the municipal boundaries in their tribal land.
Chairperson of Mpumalanga House of traditional leaders, Kgoshi Lameck Mokoena says, “We heard that they would be the fourth district in Mpumalanga… As traditional leaders, we want to be sure that those changes won’t negatively affect us. Secondly, we are worried about some of the demarcations that are separating an area of Inkosi into two.”
The delimitation processes for the municipal boundaries will be affected once these engagements are concluded.
In Mpumalanga, the affected municipalities include Emakhazeni and Msukalingwa. The intention is to ensure that voters are properly informed.
The authorities say they are aware that there will be unhappiness from other communities about the new changes in their wards.
