Low voter registration during the national election in May can have an effect on how ward boundaries will change or expand before the next municipal elections in 2021.
Members from the Municipal Demarcation Board (MDB) visited Bela-Bela on Friday 21 June, where residents were informed of the legal process to either grow or delimit wards across the country before the 2021 elections.
Zachariah Moeletsi, speaker of the Bela-Bela Council, said at the start of the meeting that Bela-Bela’s population is growing, which is why the MDB came to town. Bela-Bela currently has nine wards and 17 municipal councillors.
A total of 30 745 people were registered in the Bela-Bela area, but fewer than 19 000 voted during the elections.
Quite a number of residents were confused whether they fall within a certain ward and where to cast their vote for that particular ward. When a resident reported at a wrong voting station they were re-directed to the correct location and hardly any incidents were reported.
The MDB decided in 2015 that Bela-Bela’s ward boundaries had to change before the 2016 municipal elections.
Tshifhiwa Nethanani, MDB representative, said the delimitation process happens every five years, where the MDB makes use of the Independent Electoral Commission’s (IEC) final and last voter’s roll, to determine whether wards in a municipal area should be expanded or delimited. The number of councillors are also determined with these statistics but are finalised by the minister and MEC of the Cooperative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs (Coghsta).
Nethanani said the MDB reconfigures the wards by using only the voters roll and not the total population. This is done by dividing the previous total of registered voters with the total number of wards, in order to conform to the norm of voters that should be within a ward, he explained.
“We avoid fragmentation or the splitting of communities. It is just a matter of establishing where a ward begins and where it ends. All of this has to be in line with the municipal structures act,” said Nethanani. “The delimitation process is meant to encourage democracy. The one challenge we face when determining a ward is where people in rural communities reside far from towns or metros and or voting stations. The distance between communities in relation to a typical town where people are in close proximity to one another is another concern in re-determining ward boundaries.”
He stressed that service delivery, with regard to the correct ward boundaries, must be implemented in each ward. Thus, a ward with greater distances must be able to obtain the same service as a ward with a denser population and shorter distances in between.
“If more people register to vote, the wards can likely become smaller.”
The delimitation process has already started and the MDB encourages residents to participate in the process.
The draft wards of cities and towns will likely be made public by November this year, then public consultation can take place between January and April 2020.
The final ward maps will be available by July 2020 and will be published in the provincial government gazette.
People can visit the MDB’s website at www.demarcation.org.za for more information.
