LOCAL GOVERNMENT COALITIONS: DA BILL TO BE ‘INTEGRATED’ INTO CoGTA’s?

LOCAL GOVERNMENT COALITIONS: DA BILL TO BE ‘INTEGRATED’ INTO CoGTA’s?

• 02 April 2025
• Local & Provincial Government
• SA Legal Academy

The National Assembly’s Co-operative Governance & Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) Committee would like to see DA chief whip George Michalakis’ draft Local Government: Municipal Structures Amendment Bill ‘integrated’ into the final draft of the department’s Local Government: General Laws Amendment Bill. To that end, members have asked Michalakis to ‘engage with’ CoGTA Minister Velenkosini Hlabisa.

This is according to a committee media statement on the draft Bill, which was submitted to Parliament in March 2o25 for planning purposes but has yet to be formally tabled.

Among other things, the statement notes that:

• a draft Bill now being finalised by the department ‘must be aligned (with Michalakis’ Bill) to ensure coherence and, importantly, timeliness’, and that
• ‘presenting two similar Bills separately for public comment within a short space of time would be procedurally inefficient and impractical’ (assuming that the department’s draft Bill is approved by Cabinet and tabled soon).

The timeframe envisaged by the committee is that:

• Michalakis and the Minister should liaise on this matter ‘within one month’
• the Minister should then ‘brief the committee’ on:
  • the status of the department’s draft Bill
  • the department’s proposals for integrating the two pieces of proposed new legislation, and
  • a timeline for ‘the expeditious tabling and processing’ of an integrated Bill to ensure that the necessary legislation is in place ahead of the 2026 local government elections.

Two Local Government: Municipal Structures Amendment Bills with similar objectives were introduced in April 2024 by then DA chief whip Siviwe Gwarube (now Basic Education Minister under the Government of National Unity). Both were allowed to lapse before the May 2024 general elections and will be replaced by Michalakis’ composite Bill once formally tabled.

• Michalakis draft Bill (submitted in draft form on 25 March 2025 but yet to formally introduced and published)
• SA Legal Academy report on the draft Bill
• department’s draft Bill (released in May 2024 for public comment)
• SA Legal Academy report on the draft Bill
• committee media statement

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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