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MUNICIPAL DEMARCATION AUTHORITY BILL: NCOP COMMITTEE CALLS FOR WRITTEN SUBMISSIONS
- 27 June 2025
- Parliament
- SA Legal Academy
The NCOP Committee on Co-operative Governance, Public Administration, Traditional Affairs, Water, Sanitation & Human Settlements has called for written submissions on the Independent Municipal Demarcation Authority Bill, possibly in anticipation of more parliamentary hearings.
The notice announcing this was posted on Parliament’s website on 27 June 2015, setting 30 June 2025 as the deadline for input. However, a notice published on the Parliamentary Monitoring Group website has been backdated to 11 June 2025, tending to point to an administrative error on the part of the NCOP committee concerned. Whatever the case, SA Legal Academy will keep stakeholders informed of any change in the deadline.
Meanwhile, the length of time Parliament has taken to process the Bill merits attention. Tabled in June 2022, the Bill’s ‘B’ version was adopted by the National Assembly in November 2023, when it was sent to the NCOP for concurrence. Unfortunately, provincial negotiating mandates were still being considered when Parliament rose for the May 2024 general elections. As a result, the Bill lapsed.
Having been revived in July 2024, according to PMG records of an 18 February 2025 meeting of the new NCOP committee concerned, the Bill was expected to have been opened for written submissions in March 2025. Clarity is therefore needed.
Intended to repeal and replace the 1998 Local Government: Municipal Demarcation Act, the Bill focuses on governance matters. However, it also seeks to:
- ensure that a ‘major demarcation … affect(ing) the movement of more than one whole ward in a municipality may be done only after every 10 years’
- ‘deviate from the present norm of 15% to 30% when delimiting wards, but within strict conditions to avoid … splitting … communities’
- provide for the establishment of a demarcation appeals authority
- provide for ‘more extensive public participation and stakeholder consultation’ on demarcation or delimitation proposals
- ‘set timeframes for boundary redetermination and ward delimitation after considering the programme of the Independent Electoral Commission’, and
- make ‘municipal capacity assessments’ mandatory.
Please click the links below for more information:
- committee notice
- Bill’s ‘B’ version
- PMG report on 18 February 2025 committee meeting
Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch
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