Talk:District municipality (South Africa)

Election of the Council
I can't find any info on Wikipedia (nor on the web, really) on how the council of a district municipality is elected and composed. The only info I've seen is that the IEC website states two ballot types: "DC 40%" and "DC 60% DMA". Would that mean that the population of the District Management Area determines 60% of the District Council seats? That seems illogical. Gk sa (talk) 12:34, 16 April 2011 (UTC)


 * There's an article briefly explaining it here; basically, 40% of the district councillors are directly elected by PR vote by the people of the district, and 60% are elected by the local councils proportionally to the party support in those councils. If there is a DMA (and the DMAs are being abolished for the coming elections) then the DMA residents get to elect one councillor as part of that 60%, which is what the "DC 60% DMA" ballot type refers to. - htonl (talk) 13:06, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Scope of the Council
Also, some information of the powers of the District Municipality's council and how they compare to the Local Municipalities powers would be very useful. For instance, can the District Municipality overrule the Local Municipality in some matters? That a DM is composed of several LM's seems to suggest that, but if 60% the DM's council is determined by the voters in the largely undeveloped DMA's (see above), that would be quite counter-productive. Anyone know where to find this information? Gk sa (talk) 12:34, 16 April 2011 (UTC)


 * The powers of the districts are listed in the Local Government: Municipal Structures Act at section 84. There is a caveat, though: the responsible MEC can alter the division of powers for specific districts or specific local municipalities. As I understand it the district council doesn't have the ability to overrule a local council, but if there's a dispute about which council is responsible for a particular issue, the MEC can decide it. If I have time, I'll write some of this up in the article this evening. - htonl (talk) 13:06, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

DMA info is outdated
The abolition of the DMAs at the time of the 2011 election needs to be added to the section. Roger (talk) 12:52, 17 August 2011 (UTC)