City of Cape Town

History

Cape Town first received local self-government in 1839, with the promulgation of a municipal ordinance by the government of the Cape Colony. When it was created, the Cape Town municipality governed only the central part of the city known as the City Bowl, and as the city expanded, new suburbs became new municipalities, until by 1902 there were 10 separate municipalities in the Cape Peninsula.

During the 20th century, many of the inner suburban municipalities became unsustainable; in 1913 the first major unification took place when the municipalities of Cape Town, Green Point and Sea Point, Woodstock, Mowbray, Rondebosch, Claremont, Maitland, and Kalk Bay were unified to create the first City of Cape Town. In 1927 the municipality of Wynberg was also merged with Cape Town, with the result that all of the Southern Suburbs were incorporated into the City.

Many new municipalities were established during the 20th century. Durbanville achieved municipal status in 1901, Goodwood in 1938, Parow in 1939, Bellville and Fish Hoek in 1940, Pinelands in 1948, Kuils River in 1950, Milnerton in 1955, Kraaifontein in 1957, Gordon's Bay in 1961, and Brackenfell in 1970. In 1979 Bellville was upgraded to city status.

The areas not included in a municipality were governed by divisional councils. Most of the Cape metropolitan area fell under the Divisional Council of the Cape, while the eastern parts around Brackenfell, Kuils River and the Helderberg area formed part of the Divisional Council of Stellenbosch, and an area in the northeast around Kraaifontein formed part of the Divisional Council of Paarl.

In earlier years the right to vote in local elections was not restricted by race (see Cape Qualified Franchise), but the policies of the apartheid government aimed for complete segregation of local government. A 1962 amendment to the Group Areas Act introduced management committees for the areas designated for coloured and Indian residents. These management committees were subordinate to the existing local authority—either a municipality or the divisional council.

From 1972, no new non-white voters could be registered as voters for municipal or divisional councils, and existing non-white voters lost their voting rights when a management committee was established for the area where they lived.

Politics and government

Council

Cape Town is governed by a 231-member city council elected in a system of mixed-member proportional representation. The city is divided into 116 wards, each of which elects a councillor by first-past-the-post voting. The remaining 115 councillors are elected from party lists so that the total number of councillors for each party is proportional to the number of votes received by that party.

The makeup of the council after the 2021 election is shown in the following table.

The speaker of the council is Felicity Purchase of the Democratic Alliance.

The council is divided into 24 subcouncils which deal with local functions for between three and six wards. A subcouncil consists of the ward councillors and a similar number of proportionally-elected councillors assigned to the subcouncil.

A subcouncil is chaired by one of the councillors and appoints a manager to run its day-to-day business. A subcouncil does not have any inherent responsibilities in law, but it is entitled to make recommendations to the City Council about anything that affects its area. The City Council may also delegate responsibilities to the subcouncils.

Executive

The executive authority for the city is vested in an Executive Mayor who is elected by the council. The mayor appoints a mayoral committee whose members oversee various portfolios. A City Manager is appointed as the non-political head of the city's administration.

With the Democratic Alliance (DA) having won an absolute majority of council seats in the election of 1 November 2021, its mayoral candidate Geordin Hill-Lewis, who had been a Member of Parliament since 2011, was elected.

The Mayoral Committee consists of 10 members who are appointed by the Executive Mayor. Each member manages a different area of the local government.

The current city manager is Lungelo Mbandazayo. He had been the acting city manager since the former city manager Achmat Ebrahim, who was appointed in April 2006, resigned in January 2018 amid misconduct allegations. He was formally appointed city manager in April 2018.

The local municipality was one of the four to have passed the 2009-10 audit by the Auditor-General of South Africa, who deemed it to have a clean administration.

Electoral history

The City of Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality in its present form took shape after the 2000 municipal elections. The old Central Cape Town MLC council had been governed by the New National Party (NNP), but they were losing support to the African National Congress (ANC) and the Democratic Party (DP). Fearing further losses, the NNP agreed to contest the upcoming local election in December 2000 together with the DP by forming the Democratic Alliance (DA), with DP and NNP members running as DA candidates.

The DA won Cape Town with an outright majority, and Peter Marais, also a senior member of the provincial NNP, became mayor of the unicity. However, DA leader Tony Leon's attempt to remove Marais from his position in 2001 caused the disintegration of the alliance, and NNP came to ally with the ANC. Marais was replaced as mayor by Gerald Morkel, but Morkel was himself soon ousted during the October 2002 local floor crossing period after a large number of DA councillors had defected to the NNP. Nomaindia Mfeketo of the ANC became mayor supported by an ANC-NNP coalition.

In 2004, after a dismal showing in the general elections that year, the NNP prepared for dissolution and merger with the ANC, and most of its councillors joined the governing party. This gave the ANC an outright majority on the council, which lasted until the next election.

In the 2006 local government election, the DA was the largest single party, ahead of the ANC, but with no party holding a majority. The new

Independent Democrats (ID) led by Patricia de Lille was in third place. The African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) initiated negotiations with five other smaller parties who together formed a kingmaker block of fifteen councillors, collectively known as the Multi-Party Forum parties. Despite the ID voting with the ANC, Helen Zille of the DA was elected executive mayor on 15 March 2006 by a very narrow margin with the support of the Multi-Party Forum. Andrew Arnolds of the ACDP was elected executive deputy mayor and Jacob "Dirk" Smit of the Freedom Front Plus (FF+) was elected speaker.

The initially fragile position of this new DA-led coalition, also known as the Multi-Party Government, was improved in January 2007 with the introduction of the ID following the expulsion of the small Africa Muslim Party for conspiring with the ANC. As a result of the ID's support, the coalition significantly increased its majority, resulting in a much more stable city government. The ID's Charlotte Williams became executive deputy mayor. However, she resigned just a few months later, and the post then went to Grant Haskin of the ACDP in late 2007.

Mayors

(Post-apartheid mayors)

William Bantom, 1995 - 1996 (NP/NNP)

Theresa Solomon, 1996 - 1998 (ANC)

Nomaindia Mfeketo, 1998 - 2000 (ANC)

Peter Marais, 2000 - 2001 (DA)

Gerald Morkel, 2001 - 2002 (DA)

Nomaindiya Mfeketo, 2002 - 2006 (ANC)

Helen Zille, 2006 - 2009 (DA)

Dan Plato, 2009 - 2011 (DA)

Patricia de Lille, 2011 - 2018 (DA)

Dan Plato, 2018 - 2021 (DA)

Geordin Hill-Lewis, 2021 - present (DA)

Geography

The municipality has a total area of 2,455 km2.

Subdivision varies according to purpose. Main places for census purposes may differ from planning districts.

Main places

The 2001 census divided the municipality into the following main places:

Planning districts

The planning districts are:

Blaauwberg, which includes subdistricts: Atlantis, Blouberg, Mamre, Melkboschstrand, Table View, and parts of Cape Farms, Goodwood, Milnerton, and Maitland.

Cape Flats, which includes subdistricts: Athlone, False Bay Coastal Park, Grassy Park, Guguletu, Hanover Park, Manenberg, Ottery, Pelican Park, and parts of Muizenberg, Retreat, and Rondebosch.

Helderberg, which includes subdistricts: Gordon's Bay, Macassar, Sir Lowry's Pass, Somerset West, Stellenbosch Farms and Strand.

Khayelitsha/Mitchells Plain, which includes subdistricts: Blackheath, Blue Downs, Eerste River, Khayelitsha, Mitchell's Plain, and part of Guguletu

Northern, which includes subdistricts: Brackenfell, Durbanville, Eversdal, Joostenbergvlakte, Kenridge, Kraaifontein, Malmesbury Farms, Vredekloof, and Welgemoed.

Southern, which includes subdistricts: Bergvliet, Cape Point, Constantia, Fish Hoek, Hout Bay, Kalk Bay, Kommetjie, Newlands, Noordhoek, Ocean View, Plumstead, Simon's Town, Tokai, Wynberg, parts of Muizenberg, Retreat, Rondebosch, and Table Mountain.

Table Bay, which includes subdistricts: Camps Bay, Cape Town, Observatory, Pinelands, Robben Island, Sea Point, Signal Hill/Lion's Head, and parts of Epping, Goodwood, Langa, Maitland, and Table Mountain,

Tygerberg, which includes subdistricts: Airport, Bellville, Bishop Lavis, Delft, Elsies River, Kalsteenfontein, Kuils River, Parow, Plattekloof, and parts of Epping, Goodwood, and Milnerton.

Adjacent municipalities

Swartland Local Municipality, West Coast District Municipality (north)

Drakenstein Local Municipality, Cape Winelands District Municipality (northeast)

Stellenbosch Local Municipality, Cape Winelands District Municipality (northeast)

Theewaterskloof Local Municipality, Overberg District Municipality (east)

Overstrand Local Municipality, Overberg District Municipality (southeast)

The City of Cape Town is also bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the south and west.

Alleged corruption

Two senior city managers were accused of corruption relating to a R186m urban waste management tender. In October 2024, the city announced it was investigating the allegations.