2
“The National Party is well aware of the enormous power wielded by a highly centralised state and is deeply concerned about the black majority assuming control of such an apparatus.” — Bekker in Heymans & Tӧtemeyer (1988, p.30)
2.1 Introduction
Municipal ESI developed in South Africa in the context of how government, and local government in particular, changed over time. This chapter thus traces the evolution of government in the country in order to provide context and an overview for the detailed analyses in later chapters. In this chapter, we look at the overall fortunes of local government during the three time periods selected for this book. We identify the prevailing national political dynamics for each period, together with how policy decisions were delegated to local government. We also assess the impact of these policy decisions on local government and the response to them. Throughout, we see how the consequences of decisions and actions taken at the higher level impacted local government.
2.2 Government Prior to 1910
In South Africa, local government with an elected council goes back as far as 1836, but its forms evolved differently, depending on particular British and Dutch influences (Tsatsire et al., 2009). Local government was initially influenced by the Dutch[1] (1652 to 1795 and 1802 to 1806) and then by the British (1795 to 1802 and 1806 to 1910), both of whom left deep impressions on the tradition and structure of local government. The former deeply impacted the system of rural and early town government, while the British influenced the development of urban municipal government, starting in the Cape Colony and spreading to Natal, Orange Free State and Transvaal. Vosloo et al. (1974) identify three forms of government during this period – rural, town and municipal. For our purposes, we limit our analysis to municipal.
The Anglicisation of institutions properly began with the British re-occupation of the Cape Colony in 1806 (see endnote 1). The Cape Municipal Ordinance was passed in 1836, which set up local government for towns in the form of a board of commissioners elected by households for a period of three years. Rates were levied annually by a public assembly. The Ordinance was essentially a framework within which municipal regulations were drawn up for differing organisations and powers, to meet the needs of each municipality. This home-rule measure allowed each local community to frame its own constitution in accordance with its own circumstances. The Ordinance was adopted by Natal (1847), and with minor variations, even by the two Boer Republics – Orange Free State (1856) and Transvaal (1877). Since it borrowed heavily from the British Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, it formed the basic framework for the subsequent introduction of typically British terms and practices such as mayor, town clerk, councillors, standing-committee systems, by-law powers, and the concept of a “municipal corporation”.
2.3 The Union of South