Intsika Yethu Local Municipality is an administrative area in the Chris Hani District of the Eastern Cape in

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

. The municipality is one of six in this district.Local Government. Intsika Yethu Local Municipality.
/ref> Intsika Yethu is an

isiXhosa Xhosa (, ) also isiXhosa as an endonym, is a Nguni language and one of the official languages of South Africa and Zimbabwe. Xhosa is spoken as a first language by approximately 8.2 million people and by another 11 million as a secon ...

name meaning "our pillars".

Main places

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

People

In 2016, the population was 146,341City Population. INTSIKA YETHU (Local Municipality in South Africa).
/ref> with an estimated population growth of 0.09% per year. This rural community is 99%

Black Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white ...

with Xhosa as the most widely spoken language. Villages within the district have a sense of community and often work collectively, forming communal networks to address their impoverished circumstances.Meyiwa, T., Letsekha, T. and Wiebesiek, L., 2013. Masihambisane, lessons learnt using participatory indigenous knowledge research approaches in a school-based collaborative project of the Eastern Cape. South African Journal of Education, 33(4), pp.1-15. Women generally head households and support their families through informal employment. They are primarily responsible for caring for the elderly and younger members of the family, providing food and gathering firewood. The late political activist and former leader of the

South African Communist Party The South African Communist Party (SACP) is a communist party in South Africa. It was founded in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), tactically dissolved itself in 1950 in the face of being declared illegal by the governing Na ...

Chris Hani Chris Hani (28 June 1942 – 10 April 1993), born Martin Thembisile Hani , was the leader of the South African Communist Party and chief of staff of uMkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). He was a fierce ...

, was born in Intsika Yethu in the town of Sabalele. He grew up in a home with five siblings, his mother Nomayise and father Gilbert. The province commemorates the late Chris Hani with a statue, a municipality named after him and the annual Chris Hani Freedom Marathon, which is held on the route that Hani walked to school.Running For A Hero. 2017. Forbes Africa. Accessed 23 June 2017.
/ref>

Infrastructure

This predominantly rural area is characterised by poverty and unemployment,

subsistence farming Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow food crops to meet the needs of themselves and their families on smallholdings. Subsistence agriculturalists target farm output for survival and for mostly local requirements, with little or no su ...

, food insecurity and diseases like

HIV/AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual ...

. Natural disasters such as drought, erosion, and floods and a lack of adequate emergency plans make pre-existing shortages worse. Intsika Yethu is part of the greater Chris Hani District Municipality that was reported as one of three HIV/AIDS hotspots in the Eastern Cape. This, while the prevalence of new infections and the syndrome have decreased in other districts in the province.Bay one of three HIV/Aids hotspots. 2016. Herald Live. Accessed 23 June 2017.
/ref> The area remains underserviced with only 2.4% of the 35 851 households having piped water within their homes in 2016. In 2016, President Jacob Zuma launched the Ncora Bulk Water Project, a government initiative that committed to delivering water to areas in the Chris Hani District Municipality and other areas in the country. This project also aimed to broadened the areas’ economic activities.Zuma launches Ncora Bulk Water Project. 2016. IOL. Accessed 27 June 2017.
/ref> Its main economic sectors include community services, trade and agriculture. As part of

Eskom Eskom Hld SOC Ltd or Eskom is a South African electricity public utility. It was established in 1923 as the Electricity Supply Commission (ESCOM) and was also known by its Afrikaans name Elektrisiteitsvoorsieningskommissie (EVKOM). Eskom repre ...

’s mission to achieve widespread access to electricity for South Africans by 2020, 94 000 homes were connected over three years in the Eastern Cape.Eskom lights up rural Eastern Cape, 17 March 2017. The Citizen, accessed 15 June 2017.
/ref> In 2016, 86.6% of the homes in Intsika Yethu had electricity.

Economy

Many of the households rely on social grants as their sole source of income.Eppel, Nic. Son of the soil: The slow life in Chris Hani's home town, 10 January 2014. Mail & Guardian, accessed 15 June 2017.
/ref> The working-age population is largely absent in this region with poorly developed infrastructure and limited employment opportunities. Youth often migrate to the cities in search of work in labour-intensive industries like

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic ...

Politics

The municipal council consists of forty-two members elected by mixed-member proportional representation. Twenty-one councillors are elected by

first-past-the-post voting In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast thei ...

in twenty-one wards, while the remaining twenty-one are chosen from party lists so that the total number of party representatives is proportional to the number of votes received. In the election of 1 November 2021 the

African National Congress The African National Congress (ANC) is a social-democratic political party in South Africa. A liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid, it has governed the country since 1994, when the first post-apartheid election install ...

(ANC) won a majority of thirty-five seats on the council. The following table shows the results of the election.

References

External links

* http://www.intsikayethu.gov.za/ {{coord, 32, 00, 29, S, 27, 35, 03, E, region:ZA_type:adm3rd_source:kolossus-itwiki, display=title Local municipalities of the Chris Hani District Municipality