Karoo Hoogland is an administrative area in the
Namakwa District of
Northern Cape
The Northern Cape is the largest and most sparsely populated province of South Africa. It was created in 1994 when the Cape Province was split up. Its capital is Kimberley. It includes the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, part of the Kgalagadi T ...
in
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...
.
Hoogland an Afrikaans word meaning "highland" and Karoo is a Khoi word meaning "hard" or "dry". The name reflects the area which has dry, arid and desert-like conditions.
The municipality incorporates the towns of
Williston,
Fraserburg
Fraserburg is a town in the Karoo region of South Africa's Northern Cape province. It is located in the Karoo Hoogland Local Municipality. The town has some of the coldest winters in South Africa.
The nearest towns are Williston, Sutherland, Lo ...
and
Sutherland
Sutherland ( gd, Cataibh) is a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area in the Highlands of Scotland. Its county town is Dornoch. Sutherland borders Caithness and Moray Firth to the east, Ross-shire and Cromartyshire (later ...
. Although the towns are separated by more than 100 km by road, they share many administrative tasks.
Karoo Hoogland elected the first (and so far only) mayor from
COPE
The cope (known in Latin as ''pluviale'' 'rain coat' or ''cappa'' 'cape') is a liturgical vestment, more precisely a long mantle or cloak, open in front and fastened at the breast with a band or clasp. It may be of any liturgical colours, litu ...
, Jan Julies, in 2011, as a COPE-
DA coalition took control of the council after the
election of 18 May 2011. This lasted until the 2016 elections.
Main places
The
2011 census divided the municipality into the following
main places:
Politics
The municipal council consists of eleven members elected by
mixed-member proportional representation
Mixed-member proportional representation (MMP or MMPR) is a mixed electoral system in which votes cast are considered in local elections and also to determine overall party vote tallies, which are used to allocate additional members to produce ...
. Six 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 their ...
in six
wards
Ward may refer to:
Division or unit
* Hospital ward, a hospital division, floor, or room set aside for a particular class or group of patients, for example the psychiatric ward
* Prison ward, a division of a penal institution such as a priso ...
, while the remaining five are chosen from
party list
An electoral list is a grouping of candidates for election, usually found in proportional or mixed electoral systems, but also in some plurality electoral systems. An electoral list can be registered by a political party (a party list) or can ...
s so that the total number of party representatives is proportional to the number of votes received. In the
election of 1 November 2021 no party obtained a majority of seats on the council. The following table shows the results of the election.
On 8 December 2022 the PA/ANC coalition collapsed during a no confidence motion brought by the DA. Consequently the PA mayor Anthony Mietas was replaced by the DA’s Johan van der Colff.
References
External links
Official website
{{Municipalities of the Northern Cape
Local municipalities of the Namakwa District Municipality