Port St. Johns Local Municipality is an administrative area in the OR Tambo District of

Eastern Cape The Eastern Cape is one of the provinces of South Africa. Its capital is Bhisho, but its two largest cities are East London and Gqeberha. The second largest province in the country (at 168,966 km2) after Northern Cape, it was formed 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 ...

Geography

Port St. Johns Local Municipality is a Class B municipality. The municipality is named after its only large town,

Port St. Johns Port St. Johns (or Port Saint Johns) is a town of about 6,500 people on the Wild Coast in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It is situated at the mouth of the Umzimvubu River, northeast of East London and east of Mthatha. Port St. Jo ...

the

administrative center An administrative center is a seat of regional administration or local government, or a county town, or the place where the central administration of a commune A commune is an alternative term for an intentional community. Commune or comună or ...

. It is bounded on the southeast and south by the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by th ...

; to the southwest and west by the

Nyandeni Local Municipality Nyandeni Local Municipality is a local municipality (South Africa), local municipality in the OR Tambo District Municipality, OR Tambo District, situated in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Its administrative seat is the town of Libode. The en ...

, and in part the Mnenu River; and to the northwest, north and northeast by the

Ingquza Hill Local Municipality Ingquza Hill Local Municipality, previously known as Qaukeni, is an administrative area in the OR Tambo District of Eastern Cape in South Africa. Main places The 2001 census divided the municipality into the following main places: Politic ...

(Qaukeni) and in part the Mzintlava River. The major river in the municipality is the

Mzimvubu River Mzimvubu River or Umzimvubu River is one of the most important rivers in South Africa. It is located in the Eastern Cape Province. Course The river has its source in the northern region of the Eastern Cape, in the area of Matatiele and Mount Fle ...

, and the large town of Port St. Johns is at the mouth of the Mzimvubu. The municipality consists of 16 wards and covers a total area of 1239 square kilometers (8800 hectares). There are over 130 villages in the municipality. The interior of the municipality is rugged with some small arable areas.

History

The municipality lies near the center of the coastal region of Mpondoland (Pondoland), the area formerly part of the Mpondo Kingdom and a traditional home of the

Mpondo people The Mpondo People or simply AmaMpondo, is one of the kingdoms in what is now the Eastern Cape.Mpondo people
...

. When the Kingdom split in two around 1846, the Port St. Johns area became part of Western Mpondoland under chief Ndamase, as a result of a disagreement with his father King Faku, even though in theory Ndamase still owed fealty to his father. In 1869 the British government of the

Cape Colony The Cape Colony ( nl, Kaapkolonie), also known as the Cape of Good Hope, was a British Empire, British colony in present-day South Africa named after the Cape of Good Hope, which existed from 1795 to 1802, and again from 1806 to 1910, when i ...

offered the Mpondo king, Ndamase, a substantial sum of money for the Port St. Johns area, but Ndamase refused the offer. Cape Colony renewed the offer in 1874, but Ndamase remained adamant. However after Ndamase died in 1876, his successor Nqwiliso, readily agreed and in 1878, Nqwiliso ceded the Port St Johns area to the Cape Colony in exchange for £1000 and recognition as the ruler of the Western Mpondo Kingdom. The town of Port St Johns was founded in 1884, taking its name from the earlier Portuguese "Sâo Joâo" at the area was called. It is unclear whether the Portuguese name was derived from a wreaked ship of the same name that foundered there, or from the silhouette of a rock face that reminded the sailors of the apostle. However, before 1552 the locality was known to the Portuguese as "Sâo Christovâo". In 1960 the population of the municipality generally did not participated in the Mpondo Revolt. However, the murder of Headman Aaron Majali of Majola on 26 September 1960 by fifteen youths from Ntlanjana and Guduza was definitely related. From 1959 to 1994, the municipality was part of the

bantustan A Bantustan (also known as Bantu homeland, black homeland, black state or simply homeland; ) was a territory that the National Party administration of South Africa set aside for black inhabitants of South Africa and South West Africa (now N ...

Transkei Transkei (, meaning ''the area beyond he riverKei''), officially the Republic of Transkei ( xh, iRiphabliki yeTranskei), was an unrecognised state in the southeastern region of South Africa from 1976 to 1994. It was, along with Ciskei, a Ban ...

Main languages

The 2001 census recorded the following first languages: 98.69% IsiXhosa; 0.64% English; 0.20% Afrikaans; 0.13% IsiZulu; 0.12% SiSwati; 0.08% IsiNdebele; 0.06% Sesotho; and 0.08% other languages.

Politics

The municipal council consists of thirty-nine 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 ...

. Twenty 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 twenty

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 nineteen 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 the

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

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

Main places

The 2001 census divided the municipality into the following main places:Lookup Tables - Statistics South Africa
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References

External links

* http://www.psjmunicipality.gov.za/ {{coord, 31, 37, 42, S, 29, 32, 16, E, region:ZA_type:adm3rd_source:kolossus-itwiki, display=title Local municipalities of the OR Tambo District Municipality