Prince Albert Municipality is a municipality located in the

Western Cape Province The Western Cape is a province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , and the third most populous, with an estimated 7 million inhabitants in 2020 ...

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 ...

History

At the end of the

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

era, the area that is today the Prince Albert Local Municipality formed part of the Central Karoo Regional Services Council (RSC). The town of Prince Albert was governed by a municipal council elected by the

white White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White on ...

residents, while the

coloured Coloureds ( af, Kleurlinge or , ) refers to members of multiracial ethnic communities in Southern Africa who may have ancestry from more than one of the various populations inhabiting the region, including African, European, and Asian. South ...

residents were governed by a management committee subordinate to the white council.

Bitterwater Leeu-Gamka is a small town in the Western Cape province of South Africa, located north-east of Cape Town in the Karoo. History The town of Leeu-Gamka owes its existence to the route chosen by Prime Minister John Molteno for the Cape Government ...

(Leeu-Gamka) was also governed by a management committee subordinate to the RSC. After the national elections of 1994 a process of local government transformation began, in which negotiations were held between the existing local authorities, political parties, and local community organisations. As a result of these negotiations, in January 1995 the municipality and management committee of Prince Albert were both dissolved and the Prince Albert Transitional Local Council (TLC) was created to replace them. In the same month the Bitterwater management committee was also replaced by the Leeu-Gamka TLC. The TLCs were initially made up of members nominated by the various parties to the negotiations, until May 1996 when elections were held. At the time of these elections the Central Karoo District Council was established in place of the Central Karoo RSC, and transitional representative councils (TRCs) were elected to represent rural areas outside the TLCs on the District Council. The area that was to become Prince Albert Local Municipality was covered by the Prince Albert TRC. At the local elections of December 2000 the TLCs and TRC were all dissolved and the Prince Albert Local Municipality was established as a single local authority. At the same election the Central Karoo District Council was dissolved and replaced by the Central Karoo District Municipality.

Politics

The municipal council consists of seven 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 ...

. Four 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 four wards, while the remaining three 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. The following table shows the results of the 2021 election.

By-elections

The following

by-election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election (Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to f ...

s were held to fill vacant ward seats in the period from the election in November 2021. The by-election took place after the

Karoo Gemeenskap Party The Karoo Gemeenskap Party ( af, Gemeenskap meaning "community") was formed in 2010 and is a small South African regional political party, active in parts of the Karoo. In the 2011 municipal election, the KGP contested and won three out of seve ...

(KGP), in a coalition with 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) and Patriotic Alliance (PA), expelled its ward councillor and mayor Margy Jaftha for supporting the Democratic Alliance (DA) in a motion to replace the speaker and the deputy mayor with DA representatives. Jaftha subsequently stood for the DA against KGP leader Goliat Lottering, winning the seat, and earning the DA an outright majority on the council.

References

External links

* {{Municipalities of the Western Cape Local municipalities of the Central Karoo District Municipality Karoo