The West Coast District Municipality is a

district municipality A district municipality is a designation for a class of municipalities found in several locations, including Canada, Lithuania, and South Africa. Canada British Columbia Under provincial law, municipalities in British Columbia are to be desi ...

located in the

Western Cape 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 202 ...

province of

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 coun ...

. Its municipality code is DC1.

Moorreesburg Moorreesburg is a rural town situated about north of Cape Town, in the Western Cape province of South Africa. It was laid out in 1879 on the farm Hooikraal, was administered by a village management board from 1882 and attained municipal status in ...

is the seat of the district. As of 2011 it had a total population of 391,766.

Geography

The municipality, which covers an area of , lies along the Atlantic coast of the Western Cape, extending approximately from north to south. It includes the coastal plain and is generally bounded on the east by the mountains of the

escarpment An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that forms as a result of faulting or erosion and separates two relatively level areas having different elevations. The terms ''scarp'' and ''scarp face'' are often used interchangeably with ''esca ...

, though in the case of the

Cederberg The Cederberg mountains are located near Clanwilliam, approximately 300 km north of Cape Town, South Africa at about . The mountain range is named after the endangered Clanwilliam cedar (''Widdringtonia wallichii''), which is a tree en ...

mountains the border passes further to the east, along the

Doring River The Doring River ( af, Doringrivier) is a river in the Western Cape Province, South Africa. It is part of the Olifants/Doring River system. The name 'Doring' is also applied to a stretch of the Sout River, another Olifants tributary, midway t ...

, so that the mountains are included in the municipal area. The principal rivers in the area are the

Berg River The Berg River (also called Great Berg River or in Afrikaans: Bergrivier) is a river located just north of Cape Town in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. It is approximately 294 km (183 mi) long with a catchment area of 7,715 ...

, which drains the southern part of the municipality, and the Olifants River, which drains the Cederberg and the northern part of the municipality. The southernmost part of the district, adjacent to

Cape Town Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...

, is known as the Swartland and is primarily a grain-farming area. The Berg River flows across the Swartland from its sources in the Boland mountains. On the coast west of the Swartland is the

Cape Columbine Cape Columbine is well known for its lighthouse, the last staffed lighthouse built on the South African coast The Cape Columbine Lighthouse was commissioned on October 1, 1936. Both the headland and lighthouse derive their name from the barque C ...

peninsula, with a number of coastal holiday resorts as well as the ore-export harbour at

Saldanha Bay Saldanha Bay ( af, Saldanhabaai) is a natural harbour on the south-western coast of South Africa. The town that developed on the northern shore of the bay, also called Saldanha, was incorporated with five other towns into the Saldanha Bay Local ...

. On the north the Swartland is bounded by mountains which separate it from the Olifants River Valley. The upper valley of the Olifants is predominantly a citrus-farming region. The Cederberg mountains, much of which are a protected

wilderness area Wilderness or wildlands (usually in the plural), are natural environments on Earth that have not been significantly modified by human activity or any nonurbanized land not under extensive agricultural cultivation. The term has traditionally re ...

, rise from the eastern bank of the river, while along the coast to the west are fishing and holiday villages. The Olifants river continues northwards until, on the edge of the

Knersvlakte The Knersvlakte is a region of hilly terrain covered with quartz gravel in Namaqualand in the north-west corner of the Western Cape Province of South Africa. The name, literally "gnashing plain" in Afrikaans,Namaqualand Namaqualand (khoekhoe: "Nama-kwa" meaning Nama Khoe people's land) is an arid region of Namibia and South Africa, extending along the west coast over and covering a total area of . It is divided by the lower course of the Orange River into ...

region, forms the northernmost part of the district. The largest towns in the district are

Vredenburg Vredenburg is a town of the Cape West Coast in the Western Cape province of South Africa. "Vrede" is Afrikaans for peace. It is the transportation and commercial hub of the West Coast area and administrative centre of the Saldanha Bay Local Mun ...

and Saldanha on the Cape Columbine peninsula,

Malmesbury Malmesbury () is a town and civil parish in north Wiltshire, England, which lies approximately west of Swindon, northeast of Bristol, and north of Chippenham. The older part of the town is on a hilltop which is almost surrounded by the upp ...

in the Swartland, and

Vredendal Vredendal is a town in the northern Olifants River Valley in the Western Cape province of South Africa, with a population (according to the 2001 census) of 16,164 people. It is situated north of Cape Town on the banks of the Olifants River at th ...

in the Olifants River Valley. The district is divided into five local municipalities which are described in the following table. The district borders to the north and northeast on the

Namakwa District Municipality Namakwa is one of the 5 districts of the Northern Cape province of South Africa. The seat of Namakwa is Springbok and the region is also known as Little Namaqualand. The majority of its 108,118 people speak Afrikaans (2001 Census). The district ...

in the

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 ...

province, to the southeast on the

Cape Winelands District Municipality The Cape Winelands District Municipality, formerly the Boland District Municipality, is a district municipality located in the Boland region of the Western Cape province of South Africa. As of 2011, it had a population of 787,490. The largest tow ...

, and to the south on the

City of Cape Town The City of Cape Town ( af, Stad Kaapstad; xh, IsiXeko saseKapa) is the metropolitan municipality which governs the city of Cape Town, South Africa and its suburbs and exurbs. As of the 2011 census, it had a population of 3,740,026. The remo ...

Demographics

The following statistics are from the 2011 Census. Note that due to fuzzing applied to statistics, columns may not sum to exactly the indicated total.

Politics

The council of the West Coast District Municipality consists of twenty-five councillors, of whom ten are directly elected by

party-list proportional representation Party-list proportional representation (list-PR) is a subset of proportional representation electoral systems in which multiple candidates are elected (e.g., elections to parliament) through their position on an electoral list. They can also be u ...

. The other fifteen councillors are appointed by the councils of the five local municipalities in the district:

appoints five, Swartland appoints four, and Matzikama,

and Bergrivier appoint two each. After the elections of 3 August 2016 there are sixteen councillors from the Democratic Alliance (DA) and nine from 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). The following table shows the composition of the council after the 2016 election. The following table shows the results of the election of the ten directly-elected councillors.

Mayors

* Harold Cleophas (2011;present) * Rene Kitshoff (2008-2011) * Jacob Botha (2005–2008) * Hendrik Potgieter (-2005)

References

External links

Official website

West Coast District Municipality on the Western Cape Government website
{{Municipalities of the Western Cape District municipalities of the Western Cape West Coast District Municipality