George Local Municipality


George Municipality is a municipality located in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. the population is 193,672. Its municipality code is WC044.

Geography

The municipality covers an area of in the Garden Route and Little Karoo regions. It includes the coastal plateau around the city of George, and extends northeast over the Outeniqua Mountains to include the eastern end of the Little Karoo as far as the Swartberg mountains and the boundary with the Eastern Cape province. It abuts on the Mossel Bay Municipality to the west, the Oudtshoorn Municipality to the northwest, the Baviaans Municipality to the northeast, the Kou-Kamma Municipality to the east, and the Bitou and Knysna Municipalities to the southeast.
According to the 2011 census the municipality has a population of 193,672 people in 53,551 households. Of this population, 50.4% describe themselves as "Coloured", 28.2% as "Black African", and 19.7% as "White". The first language of 67.2% of the population is Afrikaans, while 21.7% speak Xhosa and 8.1% speak English.
The majority of the residents of the municipality are in the city of George, which as of 2011 has a population of 157,394. Close to George are the coastal resorts of Herolds Bay and Wilderness. Haarlem and Uniondale are in the interior of the municipality at the top of the Langkloof.

Politics

The municipal council consists of fifty-three members elected by mixed-member proportional representation. Twenty-seven councillors are elected by first-past-the-post voting in twenty-seven wards, while the remaining twenty-six 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 3 August 2016 the Democratic Alliance won a majority of twenty-nine seats on the council.
The following table shows the results of the 2016 election.
The DA subsequently lost one seat to the African National Congress in a by-election on 1 February 2017. The council was reconfigured as seen below:
The local council sends six representatives to the council of the Garden Route District Municipality. this delegation consisted of three councillors from the Democratic Alliance, two from the African National Congress and one from the African Independent Congress.