JB Marks Local Municipality


JB Marks Local Municipality is a local municipality of South Africa. It was established after the August 2016 local elections by the merging of Potchefstroom and Ventersdorp local municipalities.
The municipality was renamed after JB Marks in 2017, following the creation of the new municipality the year before. Other name proposals included Josie Mpama. Marks was born in Ventersdorp while Mpama was born in Potchefstroom.

Politics

The municipal council consists of seventy-seven members elected by mixed-member proportional representation. Thirty-four councillors are elected by first-past-the-post voting in thirty-four wards, while the remaining thirty-three 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 African National Congress won a narrow majority of thirty-four seats on the council.
The following table shows the results of the election.

Languages

The 2011 census indicated the following prevalence of languages for the combined municipalities of Tlokwe and Ventersdorp:
67.1% Setswana;
17.4% Afrikaans;
4.2% English;
1.4% IsiZulu;
1.3% Sesotho;
1.0% IsiXhosa;
0.8% IsiNdebele...