The demarcation of ward, municipal and provincial boundaries is the function of the Municipal Demarcation Board, which came into being in 1998 in terms of the Municipal Demarcation Act.  When Census 2001 was conducted, the first set of municipalities demarcated by the MDB was in place.  Since 2001 quite a number of changes in the boundaries of municipalities and provinces have taken place, many from pressure on the ground.

The past decade has seen a number of service delivery protests, with appeals from dissatisfied residents for their areas to be taken out of poorer municipalities / provinces, and placed in municipalities / provinces with more resources.  In particular, many people in the North West province wanted to be shifted into Gauteng, which they felt would provide them with houses and water sooner.   In this fraught environment, the MDB has had to perform something of a balancing act.

Census 2011 provides a synopsis of all the changes in the demarcation of municipalities and provinces since 2001.  The map on page 12 of the census shows that approximately  10% of our municipalities have had their boundaries altered, which means that some provincial borders have also been altered. Only the Western Cape and the Free State Provinces have not been affected. Some municipalities have been split up and incorporated into other municipalities, some municipalities have been renamed, and all the 8 cross-border municipalities have been fully incorporated into one or other province.

While the most dramatic of these changes has been the move of Matatiele into the Eastern Cape, and the move of Umzimkhulu into KZN province, there have been many municipal boundary changes in Northern Cape, North West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga and Limpopo as well. Many South Africans have found that they now live in a new municipality and a new province, even though they have not moved physically.  For businesses that operate in only one province or district, it is important to be aware of such changes. Tenderscan subscribers can have access to as many different geographical regions as required at no extra cost.

We recommend that subscribers select to receive notifications for tenders in neighbouring provinces, to ensure that they don’t miss out on tenders due to changed provincial borders. If you’d like assistance with changing your tender notification settings to include a broader area, feel free to contact us or email: contact@tenderscan.co.za.