As I councillor looking for the contact details of other councillors, I contacted the Chief Whip of Council, Fawzia Peer, and requested a full contact list. She declined saying she didn’t want to be distributing the full list of council details willy-nilly. Why on earth not?! I have since obtained the full list, and post it here:
eThekwini Councillors Information Updated 2009
I am becoming increasingly aware that most South Africans don’t full understand the structure of Government in South Africa and how our electoral system works. Below I have attempted to summarise this as best I can.
Government in South Africa comprises 3 separate but related spheres:
In Local Governments, half the councillors are directly elected to represent the people living in municipalities’s wards and the other half are “Proportional Representation” or PR councillors and are chosen by the party on the basis of the % the political party won. Thus there are twice as many councillors as there are wards in a municipality. Usually PR councillors are “deployed” to shadow the ward councillor in another ward with a view to winning the voters of that ward over in the next election.
Only in Local Government is any politician elected directly – ie. you vote for a person. In the rest of the spheres the political parties choose who will be appointed.
Thus, if a politician must be replaced in the Provincial or National spheres, the party just replaces them.
In the local sphere however, because ward councillors are directly elected, a by-election must take to allow the community to elect a new person to represent their community.
All SA reps are elected for 5 year terms.
Earlier today I put up a Facebook note about a rather quizzical conversation I had the day before:
Yesterday, while chatting with a black female friend of mine she berated the scarcity of good men saying they were either taken, gay or too promiscuous to trust.
I was quite shocked to hear for the first time that homosexuality is supposedly prolific among black men. This was verified by a young black male friend of mine who was there at the time.
I had long thought that homosexuality among black men was serious cultural taboo and put gay men at risk of being beaten and women subjected to ‘corrective rape’.
I was assured this was a thing of the past and these days people are free to choose – and many black men are now choosing to be gay.
Comments?
I got a most interesting response from a friend of mine which I share below:
Well, let’s address the first glaring point: no one CHOOSES to be gay – the only choice is whether you come out or stay in the closet. Whether hormonal, genetic, conditioned on some level or a combination of those, being gay is something that’s part of who you are, involuntary and innate.
Secondly, the statement that ‘homosexuality is prolific among black men’ is a misreading of the situation. Yes, there are more visible black gay men but that’s because there’s a higher percentage of the gay population that chooses to come out than before. The percentage, I would say, always remains more or less constant in all communities (around 10%) but now more of that percentage is coming out and being visible, hence the false perception that “more men are ‘becoming’ gay”.
Thirdly, homosexuality is generally a taboo topic in black communities (though not uniquely so) but it’s not a uniform picture. There are gradations and variations on attitudes depending on class, geography, age, etc. Most visibly out gay men would be at risk of harassment, victimisation and assault in many townships but you also find islands/enclaves of acceptance, or at least ambiguity, in some townships.
For example, I’ve heard stories of township taverns where straight men specifically go to pick up effeminate gay men for sex. The reasoning is seemingly that: 1) this particular subset of gay men are “woman” enough in appearance and presentation to be fucked but more submissive and pliant in sex than more strong-willed, assertive ‘modern’ township girls and 2) there’s no risk of pregnancy with anal sex. (Naturally my next question was, ‘Well, why don’t they just have anal sex with girls?’ and the answer lies in point 1. Many black girls don’t like taking it from behind and would refuse to do so.)
Even historically, black culture (like most cultures in fact) has evolved and adapted mechanisms for limited accommodation of homosexuality. Basically a blind eye was turned to it (though not all the time) before initiation into adulthood because it was seen as “kids fooling/playing around”. Particularly during puberty, it could be accepted as ‘sexual experimentation.
When teenage herdboys would take cattle herds to graze for days or weeks on end away from home, mutual masturbation and, more commonly, thigh sex (though sometimes anal) was not unheard of, although obviously not all herdboys did it.
But ultimately, the cultural imperative was to get married and have children. There was no concern with, or even conception of, homosexuality as an innate sexual orientation. People only cared that you did what was expected of you as an adult member of society. If you wanted to live a secret double life and continue a same-sex love affair from your teenagehood after you got married, no one cared much as long you didn’t get caught. Interestingly, the penalty for adult homosexual relations in most tribal law codes was SMALLER than the penalty for heterosexual adultery. They understood that proportionally speaking, it was relatively harmless – there was certainly no risk of illegitimate children being borne out of a gay affair!
Warwick, tell your friend to count herself lucky. In the bad old days, she’d have been at higher risk of falling in love with and marrying some closeted queen who would never be physically or sexually attracted to her and be more likely to be thinking about her brother than her whenever they had sex. There’ve always been promiscous men and gay men; at least these days it’s almost as easy to identify the second group as the first so that women don’t waste their time barking up the wrong tree.
At the meeting called by yourselves, on 7 May 2010, no consensus was reached on ward boundaries.
The MDB officials then spelled out the procedure from there on. Within 7 working days the municipality was instructed to call a meeting of all those who had proposals for ward boundaries within eThekwini. [Within a further 14 working days the MDB would advertise the last proposals for comment and objection.]
This next meeting was called for 13 May 2010 at 11h00. Regrettably the ANC did not attend, and Dr Sutcliffe [municipal manager] stated that the ANC were happy with their own proposals and did not want to consider proposals from other parties. The DA, MF, IEC and municipal officials were present. Nadeco arrived as we were leaving the room.
It is a pity that the ANC were not present, as we had wanted to propose accepting a few of the ANC suggestions. We had hoped that this spirit of concilliation could be translated into better service delivery to the people. Unfortunately the meeting was aborted, so we can only present our further proposals and arguments to you [MDB] directly.
SUGGESTIONS
Wards 5, 6, 91
We looked at the figures and came up with another option for these wards, which is better geographically but still splits communities. This will then give the MDB the following options…
MDB original proposals
ANC proposal
DA [amended ANC option]
Moving VD 43400146 from ward 6 to ward 91
Moving VD 43400551 from ward 91 to ward 6
In a spirit of conciliation we would accept the ANC proposal, or the slight amendment if the ANC preferred that.
93, 94
The ANC proposal is only slightly different from the DA proposal, one VD 43580279 is moved from 94 to 93.
In the spirit of concilliation we accept the ANC proposal.
52, 53, 55, 57
This proposal looks like gerrymandering, and we feel that the MDB proposals are acceptable.
66, 68, 75
We looked intensely at including the Nizam Road community with the Bluff, but were unable to do so without compromising other wards in the area. Our intention of keeping the harbour together with the Bluff [ward 66], and the refinery with Wentworth [ward 68] is because these communities are directly impacted by both activities.
It is our contention that ward councillors for 66 and 68 need to be able to influence these heavy industrial uses for the benefit of the adjacent residential areas.
58. 59, 60, 61, 62
The ANC proposals for the area try to put Verulam’s CBD into one ward, but fall foul because they split our new “mighty fine airport” into two wards. This will make for very disjointed areas for the ward councillors to service. Also a portion of the ANC proposed ward 61 is almost surrounded by ward 62.
Our proposal is to keep the communities of Tongaat beach and Waterloo together with the airport, as they are the most affected by the King Shaka airport. One ward councillor would then have the responsibility of the airport and the residents it affects.
11, 34, 35, 36, 37, 41, 102
The ANC and DA agree with 2 wards in this area. [36, 37]
We have managed to reduce the length of ward 102, which will make service delivery for that ward councillor easier.
We have also managed to prevent the N2 Highway from dividing most of the wards in this area.
13, 84, 100
Our proposal makes wards 13 and 84 urban and leaves ward 100 as predominantly rural. We feel this means the ward councillors would then be able to deal with service delivery issues in a more focused way. We think this has accommodated the IFP’s proposals
8, 9, 12, 14
The ANC agree with two of our proposals here. [12, 14]. We would ask the MDB and IEC to consider splitting VD 43400450, Hillcrest Library, as it is large and difficult for voters to get to the one polling station.
16, 17, 18, 21, 23, 24, 63, 92
We only have consensus with the ANC on our proposal for ward 23.
For the others we have followed the principle of creating wards that are easier for ward councillors to manage, in line with our goal of improving service delivery.
25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 101
We have no consensus with the ANC on any of these wards.
We have endeavored to not “split” wards with the N3 Highway, and in so doing have created geographically manageable wards for the councillors.
Service delivery by municipal officials tends to be divided up along geographical lines, so our proposed boundaries more closely mirror those of council departments.
76, 87, 88, 89, 90
Our ward 76 proposal has been agreed by the ANC.
We have tried to unite the Umlazi communities and sort out odd shaped wards, again to assist ward councillors to provide a better service to the community.
Isipingo now falls into one ward.
69, 70, 74, 75
Generally, as much as we tried – we were unable to accommodate the MF proposals. The numbers just wouldn’t allow their ideas/wishes to work.
Kind regards,
Geoff D A Pullan
083 695 9190
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