Orania hands report on independence to Mufamadi

The exclusively white community of Orania in the Northern Cape is to hand a report on its status as an independent municipality to Sydney Mufamadi, the Local Government Minister today, a spokesperson for Orania says.

Carel Boshoff says in a statement that the report was the result of a 14-month study of the desirability for Orania to have its own local government structures, after it was demarcated with Hopetown and Strydenburg into the Thembelihle municipality.

Boshoff says the community went to court just before the local government elections in 2000 to fight the demarcation and to insist on its own local government structures. The court granted an order that the demarcation should be halted and that an independent committee should be appointed to investigate the feasibility of the community having its own municipality.

The town's rural transitional representative council, which was granted in 1995, was retained for the duration of the investigation.

Boshoff says the report makes four recommendations. The first of being that the town should not have its own municipality. Secondly it recommends that Orania should rather be demarcated with Van der Kloof, a town at the Van der Kloof dam. Thirdly it says that certain municipal services should be delegated to the Orania community itself via a contract. The fourth recommendation is that a cabinet committee should investigate the community's right to self-determination as guaranteed by the Constitution.

Boshoff says the report contained all the elements to reach a positive agreement. He expressed the hope that the government would regard it in the same light.

Orania is a small Afrikaner community of about 600 people near Hopetown in the Northern Cape. Its main industry is agriculture.

Source