City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality

History

The City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality was established on 5 December 2000, comprising 13 former city and town councils and managed under an executive mayoral system.

2011 expansion

The Metsweding District Municipality was incorporated into the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality, with effect from 18 May 2011 (the date of the 2011 municipal elections).

Geography

The City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality's land area increased from 2,198 square kilometres (849 sq mi) in 2010 to 6,368 square kilometres (2,459 sq mi) after the incorporation of Metsweding.

The Tswaing crater is in the northwest of Soshanguve.

Subdivisions

The City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality consists of the following areas:

Main places

The 2011 census divided the municipality into the following main places:

Demographics

There were around 2,921,500 (2011 census) people living within the borders of Tshwane: 75.40% black, 20.08% white, 2.01% coloured and 1.84% Indian or Asian.

Politics

The municipal council consists of 214 members elected by mixed-member proportional representation. 107 are elected by first-past-the-post voting in 107 wards, while the remaining 107 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 (DA) won a plurality of 93 seats on the council, but no party won a majority. On August 19, 2016, minority parties united with the DA to vote in DA mayoral candidate, Solly Msimanga as the first Democratic Alliance mayor of Tshwane. Msimanga appointed a mayoral committee coalition consisting of the DA, African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) and the Freedom Front Plus (FF+).

The following table shows the results of the 2016 election.

Water and sanitation

As of 2016 City of Tshwane receives 72% of its bulk water from Rand Water, which utilizes the Integrated Vaal River System. The remaining 28% of Tshwane's water is sourced from its own treatment plants and boreholes. Water restrictions are implemented during drought, heat waves or other seasonal changes.

Railway

The main rail station is in Pretoria.

The Gautrain runs through parts of the municipality, with stations in Centurion and Pretoria, ending at a station in the suburb of Hatfield.

Airports

OR Tambo International Airport in neighbouring Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality serves Tshwane. Wonderboom Airport in the north of Tshwane serves light aircraft.

Tertiary education

The Tshwane municipality is home to the Tshwane University of Technology, and the largest distance education university (the University of South Africa, more commonly known by its acronym, UNISA). The University of Pretoria, one of South Africa's leading research and teaching universities, University of Limpopo (Medunsa Campus) (formerly known as Medical University of Southern Africa) a medical school in the north of Tshwane and the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) are also in the municipal area.

Air Force

The South African Air Force military bases AFB Waterkloof and AFB Swartkop are in Tshwane.

Thaba Tshwane Military Base

Although the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality was only created in 2000, before that a military base in the city (formerly called Voortrekkerhoogte after the Voortrekkers and before that Roberts Heights after Lord Roberts), was renamed Thaba Tshwane.

Memorials

The SANDF memorial is at Fort Klapperkop and the South African Air Force memorial is at AFB Swartkop.

Museums

There are a large number of museums, many of them in Pretoria.

Stadiums

Tshwane [tsʰwane] is the Setswana name of the Apies River, which flows through the city. The origin of the name of the river is unclear. It may mean "place -e of the black cow, tshwana, from ceremonies where a black cow was sprinkled with water from the river to end a drought. Another claim is that it was named after Tshwane, son of Chief Mushi, an Ndebele leader who settled near the Apies River about a century before the arrival of the Voortrekkers in the early 19th century. However, some Ndebele kings claim to have never heard of a chief named "Tshwane".

Two other common explanations are demonstrably untrue. One is that it is the Tswana for the motto of Tshwane Municipality, "We are the same". However, this appears to be promoted for its emotional value; if anything, it would mean "we are not the same" in Tswana (ga re tshwane). Another common misunderstanding is that it is the Tswana word for "little monkeys"; although it resembles the Tswana word for baboon, tshwene, "little monkeys" is actually the translation of the Afrikaans name "Apies".

The name Tshwane is sometimes used as an alternate name for the city of Pretoria itself. Following the city council's vote of March 8, 2005, it could become the city's new name if approved by the central government. Should the change take place, "Pretoria" would continue to refer to the city's central business district, as proposed by the current municipality. By November 2007 the change of the name from Pretoria to Tshwane had not been finalized, and controversy over the name change continues. The change is seen by many as a way to recognize that peoples of non-colonial origins represent a majority in the city. The controversy, however, says that the city was originally established under the name Pretoria, little evidence has been provided for the origin of the name “Tshwane”, and no form of jurisdiction for the area existed before Pretoria’s creation.

The Sunday Times used the word Tshwane to refer to the Pretoria area for a short period in 2005. The state-controlled SABC also started using the term in its evening news broadcasts, for a period, but by 2010, had reverted to "Pretoria". Private media outlets continued to refer to the metropolitan area as Pretoria. The Pretoria News, the main newspaper in the metropolitan area did not appear to have plans to change its name as of early 2006, although it has adopted the slogan "The paper for the people of Tshwane". The newspaper refers to the capital city as Tshwane and sometimes Pretoria. This, with the public backing of the name change by the editor of the Pretoria News, Philani Mgwaba, has led to the independence of the editorial team being called into question.

Road signs erected at the boundaries of the Tshwane Metropolitan area have been consistently defaced, with the word Tshwane replaced with the word Pretoria, presumably by South Africans opposed to the name change. The letters PTA, which are an abbreviation of "Pretoria", have also been stencilled on a number of speed limit signs.

On 21 May 2005, the Pretoria Civil Action Committee, a group consisting of business, labour, cultural, civil and political leaders opposed to the name change organised a protest in the Pretoria city centre. They marched to the office of Arts and Culture Minister Pallo Jordan and handed him a petition signed by 3000 University of Pretoria students as well as other petition documents. Former president FW De Klerk, a Nobel prize winner and the last president under apartheid, also raised concerns about the change.

In November 2005, the Advertising Standards Authority found that advertising proclaiming that Tshwane, rather than Pretoria, was the capital of South Africa was misleading.

The Pretoria name change

On 5 December 2000 a number of old Pretoria municipalities as well as others that fell outside the Greater Pretoria area were combined into one area called the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality. The city of Pretoria remained largely intact in this municipality. On the 26 May 2005 the South African Geographical Names Council unanimously approved a recommendation by the Tshwane Metro Council that the name Pretoria be changed to Tshwane.

The legal process involved is as follows:

1. Recommendation to the Geographical Names Council.
2. Council approves/rejects recommendation (approved 26 May 2005).
3. Council gives its recommendation to Arts and Culture Minister Pallo Jordan.
4. Minister approves/rejects recommendation.
5. Approved/rejected name is published in the Government Gazette.
6. Any person or body unhappy with the name change can complain within one month of above.
7. The minister can consult the Geographical Names Council with concerns raised.
8. The minister's decision, along with the reasons for it, are published
9. The minister will then take the matter before parliament where the central government will decide on whether to change the name or not based on the information before it.

Some controversial groups have attached themselves to the Pretoria name change issue, including the trade union Solidarity. Solidarity and the Pretoria Civil Action Committee have threatened legal action should the name change be recommended by the minister. As of November 2007 the name change has not yet been approved or rejected by the minister (step 4 above). In early August 2007, it was reported in the press that the municipality, after consulting with the Gauteng provincial government had withdrawn the application to change the name, and was instead contemplating a plan to change all road signs pointing to "Pretoria" to "Tshwane" or the "City of Tshwane" across the country. This plan raised threats of legal action from both political groupings opposed to the renaming, and concerns from municipal officials about the possibility of vandalism to the proposed signs.

In 2010, the Ministry of Arts and Culture prepared to publish the registration of Tshwane as a place name, in the Government Gazette. However, the registration was withdrawn at the last minute, which was explained by the minister. Although it was too late to remove the name from printing in the Government Gazette, the retraction of the name registration was published the following week in the gazette. In November 2011, Kgosientso Ramokgopa, who had been elected mayor earlier that year, vowed to push forward with the renaming in 2012.

Corruption

As in other parts of the country, the Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality experiences high levels of corruption. Significant resources of the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) are dedicated to this region since 2010. The screening of applicants for management positions has also been criticized.

Cooperation with Swiss Global Infrastructure Basel Foundation

The City of Tswhane partners with the Swiss Global Infrastructure Basel Foundation, which is currently developing SuRe® – The Standard for Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure, a global voluntary standard which integrates key criteria of sustainability and resilience into infrastructure development and upgrade.