Mafube Municipality (; ) is a local municipality within the

Fezile Dabi District Municipality The Fezile Dabi District Municipality (; ), formerly known as the Northern Free State District Municipality, is one of the 5 districts of the Free State province of South Africa. The seat is Sasolburg. As of 2011, a majority of its 460,289 reside ...

, in the Free State province of

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

. ''Mafube'' is a

Sesotho Sotho (), also known as ''Sesotho'' (), Southern Sotho, or ''Sesotho sa Borwa'' is a Southern Bantu languages, Southern Bantu language spoken in Lesotho as its national language and South Africa where it is an official language. Like all Ba ...

word meaning "dawning of the new day".

Main places

The 2001 census divided the municipality into the following main places:

Politics

The municipal council consists of seventeen members elected by

mixed-member proportional representation Mixed-member proportional representation (MMP or MMPR) is a type of representation provided by some mixed electoral system, mixed electoral systems which combine local Winner-take-all system, winner-take-all elections with a Compensation (el ...

. Nine councillors are elected by

first-past-the-post voting First-past-the-post (FPTP)—also called choose-one, first-preference plurality (FPP), or simply plurality—is a single-winner voting rule. Voters mark one candidate as their favorite, or first-preference, and the candidate with more first- ...

in nine wards, while the remaining eight are chosen from

party list An electoral list is a grouping of candidates for election, usually found in proportional or mixed electoral systems, but also in some plurality electoral systems. An electoral list can be registered by a political party (a party list) or can c ...

s so that the total number of party representatives is proportional to the number of votes received. In the election of 1 November 2021 the

African National Congress The African National Congress (ANC) is a political party in South Africa. It originated as a liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid and has governed the country since 1994, when the 1994 South African general election, fir ...

(ANC) won a reduced majority of ten seats on the council. The following table shows the results of the election.

Mismanagement

In 2015 the municipal manager, Nkabi Hlubi, allegedly awarded tenders to the value of R21 million to Pit Dog Trading. The latter company allegedly manipulated its tender grading and provided Hlubi with kickbacks of R1 million each time a municipal payment was made. Hlubi appeared in the Bloemfontein magistrate's court in 2021 on charges of fraud and corruption. As of January 2024, the municipality is under administration, one of 32 in the country, and three in the Free State where the provincial executive has intervened due to maladministration. In September 2024, the Municipal Workers Retirement Fund took the municipality to court after the municipality had deducted close to R38 million from workers for pension fund contributions, but never paid this over to the pension fund. The court ordered the municipality to pay the outstanding pension fund money. In January 2025 the Bloemfontein High Court found Mafube mayor Tlhoare Motsoeneng and the CFO personally responsible for the pension fund money that has been missing from the municipal workers. They were both ordered to pay more than R14.6 million within 60 days. In January 2025, the municipality was listed as one of the top ten municipalities in arrears on their pension contributions. In March 2025, the court has ruled against the Free State municipalities including Mafube local government to end sewage crisis within its borders.

References

External links

* https://archive.today/20130621004819/http://www.mafube.gov.za/ {{coord, 27, 17, S, 28, 31, E, region:ZA_type:adm3rd_source:kolossus-itwiki, display=title Local municipalities of the Fezile Dabi District Municipality