Metsimaholo 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 ...

. ''Metsimaholo'' means "big water" in

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 ...

Main places

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

Politics

The municipal council consists of forty-six 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 ...

. Twenty-three 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 twenty-three wards, while the remaining twenty-three 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, no party won a majority on the council. The

Economic Freedom Fighters The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is a South African communist and black nationalist political party. It was founded by expelled former African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) president Julius Malema, and his allies, on 26 July 20 ...

(EFF) formed a coalition with 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). The EFF's Selloane Motjeane was elected mayor, while Lucas Fisher of the ANC was elected Speaker and Fikile Msokweni of the ANC the Council Whip. However, that coalition collapsed and Jeff Zwane of the Democratic Alliance was subsequently elected mayor. In 2023, Zwane was voted out of office in a motion of no confidence, and Jack Malindi of the African Independent Congress (AIC) was subsequently elected mayor. The following table shows the results of the 2021 election.

References

External links

Official website
{{coord, 26.8167, S, 27.8167, E, source:wikidata-and-enwiki-cat-tree_region:ZA, display=title Local municipalities of the Fezile Dabi District Municipality