Saldanha Bay Municipality (; ) is a local municipality located within the

West Coast District Municipality The West Coast District Municipality (; ) is a district municipality located in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Its municipality code is DC1. Moorreesburg is the seat of the district. As of 2011, it had a total population of 391,766. G ...

, in the

Western Cape The Western Cape ( ; , ) is a provinces of South Africa, province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the List of South African provinces by area, fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , an ...

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 ...

. , it had a population of 154,635. Its municipality code is WC014.

Geography

The municipality covers a total area of which includes the West Coast Peninsula (also known as the

Vredenburg Vredenburg (; ) is a town of the Cape West Coast in the Western Cape province of South Africa. "Vrede" is Afrikaans for peace. It is the transportation and commercial hub of the West Coast area and administrative centre of the Saldanha Bay Local ...

Peninsula) and stretches southeast to include the

West Coast National Park The West Coast National Park lies north of Cape Town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. The park is found inside of the Cape West Coast Biosphere Reserve, part of the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Programme. It is bordered by the Atl ...

and the area around Hopefield. It abuts on the

Bergrivier Municipality Bergrivier Municipality () is a local municipality in the Western Cape province of South Africa. It governs the towns of Piketberg (the seat of the municipal council), Velddrif and Porterville, as well as the surrounding villages and rural areas ...

to the north and the Swartland Municipality to the east and south. According to the

2022 South African census The South African National Census of 2022 is the 4th comprehensive census performed by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA). The census results were released on 10 October 2023 and recorded a total of 62 million people in the country. Key findi ...

, the municipality had a population of 154,635 people, with an average annual growth rate of 4.4% between 2011 and 2022. 51.2% of the population identified as "

Coloured Coloureds () are multiracial people in South Africa, Namibia and, to a smaller extent, Zimbabwe and Zambia. Their ancestry descends from the interracial mixing that occurred between Europeans, Africans and Asians. Interracial mixing in South ...

," 30.2% as "

Black African Black is a racial classification of people, usually a Politics, political and Human skin color, skin color-based category for specific populations with a mid- to dark brown complexion. Not all people considered "black" have dark skin and ofte ...

," and 16.5% as "

White White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...

." According to the 2011 census the municipality had a population of 99,193 people in 28,835 households. Of this population, 55.8% describe themselves as "

", 24.5% as "

", and 18.0% as "

". The first language of 72.5% of the population is

Afrikaans Afrikaans is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language spoken in South Africa, Namibia and to a lesser extent Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and also Argentina where there is a group in Sarmiento, Chubut, Sarmiento that speaks the Pat ...

, while 16.4% speak

Xhosa Xhosa may refer to: * Xhosa people, a nation, and ethnic group, who live in south-central and southeasterly region of South Africa * Xhosa language, one of the 11 official languages of South Africa, principally spoken by the Xhosa people See als ...

, 6.6% speak

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

and 1.2% speak

Sotho Sotho may refer to: *Sotho people (or ''Basotho''), an African ethnic group principally resident in South Africa, Lesotho and southern Botswana *Sotho language (''Sesotho'' or ''Southern Sotho''), a Bantu language spoken in southern Africa, an offi ...

. The seat of the municipality and its largest town is

, which is situated in the center of the eponymous peninsula and according to the 2011 census has a population of 38,382. To the south of Vredenburg is the harbour town of Saldanha (pop. 28,142) on the edge of

Saldanha Bay Saldanha Bay () is a natural harbour on the south-western coast of South Africa. The town that developed on the northern shore of the bay, also called Saldanha, Western Cape, Saldanha, was incorporated with five other towns into the Saldanha Bay ...

. There are several other fishing and holiday towns on the coast of the municipality:

St Helena Bay Saint Helena Bay () is a settlement in West Coast District Municipality in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Nicknamed by locals as ''Agterbaai'',''St Helena Bay.'' CapeWestCoast.org. http://www.capewestcoast.org/regions/town.php?town ...

(pop. 11,529) on the northern coast of the Vredenburg Peninsula, Paternoster (pop. 1,971) and Jacobsbaai (pop. 416) on the western coast of the peninsula, and

Langebaan Langebaan is a town in the Western Cape province of South Africa on the eastern shore of Langebaan Lagoon. Langebaan is situated 120 km north of Cape Town, just off the R27 (Western Cape), R27, about 28 km from Vredenburg and 20 ...

(pop. 8,297) on the opposite side of Saldanha Bay from Saldanha. In the interior of the municipality is the town of Hopefield (pop. 6,460) and the village and air force base at

Langebaanweg Langebaanweg is a town on the southwest coast of South Africa, in Western Cape Province. It is the location of the air force base AFB Langebaanweg. Langebaanweg has been an important mining center, with its main minerals consisting of phosphor ...

(pop. 952).

History

The towns of

and Saldanha were united under a single Vredenburg-Saldanha Municipality in 1975. At the end of the

apartheid Apartheid ( , especially South African English: , ; , ) was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an ...

era, in the area that is today the Saldanha Bay Municipality there were also municipal councils for Hopefield,

and

. These councils were elected by the

white White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...

residents, while the

coloured Coloureds () are multiracial people in South Africa, Namibia and, to a smaller extent, Zimbabwe and Zambia. Their ancestry descends from the interracial mixing that occurred between Europeans, Africans and Asians. Interracial mixing in South ...

residents of the towns were governed by management committees subordinate to the white councils. While the

negotiations to end apartheid The apartheid system in South Africa was ended through a series of bilateral and multi-party negotiations between 1990 and 1993. The negotiations culminated in the passage of a new interim Constitution in 1993, a precursor to the Constitution ...

were taking place a process was established for local authorities to negotiate voluntary mergers. Hopefield took part in this process, merging the municipal council with the management committee in November 1992. Langebaan did the same in April 1993. After the national elections of 1994 a process of local government transformation began, in which negotiations were held between the existing local authorities, political parties, and local community organisations. As a result of these negotiations, the existing local authorities were dissolved and transitional local councils (TLCs) were created in January 1995. The Hopefield and Langebaan municipalities were each replaced with a TLC. The West Coast Peninsula TLC replaced the Vredenburg-Saldanha Municipality, the St Helena Bay Municipality, and their respective management committees. The transitional councils were initially made up of members nominated by the various parties to the negotiations, until May 1996 when elections were held. At these elections the West Coast District Council was established, replacing the West Coast Regional Services Council. Transitional representative councils (TRCs) were also elected to represent rural areas outside the TLCs on the District Council; the area that was to become Bergrivier Municipality included part of the Malmesbury TRC. At the local elections of December 2000 the TLCs and TRCs were dissolved and the Saldanha Bay Municipality was established as a single local authority incorporating both rural and urban areas. In 2006 the boundary of the municipality was adjusted slightly to transfer a strip of land on the left bank of the Berg River (adjacent to Velddrif) to the Bergrivier Local Municipality. In 2011 the

, previously a District Management Areas, was added to the municipality when District Management Areas were abolished.

Politics

The municipal council consists of twenty-seven 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 ...

. Fourteen 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 fourteen wards, while the remaining thirteen 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 Democratic Alliance (DA) won a plurality of thirteen seats on the council. The following table shows the results of the 2021 election.

References

External links

Official website

Saldanha Bay Local Municipality on the Western Cape Government website
{{Municipalities of the Western Cape Local municipalities of the West Coast District Municipality