From 50 fragments to one 'Unicity': the evolution of a city

Countries & Cities · Published 15 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Imagine a city governed by over 50 different local authorities at once. This was the reality for Cape Town at the end of apartheid. Today, it stands as a unified metropolitan municipality, but its path to cohesion involved complex negotiations and radical structural overhauls.

At the dawn of the post-apartheid era in 1994, the Cape metropolitan area was a fractured landscape of over 50 different local authorities. This included various municipalities, management committees established under the Group Areas Act of 1962, and elected town councils for black communities created by the Black Local Authorities Act of 1982. These structures were often viewed as unsustainable or under-resourced, reflecting a system designed for segregation rather than integrated service delivery.

To resolve this, a massive overhaul began in 1995 with a two-level local government system. This involved a negotiating forum that brought together political parties, ratepayers' organizations, and community groups. They first created transitional metropolitan substructures (TMSs) under a Cape Metropolitan Council. By May 29, 1996, these were distilled into six interim TMSs, including the City of Cape Town (Central).

The final transformation occurred in 2000 with the Municipal Structures Act. This legislation mandated unified metropolitan municipalities, leading to the dissolution of the previous structures and the birth of the current 'Unicity.' Today, the city is governed by a 231-member council using a mixed-member proportional representation system, divided into 116 wards.

The journey to unification was politically volatile. The transition saw shifting alliances between the Democratic Alliance (DA), the African National Congress (ANC), and various smaller parties like the Independent Democrats. These power shifts determined who held the mayoralty from 2000 through the present, illustrating how administrative unity can still be a site of intense political competition.

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