Mayor Mike Masina announced the possible amalgamation in his weekly Middelburg Observer column on 20 February, saying that the minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs, Mr Pravin Gordhan, in view of optimizing the financial viability of the new municipality.

Mr Gordhan is no amateur when it comes to government finances, having taken over the reigns successfully as minister of finance with the exit of Trevor Manuel, who served as minister from 1996 to 2009.

However, residents of the Greater Middelburg will be forgiven for their skepticism regarding the merge, since the sudden submission by the minister, comes on the back of a crippling strike that hit the towns of Belfast, Dullstroom, Machadodorp and Waterval Boven, very hard for over two months on year’s end 2014.

Furthermore, the submission by the minister, comes together with a number of other provincial demarcation requests such as the amalgamation of eMalahleni with Delmas, Nelspruit with Barberton and Balfour with Standerton.

The 6th of May 2016 is the due date for the next local government elections, and though the law allows for a 90-day postponement effectively pushing the date to somewhere in August, both the IEC and the Demarcation Board, will find it near impossible to meet the deadline.

According to Mpumalanga DA leader, Mr Anthony Benadie, the amalgamation of Steve Tshwete with eMakhazeni, is the only merger of the four in Mpumalanga that could have two reasons, one being to give the ANC a larger slice of the cake where the DA has made massive inroads, and the other simply to lift eMakhazeni out of the doldrums, by having Middelburg’s tax payers piggyback an indebted Belfast, Machadodorp and Waterval Boven- and Onder.

The infrastructure of these towns are all in serious need of upgrades, maintenance and replacement.

Dullstroom, which offers a large tourism revenue injection, is the only viable adoption, but even this income would fall far short of the financial burden which will be placed on a 40 000 household strong Middelburg residential tax base, opposed to around 6000 sustainable businesses contributing to the property tax revenue base.

Sadly, the areas to be incorporated has even less successful businesses, but the same can be said for Rietkuil, Komati and Pullenshope especially, where the closure of Optimum’s open cast operations, is set to ruin the economy of Pullenshope.

The question is, can eMakhazeni be as successfully amalgamated with STLM like Hendrina, where strict credit control measures were implemented over a stretch of five years?

Hendrina’s residents were more than willing to pay their dues for improved services, and in large, the situation was equally bleak in Hendrina as it is in Belfast at present.

“There’s just no way that the municipality can say what the impact would be at this stage, and departmental managers are feverishly collecting facts to ascertain the final impact,” a well informed source within STLM told the Observer.

According to the source there would be a large financial impact on Middelburg, and the state of infrastructure seams to be the biggest worry for the town’s minders right now.

While eMakhazeni is positively salivating at the prospects of better services, Delmas residents in comparison is foaming at the mouths as eMalahleni is in no position to provide the quality services Delmas is delivering as an independent municipality.

eMakhazeni’s Eskom debts alone stands at R26 million, and other municipal debts tally well over the R100 million mark.

With an annual local budget of around R1,1 billion, it will have to be tested whether adopting an entire district with an accumulated budget worth one tenth of Middelburg’s, is economically viable at all, since it wouldn’t only include the merger with one town like Hendrina, but four.

Residents who want to object can log onto www.demarcation.org.za where an objection form can be filled in and filed electronically.

•To comment on the possible merger between Steve Tshwete Local Municipality and eMakhazeni Municipality, SMS the word Border to 37940 at R1,50 per SMS.