Eastern Cape learn our best practise models

MBOMBELA – More than 50 portfolio councillors from 45 municipalities in the Eastern Cape Province recently visited the Mbombela local municipality as part of the SALGA Local Economic Development study tour.

The tour was aimed to encourage twinning arrangements amongst the two municipalities as well as copying each other’s best practices on LED.

The group visited many tourist attraction sites around Mbombela including the Eye of Mbombela, Jock & Java and informal trading areas around the municipality where they interacted with hawkers in town and at Karino / Pienaar intersection.

They were shown the legislature and the area near White River where the proposed Mpumalanga University will be situated.

They were also taken around KaBokweni and Kanyamazane.

The tour comes as a result of a peer learning session which was hosted by the SALGA Eastern Cape in September 2012, whereby representatives from the local municipality provided a deeper insight on the local informal trade sector support and shared valuable experiences with the participants.

“We were impressed with the presentation that Mbombela made last year in Eastern Cape and felt we must make a follow up on that since both municipaliies have similar challenges of growing SMME and they both have greater potential of growing its tourism sector,” said Cllr Viwe Ndamase.

“What is unique here is that the locals take initiatives, they are able to identify an opportunity and grow it. This is evident from the many signage of businesses unlike in our province, where people wait for the government, ” he continued.

“The trip provided a very unique experience and we will copy some of these experiences to our communities, however we were not impressed by the fact that local councillors were not part of the trip as we also needed political connection and advise from them but we hope that when they go down to Eastern Cape we will make do of this,” added Cllr Bulelwa Khweyiya the head of Community Services.

Mbombela’s municipal spokesperson Mr Joseph Ngala said, “As a municipality we were humbled by the fact that from all municipalities the Eastern Cape province chose to come and learn from us. They identified us as a beacon of hope and we wish our residents can realise that too.”

“we pride ourselves as a City of Excellence, its true we are not yet there but our aims to be there.”

Ngala continued to say that there are lot of similarities between the two province which means they can learn best practises from each other easily.