South Africa: Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) Committee to Set Out Next Steps for Processing Coalitions Bill

The Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs on Thursday received its first substantive briefing on the Local Government: Municipal Structures Amendment Bill of 2026, commonly referred to as the Municipal Coalitions Bill. The committee will now develop a detailed programme for processing the Bill, which is aimed at providing a legislative framework for the establishment and effective functioning of coalition governments in the local government sphere. One of the critical proposals in the Bill is for making written coalition agreements mandatory. This will make these agreements more transparent, binding and subject to public accountability. The agreements will have to be submitted to the Municipal Manager and the Member of the Executive Council (MEC) responsible for local government in a province and published in the Provincial Gazette. Also among other legislative proposals is the extension of the period for constituting municipal governance structures from 14 to 30 days. It is further proposed to cap the timeframe for motions to remove specified municipal office bearers at 12 months. With this limitation, it would be possible to limit rapid leadership