Westville Ratepayers Association

Who and What is WRA ?

WRA is made up of members of the Westville community joining together to form a formal body to engage with eThekweni Municipality to drive for improved service delivery and accountability for the rates we pay

Is there a cost ?

Yes, the membership is R120 per household per year.

Our Vision

To serve as the single collective void for ratepayers in the greater Westville area who will engage directly with sphere’s of government to drive for improved service delivery and future development.

Our Mission

To engage with the eThekweni Municipality to promote services that are efficient, affordable, reliable and cost effective. To ensure the transparent levying of justifiable, reasonable and agreed-upon rates that are not inflated.

More Information

The Municipal Systems Act, 2000 at s5 requires local government, as the sphere of government closest to the people, to engage local communities in the business of government (public participation) but does not prescribe the manner in which this is to take place.

Ethekwini municipality discharges this obligation by consulting its ward committees (its own creations and therefore representative of government rather than of the public) and interpreting this consultation in terms of plans included in its Integrated Development Plan (where they remain unsullied from year to year). The community has no part to play in this system.

The initial object of the WRA is to ensure that community consultation properly takes place in terms of the Act. In order to be able to demand effectively that it be consulted it must be able to claim that its membership is representative of the people of Westville, which is the reason for this membership drive.

We believe that the people of Westville have specific requirements of the municipality and we will confirm or amend these beliefs at our AGMs (Zoom meetings open to all members), in order to ensure that we accurately represent the wishes of our community from time to time. At this stage, prior to such consultation, we assume that the community requires of the municipality the provision of services which are best provided communally as against individually – security, lights, water, roads, sanitation etc. It is clear that the municipality is presently falling short in the provision of such services. If we are able to accrue a sufficient membership we are prepared to hold the municipality to ransom and withhold the payment of rates to the municipality, reserve them to ourselves as the WRA, and provide these services ourselves to ourselves as a community.

We are unable to do that unless we adequately represent the community. Hence, once again, the need for this membership drive.

In response to the possible objection that the WRA would in this event be constituting itself as a substitute municipality and would therefore be prone to replicating the endemic failures of the existing Municipality, especially that of the diversion of funds, it may be said that the accounts of the organisation will be made available to the membership at each AGM, that office-bearers of the WRA are elected annually by the membership, that they are not paid for their services, and that they will receive no reward for offering their services other than knowing that they have served their community.

Once again we urge all residents of Westville to join the WRA as a collective in order for us to have an effective voice against the municipality.

Use the below link to join or forward to all your contacts in Westville.