Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality


Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality is a metropolitan municipality which governs Bloemfontein and surrounding towns in the Free State province of South Africa. Mangaung is a Sesotho name meaning "place of Cheetahs". Legend has it that when the first settlers arrived, they were stunned by the vast plains that were roamed freely by cheetahs.
Before the municipal elections of 18 May 2011 Mangaung was a local municipality under the Motheo District Municipality. In the election, the ANC won 58 out of 100 seats on the Metro Council, while the Democratic Alliance won 26 seats and COPE won 2 seats.

Main places

The 2001 census divided the municipality into the following main places:
PlaceCodeArea PopulationMost spoken language
Barolong Baga Moroka911.668,556Sotho
Bloemfontein287.46111,697Afrikaans
Botshabelo228.79175,822Sotho
Mangaung46.23217,076Sotho
Morago221.373,941Tswana
Opkoms2.8415,397Afrikaans
Peter Swart1.9710,002Sotho
Rodenbeck2.057,837Sotho
Sonskyn0.803,630Sotho
Thaba 'Nchu216.2367,269Sotho
Remainder of the municipality4,364.1124,220Sotho

Politics

The municipal council consists of one hundred members elected by mixed-member proportional representation. Fifty councillors are elected by first-past-the-post voting in fifty wards, while the remaining fifty are chosen from party lists so that the total number of party representatives is proportional to the number of votes received. In the election of 3 August 2016 the African National Congress won a majority of fifty-eight seats on the council.
The following table shows the results of the election.