Gaborone City Council
| Gaborone City Council | |
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| Leadership | |
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Mayor
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Deputy Mayor
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City Clerk
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Agnes Seragi
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| Structure | |
| Seats | 35 |
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Political groups
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| Committees |
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| Elections | |
| First-past-the-post | |
| Motto | |
| Kgetse ya tsie ke go tshwaraganelwa | |
| Website | |
| Gaborone City Council | |
The Gaborone City Council is the governing body of the city of Gaborone, Botswana, and it is the wealthiest council in Botswana. It is composed of 35 councillors representing the wards of Gaborone.
The Townships Act mandates the structure of local governments in Botswana. Because Botswana is a unitary state, the power of the local councils are delegated from the national level. The Ministry of Local Government, Land and Housing has a major influence in terms of personnel hiring and training, budgeting, and development planning. Haskins Nkaigwa, mayor of Gaborone from 2011, has stressed the importance of more local autonomy. He advocates for a stronger city council with the power to determine budgets and hire and fire clerks and officers.
The city clerk runs the Gaborone City Council and is head of the Chief Officers Management Team (COMT). The city clerk has various advisory committees and secretaries to aid with the job; these helping positions include the deputy clerk, the secretariat, the head of the treasury, the Self-Help Housing Agency, and the departments of engineering, health, fire, education, social and community development, building and architecture, and an HIV/AIDS co-ordinator.
The Gaborone City Council is in charge of providing services like sewage management and street lighting to its citizens, but the council depends on parastatals like the Water Utilities Corporation and the Botswana Power Corporation to supply the water and electricity respectively. The GCC is also responsible for running public health clinics where the cost is less than one United States dollar. The city council runs all the public schools in Gaborone, providing free education and free meals to students.
The Gaborone City Council has seven committees:
The mayor and deputy mayor head the finance committee, making it the most important committee. In all the committees, the mayor is also an ex officio member. The committees meet once a month.
Elections to elect the city councillors are held around the same time as national elections. The most recent one occurred in 2009. The elections are administered by the Gaborone District Independent Electoral Commission. The mayor of Gaborone is elected yearly by the 35 councillors in a first-past-the-post system. Candidates are limited the councillors themselves. Like the mayor, the members of the committees are elected yearly by the 35 councillors from among the councillors. Since the citizens of Gaborone do not elect the committee members or the mayor directly, they rarely know who the candidates are until after the mayor is selected. This has led to unaccountability on the mayors part towards the electorate.
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Wikipedia