Twelfth Amendment of the Constitution of South Africa

Constitution Twelfth Amendment Act of 2005
Act to amend the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, so as to effect a technical change; to re-determine the geographical areas of the nine provinces of the Republic of South Africa; and to provide for matters connected therewith.
Enacted by	Parliament of South Africa
Date enacted	14 December 2005
Date assented to	22 December 2005
Date commenced	1 March 2006
Legislative history
Bill	Constitution Twelfth Amendment Bill
Bill citation	B33B—2005
Bill published on	30 September 2005
Introduced by	Brigitte Mabandla, Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development
Related legislation
Thirteenth Amendment, Sixteenth Amendment

The Twelfth Amendment of the Constitution of South Africa (formally the Constitution Twelfth Amendment Act of 2005) altered the boundaries of seven of South Africa's nine provinces. It also redefined all of the province's geographical areas in terms of the areas of district and metropolitan municipalities, and repealed the provisions introduced by the Third Amendment that allowed municipal areas to cross provincial boundaries. A number of the boundary changes were highly controversial and led to popular protest and court challenges.

Before the Twelfth Amendment, the Constitution defined the provincial boundaries by reference to the previous Interim Constitution, which defined them in terms of magistrates' court districts and the areas of the former bantustans. The government identified two issues with the existing boundaries: the first was the existence of municipalities that crossed provincial boundaries, permitted since the introduction of the Third Amendment, which led to complications in budgeting and service delivery. The second was the boundary between the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, where there was the large Umzimkhulu exclave of the Eastern Cape surrounded by KwaZulu-Natal, and the smaller Mount Currie exclave of KwaZulu-Natal surrounded by the Eastern Cape.

The Twelfth Amendment added to the constitution Schedule 1A, entitled "Geographical Areas of Provinces", which listed for each province a series of maps depicting the boundaries of the district municipalities that made up the territory of the province. These maps were published by the Municipal Demarcation Board in . The amendment also replaced section 103 of the constitution; the original text of this section defined the provincial boundaries by reference to the 1993 constitution, while the substituted text defined them by reference to Schedule 1A.

...
Wikipedia