Metropolitan municipality (South Africa)

[1] In the Municipal Structures Act it is laid out that this type of local government is to be used for conurbations, "centre[s] of economic activity", areas "for which integrated development planning is desirable", and areas with "strong interdependent social and economic linkages".

Metropolitan municipalities were brought about during reforms of the 1990s so that cities could be governed as single entities.

[3] For example, eThekwini (including Durban) is today a single municipality formed from what were more than 40 separate jurisdictions before 1994.

[4] This reform process was a response to the way in which apartheid policy had broken up municipal governance.

[5] A key demand of anti-apartheid civics in the 1980s was for 'one city, one tax base' in order to facilitate the equitable distribution of funds within what was a functionally integrated urban space.