Karoo Hoogland Local Municipality
Karoo Hoogland Municipality () is a local municipality within the Namakwa District Municipality, in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. The municipality incorporates the towns of Williston, Fraserburg and Sutherland. Although the towns are separated by more than 100 km by road, they share many administrative tasks. Hoogland is an Afrikaans word meaning "highland" and Karoo is a Khoekhoe word meaning "hard" or "dry". The name reflects the area which has dry, arid and desert-like conditions. In 2011, Karoo Hoogland elected the first mayor from the Congress of the People (COPE) party, Jan Julies, and a COPE-DA coalition took control of the council after the election of 18 May 2011. This lasted until the 2016 elections. Main places The 2011 census divided the municipality into the following main places: Politics The municipal council consists of eleven members elected by mixed-member proportional representation. Six councillors are elected by first-past-the-post voting in six wards, while the remaining five 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 1 November 2021 no party obtained a majority of seats on the council. The following table shows the