The mission of the Northern Cape Office of the Premier is to provide strategic leadership that will stimulate economic growth to its full potential and ensure high levels of social development. The Office of the Premier derives its mandate from the Constitution and is responsible for the implementation of provincial and national legislation within the functional areas and administering national legislation outside those listed which have been assigned to the province; the development and implementation of provincial policy; coordinating the functions of the provincial administration and its departments; and preparing and initiating provincial legislation.
Key policy focus areas derive from its legislative mandates and draw heavily from the Northern Cape Provincial Growth and Development Plan (PGDP). These include, among other things: providing strategic leadership for growing the provincial economy; ensuring that basic services are delivered speedily; promoting good governance; mainstreaming the rights of vulnerable groups across departmental policies; driving the implementation of the PGDP and monitoring and evaluating across the province; strengthening inter- and intragovernmental relations as well as international relations; and ensuring good fiscal discipline.
The powers of the legislature are set out in Section 114 of the Constitution. The Northern Cape Provincial Legislature appropriates the provincial budget and makes laws citizens must obey. The legislature plays an oversight role by carefully scrutinising the activities of the executive to ensure that services are delivered to citizens and that taxpayers’ money is spent wisely on public programmes and initiatives.
The Northern Cape Provincial Legislature facilitates public involvement in all its processes, and those of its committees, through public education, participation programmes and public hearings. The mission of the Northern Cape Provincial Legislature is to serve the people of the Northern Cape by building a developmental institution for effective lawmaking, public participation, accountability and oversight over the executive and municipalities. The legislature’s strategic goals are to deepen and entrench a people-centred democracy in the Northern Cape.
Conservation
Conservationists gathered in Namaqualand recently to celebrate a decade of successful expansion of protected areas within the Succulent Karoo biome of the Northern Cape. The celebration marked the closing out of the Northern Cape Land Project led by the Wilderness Foundation Africa (WFA) with funding from WWF South Africa through the Leslie Hill Succulent Karoo Trust, (LHSKT).
Key partners included landowners, SANParks, the Northern Cape’s Department of Agriculture, Environmental Affairs, Rural Development and Land Reform (DAERL) and Conservation South Africa. Appropriately, the celebration was held in the town of Kamieskroon, a gateway to the Namaqua National Park which is world-renowned for its annual spring flower display.
Over the past 10 years, the Northern Cape Land Project has enabled the declaration of five new nature reserves and one new protected environment with several more in the pipeline. This conservation work is done primarily through stewardship agreements with landowners who retain ownership of their land but commit to managing it in conservation-compatible ways while continuing to derive economic benefit from it.
Katherine Forsythe, WWF project manager with the LHSKT, said a key benefit of the project has been the support WFA has provided to DAERL and SANParks in fine-tuning and streamlining processes and mechanisms for protected area expansion. The work WFA has done in the Northern Cape has helped unlock doors and paved the way for biodiversity stewardship nationally.
Francois van der Merwe, chair of the LHSKT, noted that the threats to the Succulent Karoo were both “real and considerable”. In particular, he highlighted climate change which could see rainfall in the region decrease by some 40%, along with plant poaching and mining. This made the efforts to secure ecological corridors increasingly urgent.
Ben-Jon Dreyer, project manager with WFA, said, “Working on this project has been an eye-opener. There are so many landowners in the Succulent Karoo who realise the biodiversity significance of the land which has been entrusted to them and who strive to be the best possible stewards of it. It truly was a privilege to visit these stunningly beautiful and biodiverse landscapes, which will forever be etched in my memory.”
The work is a visible demonstration that land can remain in private hands and still be actively farmed while also contributing towards conservation targets, proving there need not be a trade-off between farming and conservation.
A further eight sites are also under negotiation. Once completed this would contribute a total of 70 000 hectares to conservation.
One issue that has hampered statutory protection of these areas, however, has been the slow processing of proposed protected area submissions with some 22 243 hectares awaiting declaration including one more nature reserve and four new protected environments.
A further eight sites are also under negotiation. Once completed this would contribute a total of 70 000 hectares to conservation. This work adds to South Africa’s protected area strategy and contributes towards the country’s international commitment to the Global Biodiversity Framework in Montreal in December 2022. Known as 30×30, this is a promise made by the international community to conserve 30% of terrestrial and marine environments by 2030.
Project Highlights
- The declaration of five new provincial nature reserves, including four reserves created to protect the Northern Cape’s unique “mountain islands” or inselbergs as part of the Karrasberge Protected Area. Another reserve is awaiting declaration and three more are under negotiation.
- The expansion of the Namaqua National Park that now stands at 170 000 hectares.
- The creation of an ecological corridor linking the Tankwa National Park with the Cederberg as part of a long-held dream that started in 2008 to connect these two great wilderness areas.
- The declaration of the Gys Wiese Protected Environment (PE) adjacent to the Namaqua National Park. Four other PEs are awaiting declaration.
- Sneeukop PE outside Kamieskroon that extends conservation across the N7 from the Namaqua National Park into the Kamiesberg.
Find out more about the Northern Cape Province:
- Northern Cape Provincial Overview, Service magazine, Issue 87
- Northern Cape Business journal, 2024/25 Edition
- Northern Cape Department of Economic Development and Tourism
See also a range of investment prospectuses focusing on each of the Northern Cape Provinces here.
