Ilembe District Municipality

Vision - To be a World Class African Destination,with excellent services and quality of life for its people. Mission - Service delivery through partnerships: Build partnerships for sustainable growth and development. Improve service delivery through creative partnerships. Customer care: Placing premium value on our customers to ensure satisfaction. Leadership: Provide innovative leadership in the district. Fulfill role of facilitator, enabler, mentor. Building capacity through the sharing of services. Investing in our people as valuable assets. iLembe covers 3 260 square km of the entire area of KwaZulu-Natal, it also consists of a population size of 560 000 (Portfolio, 2006). There are 54 wards, which makes it one of the smallest districts. There are four Local Municipalities in the District. These are Mandeni, KwaDukuza, Ndwedwe, and Maphumulo. The population size of these municipalities indicate that Mandeni and KwaDukuza Local Municipalities have experienced a constant growth between 1996 and 2007. The reasons for this growth are largely linked to the observation that 18% of the Mandeni area is predominantly secondary sector industry, while 19% of the KwaDukuza area marks the primary and secondary industry and has rich coastal strip (www.ilembe.gov.za) At the border of ILembe District Municipality is the Unicity of Durban in the immediate south, which is linked by the coastal highway to Richards Bay in the north. This means that it has access to both harbors for trade purposes. In addition, iLembe District Municipality is also a leading place for tourism industry because of its rich Zulu kingdom heritage, as it was named in recognition of King Shaka, iLembe. Despite this, most households in the district still struggle to live above poverty line and they only manage on incomes far less that R18000 per annum (Portfolio, 2006).