Traditional+leaders+back+extra+taxes,+Wonder+Hlongwa,+City+Press



=Traditional leaders back extra taxes=

Wonder Hlongwa, City Press, 4 November 2007
The Congress of Traditional Leaders of SA (Contralesa) has come out in full support of a controversila practice in which traditional leaders charge their subjects levies for dog ownership, allegiance taxes and financially penalise parents of girls who fall pregnant outside wedlock. The practice is widespread in parts of KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape.

KwaZulu-Natal’s department of local government and traditional affairs has condemned the practice, saying it is against the law.

Local government and traditional affairs department spokesperson Lennox Mabaso said the department was conducting an investigation into the practice.

“The taxation laws were repealed through the Traditional Leadership Act of 2005.

“We have appealed top communities who live under tribal authorities to write to us and tell us what taxes they are being charged for and we have been inundated with letters,” he said.

He said the letters would form part of the investigation.

City Press reported last week how a house belonging to a Nongoma resident who had refused to pay dog tax was razed to the ground.

This week Contralesa president Phatekile Holomisa said the practice was “perfectly normal”.

“It is the right of every traditional leader to consult with his community and charge a levy if they agree on that.”

Holomisa said another reason for such levies was that the salaries paid by the government to traditional leaders was inadequate. He added that in the Eastern Cape, they had never received a cent for the traditional administration centres.

This week IFP president Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s headman Phumempini Mtshali also defended the practice of collecting taxes from his impoverished subjects in Ulundi and Nongoma.

“Even Prince MG Buthelezi, who is the Inkosi of the Buthelezi clan, pays these taxes. He pays for his dogs, Bullet and Tutsu,” said Mtshali, responding to our story of last week.

Mtshali said these taxes had been gazetted by the “national government” even before Buthelezi became chief.

He said the people who fell under the Buthelezi Traditional Council had always agreed to pay the taxes.

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