Department Of Cooperative Governance And Traditional Affairs Free State

The mission of the Free State Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs is to strengthen cooperative governance and support municipalities and traditional leadership through integrated planning and development, partnerships, research, and monitoring and evaluation.

The Department’s strategic goals are to create a department geared towards service excellence by ensuring that leadership and support are provided to the Department in accordance with all applicable acts and policies, thereby enhancing the effective and efficient functioning of the Department; strengthen cooperative governance in order to facilitate the creation of accountable and sustainable local governance through effective collaboration with all stakeholders; integrate development and planning, with the aim of promoting and facilitating integrated development and planning at local government level; and uphold viable and sustainable traditional institutions and the functioning of the Free State House of Traditional Leaders.

Main services

To oversee and co-ordinate the establishment, monitoring, regulating, strengthening, supporting, and capacitating of municipalities in terms of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996.
To integrate and coordinate disaster management, including the prevention and/or the reduction of the risk of disasters and/or mitigation of the severity of disasters.
To render professional advice regarding the physical and spatial elements of land development.
To manage the process of integrated development planning by municipalities.
To ensure safe, salubrious, economic, and environmentally friendly development.
To submit all applications for land development and land use changes to the Townships Board for consideration and in turn submit the recommendations of the Townships Board to the MEC.
To ensure the upgrading of land tenure rights in the Free State, conduct investigations and lodge deeds of transfer in terms of the Conversion of Certain Rights into Leasehold or Ownership Act, 1988 (Act 81/1988).
To facilitate the opening of township registers as well as assisting municipalities and to access available state land for developmental purposes.
To oversee and co-ordinate the establishment, monitoring, regulating, strengthening supporting and capacitating of traditional leadership in terms of the Constitution.
To support traditional leadership through mobilizing resources, expertise an d development and support programmes and monitor the extent to which traditional leadership complies with legislation.

COGTA Free State Contact details

Physical: 7th Floor, OR Tambo House, Cnr St Andrew’s & Markgraaf Streets, Bloemfontein, 9301
Postal: PO Box 211, Bloemfontein, 9300
Tel: 051 405 5719
Fax: 051 403 3650
Web: www.cogta.fs.gov.za
Email: [email protected]