Buffalo City’s elevation to a metro status means the city will have exclusive authority over all local government matters, including general municipal planning and drafting building regulations.

The City was elevated from a Category B to a Category A municipality (metropolitan city) after the 2011 municipal elections, which were held on 18 May.

Buffalo City and Mangaung, in the Free State, join Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, Nelson Mandela Bay, eThekwini and Cape Town, bringing the number of metros in the country to eight.

According to The Constitution, Buffalo City will have exclusive powers in various matters contained in schedules 4 (b) and 5 (b), which include the building regulations, local tourism, municipal airports, municipal parks and recreation, health services, public transport, cemeteries, beaches, water and sanitation and general municipal planning.

Speaking about Buffalo City’s new status, the city’s communications manager, Keith Ngesi, said, “Residents can look forward to a new council, with a new mandate, a new vision, a new mission statement, a new set of values commensurate with the responsibilities, a new service delivery charter and a new customer care service charter.”

The City will also have a deputy mayor and an additional of 11 councillors and five wards. Buffalo City had 45 wards and 89 councillors before it was declared a metro.

According to the Municipal Demarcation Board (MDB) the clustering of wards is one of the things that a city must do to change its status to a metropolitan city.

In 2009 during ward delimitation consultations, the MDB drew up a map with proposed wards. It took into consideration physical characteristics such as road networks, rivers and mountains.

Giving an overview of what Buffalo City's new status means for rural areas, the metro’s compliance manager, Lawrence Valeta, says: "In the rural development section, the City has an opportunity to uplift its surrounding rural areas by ensuring that its development plans are ward based and equitable across both urban and rural sectors of the municipality."

Valeta adds that becoming a metro will allow the municipality to improve service delivery "and redesign itself and re-engineer the way service delivery is rendered.”

"The municipality has a potential to attract better skills especially in the scarce skills categories, including engineers, architects, artisans and economists."

Ngesi adds that the metro status positions the city as a competitive player in South Africa's "Big League". This means that Buffalo City’s economic development potential will be exposed and its attractiveness to investor opportunities which will ultimately result in job creation and poverty alleviation.

“The City will over the next five to ten years focus on a targeted public infrastructure programme that will see the upgrading of infrastructure to support economic and social development.”