Jessica Kamkam – Bitou’s third mayor this year hopes to restore dignity to the people

After her first week in office, Bitou Municipality Mayor Jessica Kamkam told Daily Maverick she’s ready to focus on building relationships between the public and private sectors, which will help fix some of the municipality’s pressing socio-economic issues. 

Bitou Municipality is home to Plettenberg Bay, its suburbs and villages including Covie, Harkerville and Nature’s Valley. The municipality is a tourist mecca boasting natural wonders and pristine beaches, as well as golf courses, luxury homes and housing estates. It also has several informal settlements that are vulnerable to devastating fires. 



Kamkam, a ward councillor for the DA, was sworn into office on 26 August 2024. She spoke to Daily Maverick about her life, goals in office and the council’s recent instability.

She would like to strategise with the new leadership and “see what we can do to assist communities to become more sustainable”, she said. 

Fresh from a council meeting, Kamkam said, “I’ve come from a discussion where we said we are going to start to brainstorm in terms of how we can assist in bringing to people or strengthening community participation in socio-economic projects.” 

She said such projects could create sustainable communities “where people can use the resources that are available to them”. 

An example, she pointed out, was the issue of food security. According to the municipality’s 2023 socio-economic profile, 62.5% of Bitou’s population live below the upper-bound poverty level of R1,227 per person per month. 

Bitou has a 30% unemployment rate.

“It is going to be imperative for us as a council to look at ways that we can improve and partner with other government structures and the private sector in terms of how we can bring programmes to the community that can restore dignity, that can give hope to the people [and] speak to some of the socio-economic challenges that we have.” 

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Kamkam was born in Kurland village in Bitou, some 20km from the centre of town, and is now a councillor for the ward in which she was raised.

While she grew up in Bitou, she attended secondary school in Knysna, later moving to Gqeberha to study but dropped out of college and subsequently returned to Bitou. 

After a stint in community development, Kamkam started working for then-council speaker Annelise Olivier in September 2013. Later, she entered politics full-time as a ward candidate in the 2016 local government elections, reported the Knysna-Plett Herald. 

She won her ward and was re-elected as councillor for another term after the 2021 local elections. 

With just under 18 months until the next local election is due, what legacy would Kamkam like to leave?

Without elaborating too much, lest she sounds like a “critical politician”, she said she wants to show the residents of Bitou that “we have practiced fairness and we have strived to be inclusive”.

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