levies, and paying subsidies, remains a constitutional question. The Court held further that the applicants' constitutional challenge to the validity of the levying of the rates in question by the second respondent (the Eastern Metropolitan Substructure) based on the alleged non-compliance with section 178(2) of the interim Constitution and the challenge to the validity of the budgets of the first and second respondents, based on non-compliance with section 58 of the Local Government Ordinance 17 of 1939 (T), had on an analysis of the facts to fail. The Court held that the rates had been validly imposed. The Court further held that the imposition of a levy by the first respondent on the second respondent in an amount equal to the budgeted surplus of the second respondent for the financial year ended 30 June 1997, and the use of that levy to meet the deficits in the budgets of the first respondent and two other of the first respondent's metropolitan substructures (the fourth and fifth respondents), could not be justified as "a grant or donation" under section 79(15)(i) of the Local Government Ordinance, as that had not been the decision which the council of the second respondent had taken. The council had considered the draft budget on the assumption that it fell within the powers of the first respondent to levy a contribution upon the second respondent for the purpose of subsidising itself and the fourth and fifth respondents. It was not known what the attitude of the members of the second respondent's council would have been had they been faced with a decision to make a donation or grant: That question was never before the council of the second respondent. Furthermore, the difference between the two was one of substance and not merely one of form. Whether item 23(c) of Annexure A to Premier's Proclamation 35 of 1995 (Gauteng), which is the same as item 23(c) of Schedule 2 to the Local Government Transition Act 209 of 1993, is construed as a condition for raising a levy prescribed in the Local Government Transition Act by a competent authority as contemplated by section 178(2) of the interim Constitution, or as a power vested in the Greater Johannesburg Transitional Metropolitan Council independently of section 178(2), the "levy," held the court, has to comply with the provisions of item 23(c). As to the question of whether or not the levy raised by