the first respondent against the second and third respondents complied with the requirement of item 23(c), namely that it was "an equitable contribution from" the substructure "based on the gross or rates income of such" substructure, the Court was evenly divided. In a joint judgment by Chaskalson P, Goldstone J and O'Regan J (Ackermann J and Madala J concurring), it was held that meaning and significance had to be attributed to the distinct requirements of item 23(c). The mere fact that a levy might be said to be equitable in all the circumstances did not dispense with or detract from the stipulation that it had also to be based on gross or rates income. It was further held that the word "based" in item 23(c) implied that there should also be some relationship between the calculation of the levy and the incomes referred to. The levy imposed by the first respondent on the second and third respondents was not fixed as a proportion or a percentage of either gross or rates income; nor was it related directly in any way to either gross or rates income. The levy was a surplus produced from the total income after agreement had been reached as to the expenditure to be incurred by the second and third respondents: To read "gross or rates income" as meaning "net income after allowing for all expenses of the substructure" was to ignore the inclusion of the words "gross or rates" in the phrase, and thereby to do violence to the provision as a whole. The levy was accordingly not based on gross or rates income, and therefore did not comply with the requirements of item 23(c). Per contra, Kriegler J (Langa DP, Mokgoro J, Sachs J and Yacoob J concurring) held, firstly, that the attack on the imposition of the levy based on the contention that it fell foul of the requirement of section 178(2) of the interim Constitution, because it was not "based on a uniform structure for its area of jurisdiction," could not succeed. It could not be said that anything other than a uniform structure had been applied. The very purpose of the co-ordination of the budgets of the first respondent and its four substructures (the second to fifth respondents) had been to apply a uniform method of estimating both the income and the expenditure of each substructure. It was an express component of