On a windy Cape Town morning, a small group of activists hands out flyers calling for secession.
“South Africa cannot be saved, Cape Independence is our only hope,” read the leaflets issued by the Cape Independence Party.
Also known as CapeXit, in a nod to Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, the group is one of a couple campaigning for a separate state in the Western Cape province ahead of May 29 national and provincial elections. Small and with little support, theirs is bound to remain a pipedream.
Photo: AFP
However, analysts say the parties’ bombastic demand is symptomatic of a wider Western Cape frustration with the central government that is likely to turn into louder calls for devolution.
“The worse the country gets, the more popular Cape independence becomes,” said CapeXit leader Jack Miller, 39. Frustration with the ruling African National Congress (ANC), accused of corruption and mismanagement, is ubiquitous across South Africa as it heads to the polls.
Thirty years after the party came to power, bringing an end to apartheid rule, the economy is at a standstill, unemployment sits above 30 percent, poverty is widespread and crime rampant.
Better Cape?
Amid the general bleakness, the Western Cape has built a reputation for relatively good governance. Long run by the liberal Democratic Alliance (DA), the leading opposition party, the province has a 20 percent jobless rate, the lowest in the country. Of the 38 out of 257 municipalities that were given a clean financial audit by an official watchdog in 2021-2022, 21 were in the Western Cape.
In recent years, droves of affluent, largely white families have moved there from Johannesburg’s Gauteng attracted by more than the province’s natural beauty. Roads have fewer potholes, public schools are better, and power and water infrastructure breakdowns are less frequent, many say.
The province’s demography is also distinct. Nationally a minority, mixed-race people, who in South Africa are known as and largely identify themselves as “coloured,” are the largest group.
White people are also overrepresented, while the opposite is true for black people, who make up the core of the ANC electorate. As unseating the ANC nationally seems difficult — the party is expected to drop below 50 percent for the first time, but should remain the largest group and be able to form a coalition government — some Capetonians have come to believe they would be better off alone.
A poll commissioned by a pro-independence lobby group last year suggested 68 percent of voters in the province favor a referendum on secession and more than half would vote for it. However, the purported separatists’ enthusiasm is yet to turn into actual votes.
CapeXit unlikely
While advocating for non-racialism, CapeXit has struggled to expand beyond its mainly white base.
“We have to free ourselves from this black government,” a party activist told Agence France-Presse as he canvassed at a crossroad, before correcting himself and describing the ANC government as simply “corrupt.”
“I believe in a black, white, green, yellow, but independent province,” the 75-year-old said, adding however that he was “old enough to remember white people on advertising on the television.”
At the road crossing, few motorists stopped to take a leaflet. Some pulled up their windows upon seeing the activists approach.
“I don’t see it make any sense to separate the Western Cape,” said Simbarashe Milos, a 24-year-old Cape Town concierge.
Founded in 2007, CapeXit won only two of the 231 seats on Cape Town City Council in 2021 and has barely managed to collect the 7,000 signatures needed to contest provincial elections in May.
Its cousin, the Referendum Party, said it has gathered only a slightly higher number of signatures.
Political analyst Daniel Silke dismissed the idea that, even with bigger numbers, the separatists would win out.
“Constitutionally they would be unable to force a secession of the Western Cape anyway, even if they were to gain some sort of powerful position, which is exceptionally unlikely,” he said.
In the meantime, the DA has been pushing for greater federal autonomy rather than a full divorce. It has tabled a provincial bill seeking to devolve more powers to the Western Cape. The legislation is undergoing public hearings, having drawn an angry response from the ANC, which brands it unconstitutional.
And as the DA, which has struck a coalition pact with almost a dozen other parties, seeks to make gains in other provinces in May, other bids might follow.
“In a country as diverse as ours, federalism makes sense. The DA is pursuing it to the fullest extent possible,” DA leader John Steenhuisen said, presenting the bill in July last year.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in