Fact check — Is it likely the Western Cape could become an independent state?

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Both the Cape Independence Party and the Referendum Party have been promising the South African electorate that a vote for their parties can lead to a referendum which may ultimately trigger the Western Cape province leaving the rest of the country.

The CapeXit campaign dates back to 2007 but it’s only in recent years that it has begun sustained political organising. The Cape Independence Party won more than 19,000 votes in the 2021 local government elections, enough for two seats in the Cape Town council.

The basic theory of the campaign is that the Western Cape is being held back from achieving its full economic and social potential through its legal and political attachment to the rest of the country. It has also been accused of dog-whistle racism for pointing to the Western Cape’s racial makeup as evidence that the province is “just different”.

Advocates of Cape secession point to the fact that the most recent opinion poll undertaken by Victory Research on whether residents of the Western Cape want the province to secede have returned results suggesting a majority is in favour. It should be noted, however, that the sample size of this poll was very small — just under 1,000 people.

But regardless of the popularity of the idea or its actual merits, are the pro-independence parties promising something that is actually legally viable?

Political party the Freedom Front Plus believes so. In an opinion piece in February 2024, the party’s Western Cape leader Corné Mulder wrote: “Are more powers for the Western Cape, which could lead to Cape secession, unfeasible and impossible? Don’t believe it for one moment. We are in Africa, and here anything is possible”.

But “more powers” for the Western Cape is a very different proposition to full secession of the province.

The DA has been pushing for the adoption of the Western Cape Provincial Powers Bill, which it says would give the province greater autonomy to improve service delivery without necessitating the province leaving the country.

But legal experts say: not so fast. Even the idea of devolving certain core government functions to provinces is unlikely to pass Constitutional muster. UCT law professor Pierre de Vos has previously written that a constitutional amendment would probably be required to allow a province to take over policing duties, for instance.

As for the plan for the Western Cape to secede: the first step, its advocates say, is to hold a referendum on the matter. It may actually be legally permissible for the President or the Premier to call a referendum on a certain issue. But even if they do so, the results are not binding in any way. They can just be ignored.

Furthermore, as Pierre de Vos has written elsewhere: “Questions of secession are not a provincial matter. They are a national matter. Only the national executive and the national Parliament can legally bring about secession through, among others, amendment of the Constitution”.

It is simply impossible to imagine a world in which South African law and politics line up to allow one of the nine provinces to assert itself as a separate country — especially since even parties like the DA do not support the idea.

As such, the CapeXit parties appear to be selling voters pipe dreams. DM