A Brexit-inspired campaign by one of South Africa’s richest provinces to declare independence from the Rainbow Nation is gaining traction – thanks to Nigel Farage-loving Brits.
The Cape Independence Movement seeks the secession of the Western Cape, a region that includes Cape Town and the Winelands, where the first Dutch settlers arrived in the 17th century, kicking off centuries of colonialism.
The newly formed Referendum Party is seeking to emulate Brexit by contesting in the country’s upcoming national election on a single issue, the Western Cape’s independence from South Africa.
The party is led by British national Phil Craig, who emigrated from the UK 20 years ago but feels his chosen country no longer feels like the one he came to, describing it as “a failure if not a failure”. country, that is a failed state,” adding that it is “fundamentally different from 2004 [as] South Africa suddenly lurched to the left”.
Not surprisingly, British attempts to draw lines of sovereignty on the map of Africa – as Mr Craig has proposed imposing immigration controls on people from other provinces in the country – have been roundly criticized.
A petition has been launched calling for Mr Craig to be deported for trying to divide South Africa. It had more than 27,000 signatures and he was called a racist who yearned for the age of empire.
“Phil Craig and his hateful white supremacist racists are lackeys of imperialism,” said a spokesman for the left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), the third largest party. “We reject any European imperialist utopia that seeks to replicate itself on the African continent and in South Africa with the intention of expanding its colonial empire.”
Craig said he had excelled in the controversy, describing himself as a “deliberately divisive figure” in an approach not too dissimilar to Mr Farage, founder of the UK Reform Party and former UK Independence Party leader, He welcomes the comparison.
He said he shared the petition with friends and was glad the Electronic Frontier didn’t like him because they were ideologically opposed to what he stood for.
Like Mr Farage’s predecessor UKIP, Mr Craig believes his independence goals will be achieved not by an outright victory in May’s election, but by boosting the country’s main centre-right party, the Democratic Alliance. DA) moves further to the right and holds a referendum.
The district attorneys themselves, however, were less than enthusiastic. Party leader John Steenhuisen has denied any ambition by the party to lead an independent Western Cape province. “No, I don’t want to be president of the Western Cape… because I think when the rest of the country collapses and people move there on a much larger scale, I don’t think that one little corner of Africa is going to be able to sustain itself. Figures .”
He added that “the referendum party is lying”, claiming he had reneged on his promise to table an independence referendum.
Nonetheless, Mr. Craig is undeterred and claims that many among the DA want independence, they just can’t admit it publicly. He hopes more support will get them out of trouble, just as Boris Johnson did when he backed Brexit because he still wants them to lead an independent Cape Town.
Nationally, the DA is the opposition party, but they have controlled the Western Cape with an absolute majority since 2009 and received 55% of the vote at the last election. It is the only province in South Africa where the ruling African National Congress (ANC) does not have a majority.
The Western Cape is also racially unique in that it is the only one of the nine provinces in which black South Africans are neither the majority nor the largest racial group, “coloured” – defined as white and black of mixed or Asian ancestry of people – they make up 42% of the population. The province also has the highest proportion of white people at 16%, and is the second richest province in South Africa.
For Mr. Craig, there is a deeper ideological divide. “The Western Cape has a more Western outlook than the rest of South Africa and that has been our rationale for partition,” he claimed, citing devolution, free markets and more growth as the main differences.
Despite his desire to close the borders, he still sees an independent Western Cape as “the ideological home for people who think like us”. Western-leaning ideological minorities from other parts of South Africa will migrate to us” – although he insists the movement is committed to non-racialism and considers it more important than the ANC, which he believes is now a black nationalist political party.
Many South Africans believed his idea was to separate the richest from the rest.
“We strongly reject the idea of Cape independence pushed by white supremacists who suffer from white nostalgia [and only] “There is a malicious intent to return our country to the apartheid system of decades ago, when black people were considered pariahs in the land of their birth,” a spokesperson for the Electronic Freedom Foundation argued.
On the DA, Mr Steenhuisen insisted: “It would be reckless and short-sighted for the DA to simply retreat to the Western Cape. I want to unite and lead all of South Africa… I certainly don’t want to lead the Western Cape because I like the Springboks.” Football team.”
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