In his recent article, “Secession or Subjugation? The Western Cape Independence Project and the Return of Colonialism”, Shabodien Roomanay accuses the Cape Independence movement of being driven by fear. This is an odd charge, given that his own argument relies almost entirely on invoking the fearmongering spectres of colonialism and apartheid, rather than engaging seriously with facts, law, or history. 

To his credit, Roomanay is correct on one point: many African borders are artificial. Drawn largely during the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, they paid little attention to cultural or political realities on the ground. These imposed borders have fuelled civil wars, ethnic conflict, and state failure across the continent. Centralised post-colonial states, forced to govern deeply fragmented societies from a single capital, have often become engines of poverty rather than symbols of unity. 

This is precisely why it is so strange that advocates of “decolonisation” insist these colonial lines must remain immutable. If arbitrary borders were a colonial crime, then treating them as sacred is a colonial hangover that post-colonialists should be eager to dismantle. The alternative solution of Pan-Africanism, often proposed from academic perspectives, does not resolve this contradiction. If anything, it risks creating new artificial borders and magnifying conflict on a continental scale. 

South Africa itself is a case in point. Far from being a natural or ancient political unit, it was forcibly centralised in 1910 to ease British imperial administration. Before then, the region consisted of four distinct colonies – the Cape Colony, Natal, the Transvaal, and the Orange River Colony – preceded by an even greater diversity of political entities. Of these, the Cape was the most liberal, possessing the Cape Liberal Tradition and a non-racial, if property-based, qualified franchise. 

During the negotiations that led to the Union of South Africa, the former Cape Prime Minister William Schreiner led a multiracial delegation of nine Cape politicians to London, urging that the Cape franchise be extended nationwide. They were ignored. The demands of British imperial administrators, Afrikaner nationalists, and local economic elites for centralisation prevailed. The rest, as we all know, is history. 

South Africa’s centralised state is a colonial design choice and when such a system becomes dysfunctional, self-determination becomes the corrective mechanism. International law is unambiguous on this point. Article 20 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights affirms that “all peoples shall have the unquestionable and inalienable right to self-determination.” This right applies universally – from Quebec to Palestine – and it applies equally to communities within South Africa, including those of the Western Cape. 

Roomanay continues to argue that the Western Cape’s relative success is merely the result of “inherited advantages” from colonialism: infrastructure, ports, and geography. Yet this argument collapses on inspection. Every major South African city is a product of colonialism and inherited colonial infrastructure in 1994. The difference is not inheritance; it is governance. Thirty years of mismanagement have reduced once-functional cities to decay. The Western Cape, at least for now, has avoided that fate. 

One possible explanation lies in one aspect of our colonial legacy that Roomanay largely ignores: people. The Cape’s population is the product of centuries of interaction between indigenous Khoi and San communities, Asian slaves, African migrants, and European settlers. This has produced a plural and distinct society with political preferences that consistently reward competence, merit, and accountability at the ballot box. 

At its core, Cape Independence is about ensuring that decisions affecting the Cape are made by those who live there, rather than imposed by a national government that has proven structurally incapable of reform. A system that condemns more than a third of its population to unemployment, while celebrating mass dependency as progress, is not merely failing; it is broken. The people of the Cape are not morally obliged to remain trapped inside such a design. 

An independent Cape would bring government closer to its people, increase the weight of each vote, and deepen accountability. In such a system, Roomanay would remain entirely free to advocate “economic transformation” and “economic liberation” – phrases that have reliably delivered stagnation, capital flight, and poverty wherever they have been attempted. After more than three decades of ANC rule, the Western Cape electorate may reasonably choose a different path. 

Real liberation is not the enforced equality of outcome. It is the freedom to build institutions that work, economies that grow, and governments that can be removed when they fail. 

This debate around Cape Independence is not about returning to the past. It is about what kind of political system will best serve us in the future. 

* Robert King is an executive committee member at the Cape Independence Advocacy Group.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media. 

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