The issue of Cape independence in South Africa’s Western Cape province has been around for a few years now. Although it was initially seen as a fringe movement, even in the Western Cape, it has now become mainstream, to the extent that the Cape Independence Party contested South Africa’s Local Government Elections (LGE) in 2021. By all accounts, Cape independence is not likely to happen anytime soon. However, what the movement represents and the false ideas that it is steeped in could have future political ramifications.

A look at the Cape Independence website offers a breakdown of the levels of support that the movement now claims to enjoy—specifically that around 58% of voters in the Western Cape support the idea of a referendum in favor of independence. Furthermore, according to the group CapeXit, 830,398 people have signed a petition calling for a more autonomous Western Cape. Despite all these numbers, parties representing Cape independence fared very poorly in the 2021 local government elections. Nowithstanding, the idea of Cape Independence has only gained traction. In 2022, AfriForum, the Afrikaans “civil rights” organization, threw its weight behind the idea, formally stating that provinces and premiers should become more autonomous and have more power. This has also gained media and social media traction with more established political players starting to lean into this idea. As political commentator Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh pointed out in his opinion piece, “DA flirts dangerously with Western Cape Separatists,” the idea of Cape independence that was once fringe has become legitimized and mainstreamed. As this movement has gained more traction, conservative media is popularizing it on many social media platforms. YouTube channels, such as ‘MorningShot’ have driven home the message around Cape independence, capitalizing on the ANC’s failures in government and falling hegemony as a way of driving this movement.

The issue is clearly not dormant. It is also not only a symptom of white privilege but also of the myth believed by a broad spectrum of voters that the Western Cape is better run because of the Democratic Alliance, South Africa’s official opposition, which controls the province.