Is the MK Party’s bill a threat to Western Cape autonomy? CAPEXIT thinks it is

CAPEXIT says a bill before Parliament is a bold move to bolt the door shut on the Western Cape ever getting a shot at breaking away from the rest of South Africa.

MK Party MP Mzwanele Manyi has introduced a bill to remove Section 235 from the Constitution.

Section 235 is the clause in SA’s rulebook that gives communities the legal right to govern themselves — or even break away from the country entirely — if they share a common culture, language or history.

CAPEXIT party leader Jack Miller said Manyi’s move was no coincidence.

“This is not a technical amendment but a deliberate attempt to shut down lawful, constitutional pathways for communities to determine their own future,” CAPEXIT leader Jack Miller said on Wednesday.

Though no SA community has successfully broken away from the country, one has come close.

Orania, a small town in the Northern Cape, was bought by a group of Afrikaner families in 1990 with the goal of creating a separate Afrikaner enclave.

It has its own informal currency and prides itself on being economically and culturally independent from SA.

But it has never formally seceded and remains subject to SA law.

The push for Western Cape independence is not new either.

The modern Cape independence movement started in 2007, when the Cape Party was founded off a Facebook group, driven by growing frustration with the national government’s “race-based policies and declining economic growth”.

While it attracted some attention after its launch almost two decades ago, it has since largely been struggling to gain ground.

The province’s first citizen, Alan Winde, has even refused to call a referendum that would allow residents to request autonomy for the province.

President Cyril Ramaphosa also publicly said he had no intention to hold a referendum to test public opinion on any part of SA.

Miller said Manyi’s claim that Section 235 was unnecessary was “fundamentally flawed”.

“Individual freedoms do not replace community rights,” he said.

“The right to speak a language is not thesame as the right of a community to sustain itself.”

He said the future of the Western Cape must be decided by its people.

“It must not be restricted by politicians in Pretoria,” Miller said.

“CAPEXIT will continue to advocate, without compromise, for the right of the people of the Western Cape to decide their own future — including the option of independence.”

Approached for comment, Manyi said he rejected what he called the misleading and alarmist claims made by Miller.

“CAPEXIT’s argument is a fundamental misrepresentation of both the law and the intent of the Bill,” he said.

“The Bill does not remove any real, enforceable right. It repeals a vague, unused, and legally hollow provision. 

“As clearly stated in the Bill: Section 235 has never been operationalised through legislation. 

“It remains a dormant clause, incapable of direct enforcement.”

He said the movement’s claim that community rights were being removed was “simply incorrect”. 

“The Bill of Rights already guarantees language rights, cultural participation,freedom of association and religious practice.”

He added: “Section 235 has increasingly been invoked to justify racially exclusive enclaves, promote territorial fragmentation and create the false impression that the Constitution permits semi–autonomous cultural territories.

“This is precisely what the Bill seeks to correct.”

Cape independence advocate Phil Craig previously said the push for autonomy was about better governance.

“[Western Cape] independence is a radical solution, of this there is no doubt, but it is also one which can work,” he said.

“Independence will render the question of who is the national government redundant.

“The Western Cape can choose its own national government and pursue policies which fix our problems rather than perpetuate them.

“If we had had Cape independence since 1994 we would not be in this current mess, and the sooner we achieve it the sooner we can start digging ourselves out of it.”

The Cape Independence Advocacy Group, meanwhile, said it had noted with Manyi’s bid with “great interest”.

It said that while removing self-determination from the constitution would be “legally impossible and morally wrong”, the MK’s actions could still serve a purpose by showing the legal framework that binds SA whether the country agrees or not.

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