Phil Craig: “Watershed” Anti-Racialism Bill to test former opposition parties in the GNU…

A Bill to bring an end to all race-based policy and legislation in South Africa has been launched. But Phil Craig, whose Referendum Party is behind the Bill, says while it is getting strong support from the public, the support from the established political parties has been "disappointing" thus far. The next step is the submission of the Non-Racialism Bill to the Parliamentary Committee on Justice and Constitutional Development. "Are they going to say, well, look, this Bill is important to me, stand with it, or are they going to vote with the ANC to effectively block this bill and maintain race-based policy? And then we'll all know." Also giving an update on the fight for Cape Independence, Craig says: "We have to build a beachhead of political power so we can then force that decision down onto the Western Cape government and obviously we'll be able to use the private referendum as a means to build pressure…" Meanwhile, he predicts that "the more the GNU is exposed as a shallow compromise that isn't a long-term solution, the more our vision of self-determination for different communities, including the Western Cape, is going to come to the fore"..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here..The seventh BizNews Conference, BNC#7, is to be held in Hermanus from March 11 to 13, 2025. The 2025 BizNews Conference is designed to provide an excellent opportunity for members of the BizNews community to interact directly with the keynote speakers, old (and new) friends from previous BNC events – and to interact with members of the BizNews team. Register for BNC#7 here..If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.Watch here.Listen here.Edited transcript of the interview ___STEADY_PAYWALL___.Chris Steyn (00:01.845).A Bill to bring an end to all race-based policy and legislation in South Africa has been launched. We speak to Phil Craig, whose Referendum Party is behind the Bill. Welcome, Phil..Phil Craig (00:15.128).Chris, great to be with you this morning and thank you for having us on the show..Chris Steyn (00:19.721).You're welcome. What does the Bill predominantly deal with and what changes does it propose?.Phil Craig (00:28.056).So predominantly it deals with Section 9 of the Constitution, which is the Equality clause. So we have this contradiction in the South African Constitution, Section 1 B, the founding values of South Africa, non-racialism and non-sexism. And then we have the Equality clause, Section 9, that obviously sets out the aspiration that we're all treated equally, which obviously we would agree with. But it allows this provision that the State can take actions to effectively remedy the effects of unfair discrimination in the past, which we also agree with. But that's been come to be interpreted by the Constitutional Court to allow race-based policy, which of course is completely contradictory to this founding value of non-racialism. How can you have a society that's founded on non-racialism, which then makes decisions on people based purely upon their race?.So effectively the crux of this Bill is it does two things. It takes away the State's ability to make decisions on people based purely upon their race and requires that those decisions are based upon individual circumstances rather than race. And it says, look, we absolutely understand that the State would want to take actions to undo the effects of unfair discrimination in the past. But in doing so, can't commit new discrimination in the present and in future, which obviously would be completely counter-productive. And I think it's very hard for anybody to say that either of those two things are unreasonable and that is the essence of this Bill..Chris Steyn (02:02.389).And what support have you been able to drum up for this bill?.Phil Craig (02:05.356).Yeah, so look, so we've started to get strong support from the public. I would have liked to have got more support from the established political parties and in some ways this Bill is going to be a bit of a watershed moment. .We saw with the BELA Bill that effectively the opposition parties or former opposition parties are now formed of the government, part of the government in the GNU, have been quite muted. Ultimately, they passed the BELA Bill when they could have used the consensus clause to block it. And I think that was a mistake. .Many of those parties are strongly opposed, or least theoretically, to non-racialism. And we hope now that those parties are going to stand up and support this Bill when it comes to Parliament and say, well, we believe in non-racialism too, and we reject the ANC's obsession with race-based policy. We've now got more race laws now than we did under Apartheid. And they'll help us bring this to an end..And if they do, great, that will be our first choice. And if they don't, then at least voters then can see how the parties that they voted for are performing and then start to re-evaluate whether those parties are the best vehicle for them going forward if ultimately they're not going to make a stand on the issues that are important to the voters who voted for them..Chris Steyn (03:19.506).And have you had any personal interaction with people in those parties on the Bill? People who are on a position to….Phil Craig (03:26.574).So, yeah, look, unfortunately at this point in time, neither look at the…probably the two main opposition parties that we would be aligned with would be the DA and the Freedom Front Plus. We have written, well, we've written to all political parties and major civic organizations. In general, civic organisations came back to us and said, look, we support the bill. Great, please go ahead and the political parties have largely ignored us. And I think that's been frustrating. So we have specifically invited parties to comment. We provided them with a copy of the Bill. We provided them to give input into the Bill and ultimately they've opted not to do so. And look without naming names at this point with one of the parties, with the DA, the first person or one person indicated that they would help us with the Bill and then suddenly were unable to help us thereafter. .And obviously there's a strong suspicion there that party politics is now coming into play, which is frustrating because mean, the Referendum Party, we're a tiny party. We don't have representation in government. We're trying to do the right thing. And ultimately this has to rise above party politics and we have to serve the best interests of the voters and we've got this huge ideological minority population in South Africa who are up against it with the ANC, MK and the EFF and we need the sort of let me call them the of the centre-right parties to stand up and to have courage – and if, and there's no point in being inside the GNU and if you're then not going to stand up for the issues that people voted you to put you there. .So, so you are very disappointing so far. But when the Bill comes before committee, then obviously the parties in the GNU will have to then publicly show their hand and then we'll see where they they stand. And I, and I suspect that once they publicly have to take a stand, it'd be very difficult for those parties to oppose this bill..Chris Steyn (05:23.775).So what is the next step now for this Bill to get it through the National Assembly?.Phil Craig (05:28.492).So the next step for this Bill is we want to submit this bill to the committee, the Committee on Justice and Constitutional Affairs. There are three ways that a Bill can be submitted. The government can submit a Bill: a private member can submit a Bill, and that would have been one of the options for those parties within the GNU. But ultimately, the committee can submit a Bill. And then there's a right under the Constitution for us to petition the committee. So what we're doing is we are, we've written this bill, we're going to the committee and we're currently going through a public participation process where we've invited members of the public to sign up in support. We started that yesterday, we've currently got a few thousand people that have already signed up in support and look so that's our hope now that'll come to the Bill. The committee will then obviously have to consider this Bill formally because it's been sent to them. They'll decide then whether they adopt the Bill as the committee or they reject it. And at that point in time, we'll see where those parties stand. Are they going to say, well, look, this Bill is important to me, stand with it, or are they going to vote with the ANC to effectively block this bill and maintain race-based policy? And then we'll all know..Chris Steyn (06:35.157).Okay, just on to another matter with your party having been established to try and force a referendum on Cape Independence. What is the latest on that?.Phil Craig (06:46.36).Well, look, so I think we look, it's going to be the long haul. So let me say, look, when we when we first started and go back before the Referendum Party and my role at the Cape Independence Advocacy Group, you know, primarily we recognise that Cape Independence is going to require the support of the Western Cape government, who are the representative of the Western Cape people. So we know from polling that the majority of people would support Cape Independence. But we have this issue that the Western Cape government won't ask them. .And undoubtedly the DA if poll this issue and understand as well as we do that there is least a strong likelihood that people would vote for Cape Independence given the chance. Obviously, as has been made public, they promised us a referendum. They reneged on that deal. And where we currently stand is this, that the DA are not going to call a referendum on Cape Independence, even though they know the majority of their own supporters and the Western Cape people would support it..Now we can get around that issue and we already have so that the Cape Independence Advocacy Group is making preparations for a private referendum and following the example that was the Italian province of Veneto who when the province wouldn't hold an official referendum they held an unofficial referendum; they won that and ultimately that led to a negotiated settlement where Veneto got an awful lot more autonomous power..So we have that solution, but the political circumstances need to be right. I think at this point in time, we're busy with that part of the project. But I mean, from the Referendum Party, and now effectively, people had two options. We had this negotiation with the DA and ultimately they broke their word. We formed the Referendum Party and we needed Cape Independence supporters to come out and vote effectively against the DA and for Cape Independence. They didn't, and we understand why. .So that in many ways has set us, you know…back onto a different trajectory. The quick fix has gone and now we're into a much longer haul.We have to build a beachhead of political power so we can then force that decision down onto the Western Cape government and obviously we'll be able to use the private referendum as a means to build pressure. Our focus as a party now really is doing the hard yards. We only had six months before the 2024 elections..Phil Craig (09:00.494).We did the best that we could, but ultimately it wasn't enough. And now we've got four years to build for 2029. And that's very much our focus. And I think the key thing for us to do now is…I think people understand that the GNU probably isn't a long-term solution for South Africa. It's better than the MK and the EFF, ANC, but it certainly isn't resulting in the majority of ideological minorities who would form a majority in the Western Cape and other parts of the country being able to be governed according to their democratic will. So now we have to sort of move forward on that side. .And I think things like this Bill, and we've also got an Illegal Settlements Bill coming later in the year, and we're looking at a Self-determination Bill. .And I think from our point of view, now we're trying to establish our party and say, look, there isn't really an opposition. The opposition has been co-opted into government. Somebody needs to stand up for these things that ordinary people support and the Referendum Party is very much putting itself forward for that. And self-determination really is our key. And in the Western Cape, the logical solution in the Western Cape is to just govern ourselves. I we've got a electoral roll, we've got a parliament, we want to be governed different to the rest of South Africa and Cape Independence is a very simple solution then to say, well, you go your way, we'll go ours. Everybody's governed according to their democratic will. Everybody's happy and the people of the Western Cape will be better off. .But also there are communities outside of the Western Cape, cultural communities, Afrikaners, Zulus, Vendas, who also have aspirations to govern themselves. Actually we see the future really is in people saying, look, don't fight us on Cape Independence, copy us, let's all work together here, this central state where one government makes all the decisions, just doesn't work. And the very fact that we can't come anywhere near reaching a consensus on how we should be governed demonstrates the fallacy of that. Whether it's federalism, whether it's independent states, that we can have a discussion later, but we have to find a different model of government that allows communities to be governed according to their democratic will. And that's what the Referendum Party is going to stand for. And I think the more the GNU is exposed as a shallow compromise that isn't a long-term solution, the more that our vision of self-determination for different communities, including the Western Cape, is going to come to the fore..Chris Steyn (11:23.999).Thank you. That was Phil Craig of the Referendum Party speaking to BizNews after the launch of a new Bill to end all race-based policy and legislation. Thank you, Phil. I'm Chris Steyn..Phil Craig (11:38.36).Thanks Chris..Read also:.Fire the GNU – Rob Hersov, Gerhard Papenfus explain why SA (still) isn't working🔒 Ramaphosa's leadership tested as GNU struggles to deliver on renewed optimism: Justice Malala🔒 RW Johnson: Why BELA Bill is an existential threat to GNU as Friday's deadline looms

Phil Craig: “Watershed” Anti-Racialism Bill to test former opposition parties in the GNU…

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