Why the Cape wants out: Freedom, migration, and the battle for liberal values

Key topics.Cape secession driven by clashing political values, not raceUncontrolled migration strains housing, services, and institutionsAdvocates say freedom means choosing who governs and who belongs.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.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.The auditorium doors will open for BNIC#2 on 10 September 2025 in Hermanus. For more information and tickets, click here..By Robert King.Misrepresenting Cape Independence: values, not raceIn his recent article, “Minority enclaves vs. free society”, Ivo Vegter accuses supporters of Cape Independence and self-determination more broadly of retreating into ethnic enclaves - motivated, he suggests, by fear, nostalgia, or xenophobia. This framing is a complete misrepresentation. These movements are not about race; they are about irreconcilable values.If South Africa were a well-governed liberal democracy, with real ideological competition and the regular alternation of power - like in the UK or US - there would be no serious push for Cape secession. Despite the country’s deep ethno-cultural diversity, most people in the Western Cape would continue to engage in national politics in the hope of change.But that hope is long gone. As even Vegter concedes, the Western Cape has never elected the ANC or any socialist party - and all indications are that this will continue for the foreseeable future. The province consistently votes for non-racialism, meritocracy, and market-based governance, while the rest of South Africa continues to choose parties committed to race-based policy, state control, and redistributionist economics. Every poll for 2029 shows that African nationalist parties will obtain the overwhelming majority of seats in Parliament and in 2024, the EFF and MK together outpolled the DA nationally - making it clear that classical liberal values are not just a minority view, but an increasingly unwelcome one in the broader Republic.It is this deep ideological divide, not race or culture, that drives the call for Cape Independence. The Western Cape is not seeking secession based on racial or ethnic identity - it is responding to decades of voter preference being fundamentally out of sync with national governance. In a country where policy is increasingly shaped by racial classification and redistribution, it is no surprise that many of those alienated by the system are ethnic minorities, but that does not make the movement race-based. Why should people be forced to remain in a system they consistently reject at the ballot box - and that actively discriminates against them?Self-determination is a right under international lawVegter warns that those pursuing enclaves or autonomy are embracing dangerous collectivism, yet he confuses voluntary association with coercive exclusion. Across South Africa, communities and initiatives organised by groups like AfriForum are taking back control of education, safety, infrastructure and governance - not as acts of isolation, but of necessity, in the face of a failing state. Decentralisation - whether through local autonomy or outright secession -is not a threat to liberalism. On the contrary, it is often the only way to protect it when the central authority no longer reflects or respects the values of those it governs.In asserting the right to self-determination, communities like the Western Cape are drawing on a principle central to the liberal international order. Across the democratic world - from Quebec to the German-speaking region of Belgium - national minorities have achieved autonomy or self-rule without conflict, oppression, or civil unrest. These are not acts of division, but mechanisms for managing diversity peacefully in pluralistic societies.Vegter warns that such movements risk civil war, but in truth, self-determination is a pressure valve, not a powder keg. It offers a peaceful, democratic means for communities to govern themselves in line with their values - rather than having incompatible values imposed from above. If there is a threat to peace, it comes not from those seeking autonomy, but from those determined to forcibly maintain political control over unwilling populations. Migration lessons from Lebanon and the “Yookay” This principle of self-determination extends naturally to the question of immigration - another area where Vegter misrepresents the Cape Independence position. He implies that any desire to regulate migration is driven by xenophobia or racism, yet the truth is far more principled, and more liberal.Cape Independence is not anti-immigration. The proposed Western Cape Peoples Bill, drafted by the Cape Independence Advocacy Group (CIAG), explicitly recognises both the region’s indigenous peoples and the many waves of migration that have shaped its identity - from the Khoi and San, to the Dutch and Xhosa. The Cape has long been a crossroads of cultures, and its openness remains part of its character.Yet like democracy and liberty, immigration requires balance. It is not enough to champion movement; there must also be consent and reciprocity. Vegter cites the United States as a model of successful immigration - and in many respects, it is. However, there are also examples where unchecked demographic change has led not to prosperity, but to collapse.Lebanon is one such example. Once a majority-Christian nation with a thriving economy, it became a flashpoint for conflict after a dramatic influx of Palestinian refugees disrupted its sectarian balance. The resulting tensions helped spark a devastating civil war. The later influx of Syrian refugees since 2011 has further strained resources, exacerbating ongoing economic and political instability. To ignore such outcomes is intellectually negligent. The West is not immune. In the UK’s 2024 general election, ethnic enclaves emerged as powerful political blocs, where candidates were often elected based on identity rather than ideology - a phenomenon colloquially dubbed the “Yookay”, a term popularised by X user Drukpa Kunley to highlight how parts of Britain have fragmented into culturally and politically distinct communities. This sectarian drift - not unlike what plagued Lebanon - is a warning of what happens when migration is divorced from shared national civic and cultural values. Mass migration is overwhelming the Western Cape The Western Cape is already under pressure from uncontrolled internal migration, particularly in the form of illegal settlements that continue to spread across the province. These are de facto ethnic enclaves, yet Vegter ignores them entirely in his warnings about parochialism. Migration is welcome - but not when it begins with the violation of property rights. If a new arrival’s first act is to unlawfully occupy land, their moral claim to belong to the society they’re entering is deeply compromised.As Joe Emilio’s documentary Stolen Ground makes clear, evicting illegal occupants places enormous strain on municipal resources. Housing waiting lists in Cape Town stretch into the hundreds of thousands. By law, municipalities must provide alternative accommodation before any eviction, meaning each illegal occupation delays housing for those who followed the rules.The institutional burden goes beyond housing. Many new arrivals arrive without the means to support themselves, adding pressure to schools, clinics, police, and infrastructure. The Western Cape is not a charity for the failed governance of other provinces, and it cannot absorb unlimited numbers of impoverished newcomers without undermining the very conditions that make it attractive in the first place.There is also a political consequence Vegter fails to consider. While voter turnout in informal settlements remains low, available data shows that many migrant communities continue to support the same parties whose policies ruined their home provinces. In effect, they import the political culture that destroyed their communities, threatening to erode the liberal, market-oriented consensus of the Western Cape. It would be suicidal for a region built on liberal values to invite in mass numbers of people who do not share those values and whose votes may, over time, dismantle the institutions that protect them. Migration must work for the Western Cape peopleThis does not mean the Cape should close itself off. Far from it. Whether from London, East London, or Lagos, those who come and settle legally, respect the law, contribute economically, and integrate into civic life should be welcomed without hesitation.Migration, like any relationship, must be consensual. It cannot be lawless, one-sided, or imposed. A society has both the right and the responsibility to protect itself from those who would exploit its openness while rejecting its values. Cape Independence is not about exclusion - it is about defending a free, functional society from a central state that has collapsed into corruption, coercion, and racial nationalism.The Cape’s legacy communities - those who built and sustained a culture of law, liberty, and order - should not be forced to surrender their future for the sake of those who disregard it. No one has the right to dismantle a working society in the name of blind idealism. If freedom is to mean anything, it must include the freedom to draw a line and say: this far, no further.

Why the Cape wants out: Freedom, migration, and the battle for liberal values

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