cape escape

Tech enriches South Africa’s Cape; premier rejects Brexit style secession

By Ray Mwareya, Ashely Simango

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Posted on June 1, 2022 14:02

 © Contested land earmarked for a development, which includes a new Africa headquarters for U.S. retail giant Amazon, is seen alongside the Liesbeek river in Cape Town, South Africa June 2, 2021. Picture taken June 2 ,2021. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings
Contested land earmarked for a development, which includes a new Africa headquarters for U.S. retail giant Amazon, is seen alongside the Liesbeek river in Cape Town, South Africa June 2, 2021. Picture taken June 2 ,2021. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings

Buoyed by tech money flowing into the region, there have been calls in some quarters for South Africa’s Western Cape Province to do a ‘Cape-Xit’ and secede from the rest of South Africa.

“We [seek] the creation of a new sovereign state, which no longer forms a part of the Republic of South Africa,” Phil Craig tells The Africa Report.

He is the co-founder of the Cape Independence movement that wants the envisaged future country to be named ‘Cape of Good Hope’.

Craig claims that a 2021 informal and non-binding poll showed that 46.2% of the Cape’s residents support independence and 58.0% favour a referendum on secession.

At the heart of the secessionists’ grievances are the feeling that South Africa is falling apart as a country and that the Cape province must not be dragged along with it.

“South Africa is intent on self-destruction,” Craig says, referencing a lack of energy security, staggering levels of corruption, the world’s highest youth unemployment rate and spiralling crime.

The Cape Independence Party further accuses the South Africa Revenue Service of not

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