Screaming into the void

Link to original article: https://axiomatika.substack.com/p/screaming-into-the-void

The votes of the individuals of the Western Cape mean nothing. Their voice is drowned out by a majority government that does not have their interests at heart, and only Cape Independence can fix this

(The following is an older article by the author from 2021 that still has sentiment as true and powerful as it was then, regardless of its age)

It has been almost 3 decades of democratic government for South Africa. In this time South Africans have enjoyed a multitude of political rights that have never been experienced by the majority of the population for centuries. Ever since the 90s each province has voted for the local, provincial and national governments of their choice… except the Western Cape(WC).

During each election year the Western Cape has voted in line with its generally Liberal political culture by having the Democratic Alliance retain a majority in its Provincial Parliament as well District Municipalities. However the Western Cape has never received the National Government of its choice. This inability of the Western Cape to get the government of its choice, a dilemma echoed by the Cape Independence Advocacy Group(CIAG), is a simple illustration of the meaninglessness of the province’s vote during national elections. Being the chief source of their electoral numbers, the DA(among other small parties in the Provincial Parliament) can be seen as the chief voice for the interests of the Western Cape in the National Assembly. Outside of the WC the DA does not have any majorities in Provincial Legislatures, and at best has only coalitions in metros and majorities in local municipalities that have little influence outside their jurisdictions.

Asking a wall some questions

In evaluating the meaningless of WC votes, one has to assess the amount of power DA votes carry in the National Assembly. Due to the massive majority the ANC has, the DA has no way of confidently fulfilling the promises it has made to the WC electorate in the 2019 elections, a big one being the creation of a provincial police service. The ANC, as well as wannabe-tyrant Bheki Cele, are against the idea of decentralising police services to the provincial level, much less allowing citizens the right to defend themselves and have recently shown an interest in going after the private security industry, one of the few remaining things in the country that hasn’t completely gone to ruin. It is clear, I believe, that the DA will most probably not fulfill its promise and in turn will be unable to represent the WC’s interests in the National Assembly.

Even if the DA manages to convince some ANC moderates and gain some support among smaller parties such as the ACDP and FF+, the fools and firebrands at the EFF will ultimately vote in agreement with the ANC, shooting any hopes the DA may have out of the sky, and depriving the WC of any hopes it may have of alleviating its massive crime rates.

The WC has dangerously high crime. This is common knowledge, something that the neither the DA nor the ANC( or the Cape Independence Movement, for that matter) are oblivious to. The DA’s inability to effectively address this issue, although not being completely irresponsible of, is mostly a result of the National Government’s inability and Cele’s lack of will to significantly reform the service or allow people better protection. Because of this inability to make any real progress the people of the WC are currently suffering under warzone levels of crime with no real hope of peace coming from their hopeless representatives. Having more funding, manpower and accountability would greatly aid the WC, and instead of helping the ANC has decided to leave the province dying in a field while their corrupt cadres milk it dry of the production that its people(a people that they refuse to even recognise exists, mind you) work so hard to produce. Trying to appeal to a Government that could honestly give less than a rat’s ass is essentially like asking a wall questions and expecting answers.

Banning the hand that feeds you

Speaking of hard work, I think it’s quite paramount to point out the absolute abuse that the WC specifically has gone through this past year. During the previous year the WC’s Wine industry has sustained massive losses due to the National Government’s continuous and arbitrary alcohol bans in its willy nilly attempts to combat the spread of Covid. The Wine industry is estimated to contribute approximately R47 billion annually to the Provincial economy and provided 300000 employment opportunities, all this was brought to an abrupt end by heavy lockdown restrictions which resulted in 350 wine producers going out of business.

And with this in mind, the alcohol industry is still trying to warn the government against bans. The previous four bans saw the beer industry losing 161 days of trade since March last year, putting just over 240 000 jobs at risk, with a tax revenue loss of R34.2 billion and R10.2 billion lost in excise revenue, according to an article by Business Tech.

From Elite to Elite

The continuation of racial filth unjustly discriminates against the majority of the WC. By that I mean that the ANC policies of BEE and AA, despite having good intentions fail to address any of the past injustices that pervade the milieu of people of colour in the WC. On this specific topic I would like to elaborate more about in a future article, but to keep things short I wish iterate that not only in the social sphere, but in intellectual spheres there is a constant dismissal of the identity of Coloured people as if they either have no culture or that they are “so-called coloureds”, as if those that confidently and proudly identify as such aren’t actually what they say they are, as if their identity can still be decided by those outside themselves even in this supposed democratic era. I am well aware of the lumping of different ethnic groups into one to form Coloured culture, but it is a mistake to act as if those who were born and raised with the identity, those who live and breath what it means to be Coloured, those that made the identity their own and who choose to move forward and build from what they have now instead of destroying and assimilating into what was never theirs to not deserve the dignity of having their identities recognised with as much legitimacy as the Zulu’s, Xhosa’s, Afrikaners and the myriad other ethnicities that make this country what it is(or perhaps could have been).

The frequent implementation of racial policies and attitudes by the rest of the country is a simple proof that the people of the WC, despite constantly voting for non-racialism, has no true voice in this country, and that it is frankly futile to try to save the rest of it as they continue to follow the trends of racial tyranny off a cliff.

No answer

It is quite obvious, I am convinced, that the Western Cape has only a future of mediocrity and decay in the current South Africa and the province has no real hope of changing that. It is against this voiceless province’s interests to stay in this dying Republic’s echo-chamber. The only real hope for the Cape of Good Hope is to leave and create its own legacy, for the good of her own peoples and not the bureaucratic leeches and snakes in the National Government.

We can either continue to scream into the void and receive no answer, or we can look into ourselves and create our own legacy.