What it all means, and how you can help
Talk about provincial autonomy has become a mainstream issue lately. Everyone agrees it has become necessary. And while the DA were happy with empty promises up until now, the independence movement has forced them to act.
Their response is to try to make the efforts utterly useless, because they are afraid of change.
There are two Bills on the list this year for the Western Cape Provincial Parliament – the Western Cape Provincial Powers Bill and the Western Cape Peoples Bill.
The first Bill that was written was the People’s Bill, which can be found here. It was written to declare the Western Cape people a separate people from the rest of South Africa, by virtue of our ethnicities, our languages, our culture, our geography, and our values.
This seemingly symbolic act has great consequence – it will give effect to several articles of the National and Provincial Constitutions, and several international treaties and articles of international law recognised by South African courts, that provide the Western Cape people the right to take charge of their own governance in line with their interests, whether the ANC likes it or not.
The DA, fearing the responsibility that would come with the autonomy that they promised to the people, and having superstitious fears of the notion of separate provincial identity, refused to back the bill, and instead worked on their own, utterly toothless bill, and argued for the postponement of the Peoples Bill.
The Provincial Powers bill compels the Provincial government to seek means of devolving powers to the province. But almost all of these powers will require asking the ANC for permission, and the few powers that can be gotten permission are marginal and weak.
DA leaders have slandered the Peoples Bill in public, but without it, none of the powers they seek from the Provincial Powers Bill will have effect.
DA politicians are not all robots, but many live in their own bubble. While the leadership may not want the bill, many members are likely to be persuaded to see the light with a little public help.
The case is simple, and has merit – we need real control of our own destiny, and a real escape from the corruption, the violence, the incompetence, the racial discrimination and general decay imposed on us by the ANC. We need control of policing, transport, health, fisheries, power, water and education.
And we can do it, but only if we pass both these bills.
You can call or email your local representative using the link below. Many are quite lonesome and may enjoy the attention. Call them all and make you case. It might be the first friendly voice they've heard all week.
Just go to our main page - https://www.capeyouthfront.org/ - and scroll to the bottom. All the contacts for every MP are listed there.