SACP Western Cape response on the Provincial Powers Bill
24 January 2024
The colonial apartheid imagination is ever present in the political DNA of the DA. After 14 years of electoral dominance and armed with an annual fiscal budget of R303,36 billion, managed respectively by Legislature and City of Cape Town, there comes a claim that National Government is unwilling to provide services to the people of the Western Cape. With almost 14 years of uninterrupted governance in Western Cape and an average of R2,5 trillion to work with over said period, yet the Gini coefficient in Western Cape remains at 0.62. The Western Cape is characterised by asset and income inequality and spatial segregation that perpetuates the tale of two cities. The 16 per cent White demographic enjoys the lion’s share of the Western Cape’s R654 billion Gross Domestic Product.
Compared with the annual budget of the National Government of Namibia which stands at R83,754 billion, the DA, Cape Independence Party, the Capexit alliance dream of creating an independent state by introducing their Western Cape Powers Bill. And why not? With a Western Cape GDP of that magnitude you can imagine creating two Namibia(s) on the Southern tip of Africa.
The farce that this is about service delivery fools no one. This ruse is about capturing the GDP after they already control the Western Cape fiscal.
When history repeats itself first as a tragedy then as a farce, is what the intent of this Provincial Powers Bill is. That is, to divide the populations nationally and create enclaves of privilege and misery for the people in the Western Cape. If the sprawling squatter camps and homelessness in the Cape flats is not evidence of the deteriorated material conditions of the poor and working-class, then the farce concocted by the DA Capexit alliance is the perilous future.
The colonial apartheid mind-set is evident in the Provincial Powers Bill. After 30 years of democratic breakthrough, the vestiges of apartheid privilege are as real today as they were then. The inequality and the indignity of poverty is deepening and widening. If the DA’s 14 years of uninterrupted governance cannot address this intergenerational material condition of the Western Cape populace, what would make us believe they can eradicate the crisis of social reproduction, conditions of colonial and apartheid vestiges in the future? It did not take the white dominated DA’s anti-majoritarian (only when it favours them) protagonist long enough to show their true colours.
As is the case of genocide perpetrated on the Palestinians supported by the DA, we wonder what an apartheid Zionist Western Cape future would look like in their imagination. The DA-Capexit Alliance is once again on the wrong side of history. Their politics has no place in a unitary democratic national building project.
Today we remember the historical words of the founding president of our nation, President Nelson Mandela, when he said, “I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination”, and we should add fight against racist secession.
It is against this background that the SACP in the Western Cape condemns the Provincial Powers Bill and calls on the Western Cape populace to reject this Bill. We, further, call upon the National Government to use all its powers to oppose the separatists occupying the corridors of power in the Western Cape Province.
Therefore, the task of the SACP, if this Bill is not legally stopped, will once again be called upon to render the DA Capexit nexus in Western Cape ungovernable to prevent reincarnation of the modern day apartheid system.
Issued by Benson Ngqentsu, SACP Provincial Secretary, 24 January 2024
