The strategy of the Cape Independence movement going into 2024 the election was to focus on two different constituencies – the RP on the Anglophone liberals, and the VF+ on the Afrikanerphone conservatives, and to hopefully gather enough of the Western Cape provincial vote to force the DA under 50% and create a coalition that would force a referendum on Cape independence.

The result was a 6% dip in VF+ support in the Cape (falling roughly 30% nationally), and an almost infinitesimal vote for the RP. And yet previous polling, by the most credible and accurate polling organisation working in the country showed that there was overwhelming support for the idea of secession.

To figure out why this failure occurred, the CIAG commissioned a new poll to see why those who supported Cape independence did not vote for it. Yesterday, the CIAG release their full report on the failure of the Cape independence effort. The study was based on reflections on past opinion polls, as well as a new poll conducted on people who had voted on the past election.

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The Poll

The 2023 opinion poll, carried out by Victory Research, had a margin of error of 5%, and was demographically representative of the provincial population.

Two questions were highlighted: which party the person intended to vote for, and whether that party coming out firmly against cape independence would change their intention to vote for it.

Of those most strongly in support of Cape independence, 89% indicated an intention to vote for the DA. Based on the roughly 1.1 million stable DA votes, this would suggest a potential secessionist voting pool of 140 000 voters.

This meant explaining why those supposed swing voters did not swing away from the DA. The new June poll focused on known independence supporters and allies. And yet even in this hardcore support base, over a quarter said they voted for the DA.

43% claimed this was because of the DA’s current performance in the Western Cape, but the remainder felt that there was either no point in voting for smaller parties (a self-fulfilling prophecy), or the functionally similar response that they were afraid of the ANC bringing the EFF into power.

The bulk of respondents simply lacked confidence in the success of the ideal, whether because of imagined legal barriers, or because of the self-fulfilling notion of the DA’s first-mover advantage.

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Ethnopolitics

First, that the country is clearly divided into a majoritarian and a minoritarian camp, and that there is no meaningful movement between the two. This has been observed by many commentators, including this paper, and the work of Gareth van Onselen, whose polling organisation is contracted to both the CIAG and the Democratic Alliance.

Roughly 14% of the DA’s support comes from black voters, which the party is wont to celebrate as a sign of diversity when given the opportunity. But as a proportion of the black vote nationally, the DA only receive 4.3%. In 42% of all national voting districts outside the Western Cape, the DA got not a single vote.

Black people on the whole do not vote for liberal or minoritarian parties, and are on the whole hardline race-nationalists who will not vote for anyone who entertains the idea of legal equality with racial minorities.

However, as the biggest representative of the minority vote, the DA have a first-mover advantage in the minoritarian bloc in every election. Those who vote for them do not broadly do so because of agreement with their political programme, nor out of praise for their performance in absolute terms.

Rather, they vote for the DA out of fear, that the ANC will dominate, and only the largest minoritarian party has the capacity to keep them in check.

As a result, parties that much better represent the values and desires of the broader public suffer at the polls merely by virtue of not having already established the dominant position within this electoral bloc.

By playing on the fears of an ANC reunion government (ANC/EFF/MK coalition), the DA managed to scare every potential detractor into falling into line, and by forming a coalition with other minoritarian parties (the MPC), they both managed to give the impression that they would have greater support than was actually mathematically possible, as well as render these votes fungible, motivating a move to vote for the DA as the main element of the MPC.

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The CIAG’s plans

In response to the situation, the CIAG has leaned on the precedent set by Venice (Italian province of Veneto) in 2014, which held a private virtual referendum on its own secession, creating enough pressure that the province was granted an official state-backed referendum in 2017. They hope to conduct their own private referendum before the next election.

But this is only a single operation. More substantially, the CIAG identified deficits in research, activism, and operational capacity.

A dearth of substantial research on the legal grounds, risks and advantages of secession has led to a lack of confidence and certainty in weighing up the options available. Public communication rests on prior facts and sentiments that must be created beforehand.

The absence of a more permanent and reliabel network of supporters active in local communities has also resulted in a difficulty in mobilising and coordinating support on the ground, leading to a largely virtual support base.

Without loyal and involved activists, the movement has had to rely on the sentiment and conscience of the average voter. The CIAG has thus emphasised the need to form a support network with civic organisations to penetrate local communities more effectively.

There was also the observation that the success of the movement going forward was largely reliant on the performance of the DA in the ruling coalition, and the possibility of Ramaphosa being replaced by an MK/EFF-friendly opponent in the 2027 ANC leadership conference.

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Ultimately, the report gleaned the fact that despite the supermajoritarian legitimacy of the ideal, minorities' fear of majoritarian tyranny and a lack of self-confidence, combined with a weakness in structural strength in the movement, has resulted in a reluctance to embrace active solutions.