The race to secure an independent Cape has now begun in earnest. As of yesterday, the IEC has confirmed that the Referendum Party will be on all three ballots, provincial, regional and national.

With a pending Electoral Court case over the definition of a signature, it seems the IEC chose not to quibble, especially after allowing Jacob Zuma’s MK party to compete despite serious legal questions hanging over their head.

The RP, despite having been initially turned down for the digital format of their signatures, had petitioned the court over the matter, and collected several thousand additional signatures in the meantime.

The Cape Independence Party has not been able to acquire the requisite signatures, though party leader Jack Miller has said he intends to contest the matter. Several other political parties have failed to make the cut for this election, including the UIM of former spy Niel de Beer.

The oldest veterans of the minority bloc, the Vryheidsfront Plus, will be contesting the election in a provincial coalition compact withe the Referendum Party, ensuring that whatever the political persuasion of the pro-independence voters, the two parties will not be splitting the vote.

This registration process has been a Darwinian bottleneck- only those with the fitness to make it have passed through. Those who remain will be faced with a hard choice - slip into obsolescence, or throw their weight behind the parties contesting the election this year.

The CIP started this movement, and carried it through the desert for 14 years. But after all that time in the wilderness, they needed others to take us into the promised land, and have been left by the wayside, used as a punching bag by the pro-establishment big media houses to distract voters form the momentum gained in other organisations.

The CIP still has a small but significant supporter base in the City, and Jack Miller could strengthen the movement by showing a united front and throwing his lot in behind Phil Craig, the best fit for the largely Anglo CIP voter base.

CapeXit, still cagey about using their mailing list for research or cavassing, and having publicly taken a “nonpartisan” stance, nonetheless has a cosy relationship with the VF+, and could give a healthy boost to the campaigning strategies of both independence parties. If Des Palm does not have the will or capacity to convince his organisation to act on this opportunity, his remaining options will be to become irrelevant or to actively sabotage the movement.

But the achievements of the Referendum Party will more than make up for the deficits in other sectors of the movement.

As the efforts of Phil Craig and Robert King (among many others) have shown, the team which started in the little lobby group known as the CIAG has managed to put Cape independence on the map in a meaningful way.

The press, particularly state-backed propagandists for social media and major media houses colluding with the ruling party (who cannot be named for legal purposes) have spent the last three years focusing attention on the Cape Independence Party in a partially successful attempt to get the public to believe that the smallest part of the movement was its only true representative.

So far, this criticism has worked on the less-informed members of the public, particularly those hostile to the notion of Cape independence. But those paying even cursory attention to this fight will be aware of the opinion polls the CIAG has released showing 58% support for independence and 68% support for a referendum.

The rise of the RP will show them that success through the party-political system is possible. It will expose the false promises the DA made when they thought the movement was too weak to win - that they would deliver a referendum, and fight for provincial autonomy.

They have done neither, instead actively sabotaging the Western Cape Devolution Working Group and pushing through a toothless bill on provincial powers that relies on asking permission form the ANC to get their powers.

The DA are facing sweeping corruption allegations across Western Cape municipalities as the VF+ gains in leaps and bounds in the Afrikaner community nationwide, and the Cape Coloured community is beginning to leave the DA, not only for Coloured-identity parties like Gayton McKenzies shady outfit, but also for the VF+.

The RP will eat the Anglophone liberals, as the VF+ chips away at the conservative Afrikaanerphone population, and McKenzie’s refusal to endorse secession, no doubt motivated by his parents’ foreign and interior-South African roots, will do nothing to stop them - in fact he will make it more likely that the Independence Coalition succeeds in dragging the DA under 50% and forcing a referendum by taking away their rural Coloured supporters.

What the independence coalition needs to win this battle is no more than will be needed to force the DA into a coalition with them, and hand down a referendum, which the people are almost guaranteed to win.

From there on, it becomes only a question of willpower - whether those in charge will find the audacity to tell the ANC to keep their country, and let us keep ours.

After this historic achievement, in an understated press release, RP leader Phil Craig told their supporters, “We would like to thank the thousands of people who endorsed us and all our supporters, donors and activists who helped us reach this exciting milestone.”

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