Poetic Licence

The coloniser never truly leaves. He just changes his accent, swaps his flag, and returns with new words to mask old ambitions. Today, the Democratic Alliance’s demand for a transfer of policing powers from the national government to the DA-led provincial Western Cape, coupled with the mutterings of Cape Independence, feels like a familiar theft rehearsed again, a slow slicing away of sovereignty and unity that so many bled to achieve.

We must not be fooled by the language of “efficiency” and “better service delivery.” This is the same sleight of hand once used to sell Bantustans as self-rule, when in truth they were designed to weaken African unity and entrench minority power. The DA insists it is not calling for independence, but it nurtures the soil where separatism germinates. Already, the Cape Independence Advocacy Group has crossed the Atlantic, begging Washington for funds and legitimacy, as if the liberation of Africans must once again be signed off by foreign hands.

This is regression, not reform. It recalls the Berlin Conference of 1884, when Africa was partitioned without the consent of her people. Then, maps and rulers carved up the continent. Today, policy and referendums threaten to carve up our republic. Devolving policing powers may sound like good governance, but in context, it is the opening act of a theatre we know too well, the coloniser’s whisper that “you are different, you are special, you will be better off alone.”

The DA may claim its hands are clean, but it cannot escape the fact that its own voters are increasingly enchanted by secession, formally breaking away from our country. Polls show overwhelming support for a referendum on independence among DA supporters. The party’s silence on this contradiction is telling. Whether by intent or cowardice, the DA stands on both sides of the road, preaching national unity while winking at those who dream of a white-tinted, Coloured-fronted “Cape Republic.”

And where is this dream being sold? Not in Addis Ababa, not in Gaborone, not even in Pretoria. No, the plea for support is sent to Washington, the very power that props up occupations in Palestine and meddles in African democracies. That is the neo-colonialism in play. To seek validation from the United States for secession is to spit on the graves of those who fought for African liberation.

Cape Independence is the bastard child of apartheid nostalgia and Western meddling. Devolved policing powers are the incubator keeping that child alive. Together they risk turning the Western Cape into a laboratory for fragmentation, where “efficiency” masks exclusion and “autonomy” slides into separation.

Our struggle has always been continental, not provincial. We belong to Africa first, and our destiny lies in Pan-African freedom, justice, and solidarity. The coloniser no longer arrives with chains; he arrives with policies. He no longer steals land with guns; he steals unity with referendums. Our task is to see through the disguise, to protect the wholeness of our country, and to insist that Africa belongs to Africans, not to the ghosts of empire.

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