CIAG Labels Minister In Presidency Statement Abhorrent, Hypocritical, And Ironic
The Cape Independence Advocacy Group (CIAG) condemns in the strongest possible terms Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni’s comments that those who believe South Africa “is not a good country for them” should leave.
This statement is abhorrent, hypocritical, and ironic.
Where citizens of South Africa choose to use their constitutionally protected rights to protest the abject and enduring failure of their government, including its inability to prevent them from being murdered, its persistent use of apartheid-era racial classifications to impose pervasive racial discrimination on its people, and its tacit endorsement of songs calling for the murder of a specific ethnocultural group, they are not being unpatriotic. To the contrary, they are performing an essential civic duty.
Nobody should understand this better than the ANC themselves. It is inconceivable that during the apartheid era, the ANC would have advised black, coloured, and Indian citizens that, if South Africa is not a good country for them, they should leave. Yet here is the Minister offering that advice to predominantly white South Africans, seemingly without a hint of shame.
Ironically, where South Africans do wish to take the Minister’s advice and leave, the government is intent on stopping them.
In 1994, by agreement, Afrikaners and the State established a Volkstaatraad which would investigate the establishment of an Afrikaner territory. In 1999, the State unilaterally defunded the Volkstaatraad and failed to respond to its findings.
In 2025, President Ramaphosa and his spokesperson said, in response to calls for Cape Independence, “There is no part of our beautiful land that can be allowed to secede”, and “I have no intention of considering a proposal or holding a referendum on the secession of any part of the country.”
The Social Research Foundation has recently released polling data to show that the majority of KZN residents favour independence from South Africa.
CIAG spokesperson, Phil Craig, says, “The Minister has everything about this wrong. People who are fighting to make South Africa a better place for its people are patriots who should be applauded, not thorns in the flesh who need to be silenced. These people love their country; it is their government, its performance, and its conduct which they detest. The State should either end racial discrimination once and for all, celebrate and protect the diversity of the South African people, and implement policies which will create rather than stifle economic growth and job creation, or, if it is unwilling to do so, allow those people to exercise their right to self-determination and to leave. Not by emigrating, but by establishing their own self-governing communities where they live now.”
DATE: 30 September 2026
