PRESS RELEASE: WESTERN CAPE MUST NOT PAY THE PRICE FOR PRETORIA'S FOREIGN POLICY FAILURES
The Cape Independence Advocacy Group (CIAG) warns that South Africa's exclusion from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) will have serious consequences for the Western Cape economy, highlighting the urgent need for greater local control over economic affairs.
The Western Cape exported R14.51 billion in goods to the United States in 2025, with key industries, including citrus, wine, fruit juice and yacht manufacturing, now facing considerable uncertainty. Wesgro estimates that US exports across AGOA-related sectors supported approximately 28,000 Western Cape jobs in 2021.
This is another consequence of South Africa's highly centralised system, in which the Western Cape's economic interests are held hostage to Pretoria's foreign policy decisions. Rather than prioritising genuine economic interests, the ANC continues to pursue a foreign policy shaped by its old liberation struggle alliances, often with regimes possessing some of the world's worst human rights records.
Simultaneously, Pretoria has repeatedly antagonised the United States, failing to seriously address American concerns over race-restrictive legislation, the Expropriation (without Compensation) Act and chants of "Kill the Boer". Instead of engaging constructively, South African officials have too often preferred to antagonise Washington.
CIAG's 2025 polling found that 63% of Western Cape residents preferred alignment with the US and EU over Russia and China, in stark contrast to recent national polling by The Common Sense, which found that a plurality of South Africans preferred closer alignment with Russia, China and Iran.
While the CIAG welcomes Premier Alan Winde's diplomatic overtures to Washington, bolder action is required. The Western Cape must pursue direct negotiations with American officials to protect its industries, while demanding the constitutional powers necessary to secure its own trade arrangements.
Greater control over Western Cape tax revenue, through fiscal federalism, would strengthen the province's ability to protect its own economic interests. On 17 November, CIAG and Lex Libertas will release independent research examining the true state of the Western Cape’s fiscal relationship with South Africa over the past decade. The findings will expose the enormous imbalance between what the Western Cape contributes to the national fiscus and what it receives in return, quantifying the price the people of the Western Cape are paying for their subservience to the South African national government.
The Western Cape cannot continue to have its economic future dictated by a central government whose foreign policy neither reflects the province's best interests nor its democratic will.
DATE: 03 Nov 2026
