The Cape Independence Party (CAPEXIT) has used the Cape Town budget debate to renew its call for Western Cape independence, arguing that Capetonians are losing 75% of their taxes to a national government that returns little in exchange.

Speaking in council, CAPEXIT’s Jack Miller said the Western Cape would pay R335 billion to the national government this year while receiving back only R80 billion in unconditional grants. Cape Town specifically, he said, contributes R235 billion in taxes and receives approximately R56 billion, leaving ratepayers to make up a further R32 billion shortfall to fund the City’s R87.6 billion budget – R4 billion more than the previous year, or an additional tax burden of roughly 12%.

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“The Cape Town taxpayer, working and middle classes are dying. The DA’s relentless high tax social welfare agenda which you proudly boast gives over 70% of our budget towards subsidising the indigent and poor, many of whom have come here from the Eastern Cape to take advantage of your social welfare programs and to get free second homes, while the Cape Flats is overflowing with backyard dwellers and 30% unemployment,” he said in Council this week where the City of Cape Town’s 2025/26 budget was adopted.

If you demanded from national treasury that Cape Town keep a mere 1.7% of what we give to national government, you would have been able to boast that there would be no increase in rates for Capetonians this year.

“It has now been 20 years since we at the Cape Independence Party have begged and pleaded with the DA to use your majority in both Cape Town and the Western Cape to fight back against
the national government’s Division of Revenue Act. Yet you do nothing. In fact, quite the contrary, you support it, and happily implement ANC and EFF national policies here in the Cape, while taxing locals even more,” he said.

He argued that it is even worse in Cape Town, which is why the City is forced to tax Cape Town resident so heavily in rates.

“If you [the City] demanded from national treasury that Cape Town keep a mere 1.7% of what we give to national government, you would have been able to boast that there would be no increase in rates for Capetonians this year.

He argued that an independent Western Cape could cut taxes in half and still have double the current budget for schools, hospitals, housing, police, water, energy and infrastructure. The figures cited are CAPEXIT’s own calculations and have not been independently verified.