Kay is a relatively tall man of medium build. He speaks in a relaxed manner and pays significant attention to detail. His body language is not particularly energetic, which, combined with his investigative stare through gold frame eyeglasses, almost gives off the impression that he is more of an academic than a politician. Indeed, Kay worked as an English teacher in South Korea for a year in 2008 after completing his Honours programme in political communication at the University of Cape Town. He joined the Cape Party late last year and recalls he “always had an interest in politics”. The party, led by 25-year-old actor Jack Miller, registered with the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) last year. Its Facebook group has been in existence since June 2007 and currently boasts somewhere around 1100 members. It’ll be looking for more votes than that come 22 April, of course.

Kay does not exude much excitement when speaking about his political beliefs, but nor does he feel ashamed or guilty for sharing them. “I have always been tremendously proud of the Cape and felt we could do it on our own,” says the novice politician in a calm and assured voice. He is convinced the Cape Party’s secessionist claim is legitimate, for two reasons. Firstly, he claims the Cape is historically, culturally and demographically different from the rest of South Africa. Secondly, he says its union with South Africa was forced on the people in 1910 in much the same way that most African countries that exist now were formed by the Berlin Conference of 1880. He says the question of joining South Africa has never been posed to the people of the Cape, just as the South African constitution was “never given to the people for their approval or disapproval.”

After finishing this last sentence, he pauses for a few seconds. He is out of breath, and seems slightly worn out following days of campaigning in Mitchell’s Plain for the by-election in ward 79. He says he would appreciate a five minute break from the interview and explains how exhausting it is to give interviews to the media every day. But in a moment, Kay abruptly changes his mind and continues with the interview.

Kay gives another reason for why he joined the Cape Party: he is, as you’d expect from an opposition candidate, unhappy with the current state of South African politics. Much of his frustration stems from the “economic injustice” he claims has been perpetuated against the people of the Cape by “a foreign political agenda” in the form of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and Affirmative Action (AA) policies. He believes these policies do not benefit the Coloured population of the Cape, and blames both the African National Congress (ANC) and the Democratic Alliance (DA) for doing an unjust job in housing allocation. The Cape Party’s view is that “people who were born here and rooted here should get houses first”, which has not always been the case. His voice suddenly becomes strong, and he utters with conviction, “If you aren’t outraged by that, you should be.”

For all thes concerns of Kay’s party for the native population of the Cape, they clearly border on outright intolerance towards the racial other. One of the party’s pamphlets distributed during the election campaign singled out “black migrants” for receiving resources that belong to the local population. During the interview, Kay elaborates on this, saying that his party is frustrated about the way migrants from the Eastern Cape are disturbing the Cape’s social order.”We want one Cape people so that there’s a sense of community. I can’t have a radically different view of the world to someone else and still get along… We can have differences of opinion, but not totally different cultures,” says Kay. The Cape Party has a disturbing expectation for people to change their cultural behaviours according to its own, and what it sees as the Cape’s, standards. When you consider this, you can’t shake the feeling that Kay and his party want to build the utopian Cape society on an unfathomable, pseudo-heterogeneous, disturbing foundation.

Despite this, Kay denies that the party’s ideas have racist undertones or the potential to incite hostility, as he claims there have not been “incidents of political violence or tribal infighting” in this region in the last 300 years. As for the xenophobic violence that took place in mid-2008, he explains that “none of those [attacks] have been committed by people who are rooted and born in the Cape”, but possibly the disgruntled migrant population. He moves on from the prickly topic, and says the Cape, not South Africa, is the true melting pot that is tolerant of people of all race, class, gender and religion. But Kay’s statements continually contradict each other, as in the same election pamphlet mentioned above equates the “Cape nation” solely with the Coloured population, and completely overlooks the supposed ethnic and cultural diversity of the Cape.

The Cape Party’s manifesto does not present detailed and specific policies about governance, Kay justifies it on the basis that at the moment, his party is primarily attempting to popularise the ideal of a Cape nation to the voters. However, he says the party is not bankrupt in terms of policy ideas. It strongly believes education is the “solution to all of Cape’s problems”, and that politicisation of civil service must be prevented to ensure competent officials run government departments. As for crime, he feels part of the solution to prevent crime is to have “controlled immigration” so there isn’t “a surplus of unemployed, disaffected, disillusioned people.”

As the interview comes to a close, Kay reiterates that he is anything but pessimistic about the future of his political movement. Being a young politician, he is full of vigour and enthusiasm, and fully understands it will require competing in more than one election for his party to make progress. Returning once more to the discussion about his political ambitions, Kay assures me “the Cape will be independent before the Second Coming”, and bursts into laughter.

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Saif Islam is a third-year student at the University of Cape Town, majoring in print production and politics.