House of Assembly (South Africa)

The House of Assembly (known in Afrikaans as the Volksraad, or "People's Council") was the lower house of the Parliament of South Africa from 1910 to 1981, the sole parliamentary chamber between 1981 and 1984, and latterly the white representative house of the Tricameral Parliament from 1984 to 1994, when it was replaced by the current National Assembly. Throughout its history, it was exclusively constituted of white members who were elected to office predominantly by white citizens, though until 1960 and 1970, respectively, some Black Africans and Coloureds in the Cape Province voted under a restricted form of suffrage.

House of Assembly of South Africa

Volksraad van Suid-Afrika
Coat of arms or logo
Type
Type
Lower house (1910–1981)
Unicameral legislature (1981–1984)
White representative house (1984–1994)
History
Established1910
Disbanded1994
Succeeded byNational Assembly of South Africa
Elections
First-past-the-post
Last election
6 September 1989
Meeting place
Houses of Parliament
Cape Town
Cape Province, South Africa
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The House of Assembly

The old House of Assembly chamber was severely damaged in a fire in January 2022.[1]

Method of election

The members were elected by first-past-the-post voting in single-member electoral divisions. Following the abolition of the Senate in 1981, the membership of the House of Assembly was increased included 12 additional members, of whom four were appointed by the State President and eight were elected by the directly elected members.[2] The elected additional members were chosen by proportional representation, by means of the single transferable vote.[3]

Franchise

The South Africa Act 1909 provided that the franchise in each province should be the same as that in the corresponding colony before the Union, until altered by the Union Parliament. The Act included entrenching clauses, providing that black and coloured voters could only be removed from the common voters roll in the Cape of Good Hope, by legislation passed by a two-thirds majority by both houses of Parliament in joint session.[4]

The franchise, in all parts of the Union, was initially limited to men over the age of 21. White women were enfranchised in 1929 and the remaining property and income qualifications affecting white men were abolished in 1930.[5] The voting age was reduced to 18 in the 1960s. There were some additional qualifications and disqualifications which varied between provinces.

The voters in the Orange Free State, Transvaal and South West Africa had to be qualified white people, throughout the whole period when those areas were represented in the House of Assembly.

Cape Franchise
Main article: Cape Qualified Franchise

The Cape of Good Hope had a franchise based on property and wage qualifications, open to people of all races. At the time of the National Convention in 1908, which drafted the terms of what became the South Africa Act, "22,784 Native and Coloured persons out of a total of 152,221 electors" were entitled to vote in Cape elections.

From 1930, the traditional Cape franchise only affected non-white electors. The 1929 and 1930 extensions of white voting rights were not granted to the non-white majority of the population.

Until 1937, a small number of blacks in the Cape Province were included on the common voters' roll. Under the Representation of Natives Act (1936), three white members were elected to represent black voters in the province, with the voters' roll being limited to only 11 000.[6] In 1960, these seats were abolished.[7]

Similarly the coloured voters in Cape Province were removed from the common (or general roll), under the Separate Representation of Voters Act 1951, although as the Act was challenged during the Coloured vote constitutional crisis and not completely enforced until the later 1950s, the last year to see non-whites participate in a general election was in 1953. Coloured electors complying with qualifications were subsequently given four white MPs between 1958 and 1970. These seats were abolished in 1968 through the Separate Representation of Voters Amendment Act, 1968, enacted on behalf of Prime Minister B. J. Vorster. This removed all political representation for non-whites in South Africa; Indians had never had any parliamentary representation.

Natal Franchise

Natal had a theoretically non-racial franchise, which was similar to (but different in detail) from the property and income based franchise of the Cape. In practice, few non-white electors ever qualified to vote under it. It was estimated, in 1908, that "200 non-Europeans out of a total of 22,786 electors had secured franchise rights".[8]

In 1935, there was one black elector in Natal. He retained the general roll franchise when the Cape black voters lost it.[9]

South West Africa

In 1949, the South West Africa Affairs Amendment Act extended parliament representation to South West Africa's white minority, who elected six MPs to the House of Assembly.[10] They were first elected in 1950, with the territory being represented in the South African Parliament until 1977.[11] South West Africa's representation in the South African Parliament was abolished in 1977, to pave the way for independence for the territory, which did not occur until 1990.[12]

However, Walvis Bay was transferred back to the Cape Province, thereby making it an exclave.[13] From 1980, it formed part of the Green Point constituency in Cape Town, before becoming a separate constituency in 1982.[14]

Tricameral Parliament

In the Tricameral Parliament, the House of Assembly (by this time numbering 178 members) was retained as the Whites-only chamber while the House of Representatives and House of Delegates were designated to Coloureds and Asians respectively.

Composition by election, province, and type
ElectionNo.CapeNatOFSSWATvlTotal gen.CCRMCNRMTotal MPs
1910, 15 September1511717–36121––121[15]
1915, 20 October2511717–45130––130
1920, 20 March3511717–49134––134
1921, 8 February4511717–49134––134
1924, 19 June5511717–50135––135
1929, 14 June6581718–55148––148
1933, 17 May7611616–57150––150
1938, 18 May8591615–60150–3153[16]
1943, 17 July9561614–64150–3153
1948, 26 May10551613–66150–3153[17]
1953, 15 April11541513668156–3159[18]
1958, 16 April1252161466815643163[19]
1961, 8 October135216146681564–160[20]
1966, 30 March145418156731664–170[21]
1970, 22 April15541815673166––166[22]
1974, 24 April16552014676171––171[23]
1977, 30 November17552014–76165IENom165[24]
1981, 29 April18552014–7616584177[25]
1987, 6 May19562014–7616684178[26]
1989, 6 September20562014–7616684178[27]

Abbreviations and notes:

  • General roll electoral divisions (contested at general elections)
  • Cape: Cape of Good Hope
  • Nat: Natal
  • OFS: Orange Free State
  • SWA: South West Africa (represented in the House 1950–1977)
  • Tvl: Transvaal
  • Non-general roll seats (not filled at general elections)
  • CCRM: Cape Coloured representative members (represented in the House 1958–1970)
  • CNRM: Cape Native representative members (represented in the House 1937–1960)
  • IE: Indirectly elected, by the directly elected MPs (represented in the House January 1981 – 1994)
  • Nom: Nominated by the State President, one per province (represented in the House January 1981 – 1994)

Election results

The following table reflects only those members elected from general roll electoral divisions.

TermElectionTotal seatsParties
South AfricanUnionistLabourOthersIndependent
1st15 September 191012167394—11
NationalSouth AfricanUnionistLabourOthersIndependent
2nd20 October 19151302754394—6
3rd20 March 192013444412521—3
NationalSouth AfricanLabourOthersIndependent
4th8 February 192113445799—1
5th19 June 1924135635318—1
6th14 June 192914878618—1
7th17 May 1933150756122 Roos10
Purified NationalUnitedDominionLabourOthersIndependent
8th18 May 193815027111831 Socialist—
Reunited NationalUnitedDominionLabourOthersIndependent
9th17 July 1943150438979—2
AfrikanerReunited NationalUnitedLabourOthersIndependent
10th26 May 1948150970656——
NationalUnitedLabourOthersIndependent
11th15 April 195315694575——
12th16 April 195815610353———
NationalUnitedProgressiveOthersIndependent
13th8 October 19611561055911 National Union—
14th30 March 1966166126391——
15th22 April 1970166118471——
16th24 April 1974171123417——
NationalNew RepublicProgressive FederalOthersIndependent
17th30 November 197716513410173 South African1
18th/19th29 April 1981165131826——
ConservativeNationalNew RepublicProgressive FederalOthersIndependent
20th6 May 198716622123119—1
ConservativeNationalDemocraticOthersIndependent
21st6 September 1989166399433——

See also
Wikimedia Commons has media related to House of Assembly (South Africa).

References
  1. "South Africa's national assembly chambers destroyed in parliament fire". Stuff. 2 January 2022. Retrieved 14 January 2022.
  2. The Comparative and International Law Journal of Southern Africa, Volume 13, Institute of Foreign and Comparative Law, University of South Africa, 1981, page 354
  3. SOUTH AFRICA Date of Elections: 29 April 1981, International Parliamentary Union
  4. Section 35 of the South Africa Act 1909
  5. ‘'The South African Constitution'’, by H.J. May (3rd edition 1955, Juta & Co) pp 92–93
  6. Natives in South Africa, The Glasgow Herald, 16 June 1937
  7. The South African Constitution, pp 101–109 (for the details of the native representative seats)
  8. Discussion of the franchise and the quotations about numbers of voters are from The South African Constitution, page 10
  9. The South African Constitution, page 95: H.J. May, writing in 1955, discussed the qualification for non-Europeans in Natal to be voters on the common (or general) roll. "There was only one Native in Natal (and only one therefore in the whole of the Union) on the general voters' list in 1945, and now there are none".
  10. Official Documents of the 4th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, United Nations, 1949, page 11
  11. Mediating Conflict: Decision-making and Western Intervention in Namibia, Vivienne Jabri, Manchester University Press, 1990, page 46
  12. South Africa 1978: Official Yearbook of the Republic of South Africa, Volume 5, State Department of Information, 1978, page 141
  13. The Green and the dry wood: The Roman Catholic Church (Vicariate of Windhoek) and the Namibian socio-political situation, 1971-1981, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, 1983, page 6
  14. Sub-Saharan Africa Report, Issues 2578-2584, Foreign Broadcast Information Service., 1982, page 48
  15. (Distribution of seats 1910–1933) The South African Constitution, pp. 79–82; South Africa 1982, page 129.
  16. (Distribution of seats 1938–1943) The South African Constitution, pp. 79–82 and 104–109, South Africa 1982, page 129 and Keesing's Contemporary Archives 1943–1946, pp. 6005–6008.
  17. (Distribution of seats 1948) The South African Constitution, pp. 79–82 and 104–109, South Africa 1982, page 129 and Keesing's Contemporary Archives 1946–1948, page 9297.
  18. (Distribution of seats 1953) The South African Constitution, pp. 79–82, 104–109 and 406–408, South Africa 1982, page 129 and Keesing's Contemporary Archives 1952–1954, page 13005.
  19. (Distribution of seats 1958) South Africa 1982, page 129 and Keesing's Contemporary Archives 1957–1958, page 16169.
  20. (Distribution of seats 1961) South Africa 1982, page 129 and Keesing's Contemporary Archives 1961–1962, page 18449.
  21. (Distribution of seats 1966) South Africa 1982, page 129 and Keesing's Contemporary Archives 1965–1966, pp. 21375-21376.
  22. (Distribution of seats 1970) South Africa 1982, page 129 and Keesing's Contemporary Archives 1969–1970, page 23971.
  23. (Distribution of seats 1974) South Africa 1982, page 129 and Keesing's Contemporary Archives 1974, pp. 25641-25643.
  24. (Distribution of seats 1977) South Africa 1982, page 129 and Keesing's Contemporary Archives 1978, page 28813.
  25. (Distribution of seats 1981) South Africa 1982, page 129 and Keesing's Contemporary Archives 1981, page 30973.
  26. (Distribution of seats 1987) Keesing's Contemporary Archives 1987, page 35298.
  27. (Distribution of seats 1989) Keesing's Contemporary Archives 1989, page 36880.
  • Keesing's Contemporary Archives (various volumes)
  • South Africa 1982: Official Yearbook of the Republic of South Africa, published by Chris van Rensburg Publications
  • The South African Constitution, by H.J. May (3rd edition 1955, Juta & Co)
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