General elections were held in South Africa on 15 September 1910 to elect the 121 members of the House of Assembly. They were the first general election after the Union of South Africa was created on 31 May 1910.
The elections were held alongside the first election to the provincial councils of Cape Province and Transvaal. Those councils used the same electoral districts as those for the House of Assembly seats in the province. The first election for the provincial councils of Natal and Orange Free State, which did not use the same constituency boundaries as the House of Assembly, took place at a later date.[1]
Although the Unionist Party received the most votes, the alliance of parties led by General Louis Botha won a slim majority. The Unionist Party became the official opposition. Botha's alliance would later unite as the South African Party.
Electoral system
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.[2]
The franchise, in all parts of the Union, was limited to men over the age of 21. There were some additional qualifications and disqualifications which varied between provinces.
The franchise in the Orange Free State and Transvaal was limited to white men.
Map showing the % of non-white voters by electoral district in Cape Colony in 1908 - on the even of union.
The traditional "Cape Qualified Franchise" system of the Cape of Good Hope was based on property and wage qualifications, equally 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.
Natal had a theoretically non-racial franchise, but in practice few non-white electors ever qualified. It was estimated, in 1908, that "200 non-Europeans out of a total of 22,786 electors had secured franchise rights".[3]
The South Africa Act 1909 provided for single member electoral divisions, with members of the House of Assembly being elected using the relative majority (also known as first past the post) electoral system. The act also provided for a delimitation commission to define the boundaries for each electoral division.[4]
Provinces
Cape
Natal
Orange Free State
Transvaal
Total
Seats
51
17
17
36
121
Contesting parties
South African National Party
The first Union Prime Minister (and former Transvaal Prime Minister), General Botha, assembled an electoral alliance before the first Union election. This grouping was composed of the governing parties of three of the colonies being united and some individual politicians from Natal (which did not have a pre-Union party system).
The 'Unionist Party of South Africa was formed, in May 1910, under the leadership of Leander Starr Jameson (a former Prime Minister of Cape Colony), by the merger of the three colonial opposition parties joined by some individual politicians from Natal.
The parties merged into the Unionist Party were the:
The party was a pro-British conservative party. It favoured the maintenance of a pro-British political culture in South Africa similar to that present in the other 'white dominions'.
^The Times, edition of 24 May 1911, a review of the first session of the Union Parliament (which article included confirmation that the first group of 17 Natal MPs included 11 Independents, 4 Unionist Party members and 2 representatives of the South African Party). South Africa 1982, p. 165.
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