Franchise notes
When the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910, the electoral qualifications in use in each pre-existing colony were kept in place. The franchise used in the Natal Colony, while theoretically not restricted by race, was significantly less liberal than that of the Cape, and no more than a few hundred non-white electors ever qualified. In 1908, an estimated 200 of the 22,786 electors in the colony were of non-European descent, and by 1935, only one remained. [1] By 1958, when the last non-white voters in the Cape were taken off the rolls, Natal too had an all-white electorate. The franchise was also restricted by property and education qualifications until the 1933 general election, following the passage of the Women's Enfranchisement Act, 1930 and the Franchise Laws Amendment Act, 1931. From then on, the franchise was given to all white citizens aged 21 or over, which remained the case until the end of apartheid and the introduction of universal suffrage in 1994. [2]
History
Like the rest of Durban, Berea was a largely English-speaking seat. The Berea area is known as one of Durban's wealthiest, and it was the only one of the city's original six constituencies never to elect a Labour MP. Its first MP was James Henderson, who was first elected as an independent (Natal having had no party system before Union), and later represented first the Unionist and then the South African Party. Henderson represented the seat until 1929, and his successor and party colleague John Williamson would only serve for one term before the constituency was abolished in 1933.
Its abolition was short-lived, returning for the very next election in 1938, and at that point, like several other Natal seats, it was taken by the Dominion Party, a pro-British conservative party formed by the faction opposing the SAP's merger into the Hertzog-led United Party. When Hertzog resigned in 1939, the Dominion Party lost its primary raison d'être, and at the 1943 general election, Berea's Dominion Party MP, Edward Cecil Hooper, lost decisively to independent (later UP member) Joseph Richard Sullivan. From that point on, Berea was a safe seat for the UP, which held it under a succession of MPs until its dissolution in 1977. After the UP's disappearance, Berea became a marginal seat that saw fierce contests between its two successors, the conservative New Republic Party and the liberal Progressive Federal Party. The NRP won the seat in 1977, then lost it to the PFP in 1981, and the PFP held it in 1987. In 1989, the PFP merged with a number of smaller parties to form the Democratic Party, and the leader of one of these smaller factions, Denis Worrall, was selected to contest Berea for the new party. Worrall was on the conservative end of the DP, having previously served as a senator for the governing National Party, and he was able to reunite the NRP and PFP voter bases to win the seat handily, representing it until its final abolition in 1994.
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