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, Durban North was a largely English-speaking seat. It was initially a safe seat for the Labour Party, and its first MP was former Army chaplain Cecil Frank Miles-Cadman. He was re-elected in 1943, helped by a pact with the United Party that resulted in him facing only independent opposition, but on his retirement in 1948, the UP took the seat. They would hold it until 1976, with only two MPs, Jack Lewis and Michael Lloyd Mitchell. Mitchell left Parliament in 1976, resulting in a dramatic three-cornered by-election that saw the UP's candidate defeated by Selwyn Anthony Pitman of the Progressive Reform Party, which had formed just a few months earlier as a merger of the Progressive Party with a liberal faction of the UP led by Harry Schwarz.
Between then and the 1977 general election, the UP collapsed, with another liberal faction joining with the PRP to form the new Progressive Federal Party, while the more conservative members of the party formed the New Republic Party. In Natal, unlike the rest of the country, the NRP was the stronger of the two factions, and defeated Pitman at the 1977 election. In 1981, Pitman moved to the neighbouring Pinetown seat and won, while NRP MP Ronald Miller was re-elected in Durban North. However, the NRP was already in decline by then, and Miller jumped ship to the governing National Party before the next election in 1987. In that year, despite a generally poor result across South Africa, the PFP retook Durban North with Mike Ellis, who would go on to become one of South Africa's longest-serving MPs, representing Durban North until its abolition in 1994 and then the KwaZulu-Natal provincial constituency until 2011.
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