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. In the Transvaal Colony, and its predecessor the South African Republic, the vote was restricted to white men, and as such, elections in the Transvaal Province were held on a whites-only franchise from the beginning. 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. Non-whites remained disenfranchised until the end of apartheid and the introduction of universal suffrage in 1994. [1]
History
Fordsburg was a largely working-class seat, and was closely fought between the Labour Party and various non-socialist candidates. Its first MP was a young Patrick Duncan, later a cabinet minister under Jan Smuts and Governor-General for much of the Second World War. Its long-serving Nationalist MP, Jacobus Stephanus François Pretorius, followed J. B. M. Hertzog into the United Party in 1934, and was succeeded by party colleague Ben Schoeman (later a cabinet minister for the National Party) in 1938. In 1943, it was given to Labour as part of an electoral pact between them and the UP, and former Umbilo MP D. C. Burnside held the seat until its abolition in 1948.
This page is based on this
Wikipedia article Text is available under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.