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
Gezina was first created in 1929, as part of the general expansion of the House of Assembly for that year's general election. It mainly took territory from the Wonderboom seat, whose MP Barend Jacobus Pienaar moved to the new seat - however, he left parliament after just three months. This provided an opportunity for National Party stalwart Oswald Pirow, who had just failed in his bid to unseat Jan Smuts from the Standerton constituency, to return to parliament. Pirow would represent Gezina until 1943, and became controversial during World War II as perhaps the most outspoken supporter of Nazi Germany in high-level South African politics. This resulted in him breaking with the National Party in 1942 to found his own "New Order" movement - however, he did not stand for re-election in 1943, and his seat went to an NP member.
From then on, as it had been before, Gezina was a safe Nationalist seat. It was abolished in the 1958 delimitation, with its MP moving to the new seat of Hercules, but in 1966 it was recreated. In its second iteration, it had only two MPs - Jan Hendrik Visse, who moved there from Prinshof in 1966 and served until his departure from parliament in 1975, and Karel David Swanepoel, who was elected in 1975 and held the seat until the end of apartheid. He faced stiff opposition from the Conservative Party at the 1987 and 1989 by-elections, but unlike some other Pretoria seats, Gezina stuck with the governing party.
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