Act to provide for the further extension of the period of office of the sitting members of the House of Assembly elected under the Separate Representation of Voters Act, 1951; to prohibit the filling of any vacancy in the representation of any division referred to in section 6 (2) (a) or (b) of the said Act or in the representation of non-Europeans in the Senate under section 7 of the said Act; to repeal the said Act with effect from the date of dissolution of the House of Assembly; and to provide for matters incidental thereto.
The Separate Representation of Voters Amendment Act, 1968 (Act No. 50 of 1968) was an act of the Parliament of South Africa enacted under the government of B. J. Vorster, which repealed the Separate Representation of Voters Act, 1951. This had the effect of removing the four members of the House of Assembly who were elected by Coloured voters in the Cape Province (as well as the additional nominated seat in the Senate for the "non-European population" of the Cape Province, that had been filled only once in 1957 and had been vacant since 1962). Subsequently the House of Assembly would be elected solely by white voters.
An act of parliament, also called primary legislation, are statutes passed by a parliament (legislature). Act of the Oireachtas is an equivalent term used in the Republic of Ireland where the legislature is commonly known by its Irish name, Oireachtas. The United States Act of Congress is based on it.
The Parliament of South Africa is South Africa's legislature; under the present Constitution of South Africa, the bicameral Parliament comprises a National Assembly and a National Council of Provinces. The current twenty-seventh Parliament was first convened on 22 May 2019.
The Separate Representation of Voters Act No. 46 was introduced in South Africa on 18 June 1951. Part of the legislation during the apartheid era, the National Party introduced it to enforce racial segregation, and was part of a deliberate process to remove all non-white people from the voters' roll and revoke the Cape Qualified Franchise system.
The act was promulgated on 5 June 1968, but the repeal only took effect at the dissolution of the House of Assembly on 2 March 1970, before the general election of 22 April 1970. In the interim, the term of office of the four members was extended and the filling of any vacancy in their seats (or the vacancy of the additional Senate seat for the "non-European population" of the Cape Province) was prohibited.
In 1969 Coloured citizens were given the right to elect members to the Coloured Persons Representative Council, a quasi-legislative body with limited powers.
The Coloured Persons Representative Council of the Republic of South Africa was a partially elected council with limited legislative powers, intended to represent coloured South Africans during the apartheid era. It was first elected in 1969, re-elected in 1975, and permanently dissolved in 1980. In 1984 the House of Representatives was created to represent coloured voters in the Tricameral Parliament.
The Constitution of 1983 was South Africa's third constitution. It replaced the republican constitution that had been adopted when South Africa became a republic in 1961 and was in force for ten years before it was superseded by the Interim Constitution on 27 April 1994, which in turn led to the current Constitution of South Africa, which has been in force since 1997.
Elections in South Africa are held for the National Assembly, provincial legislatures and municipal councils. Elections follow a five-year cycle, with national and provincial elections held simultaneously and municipal elections held two years later. The electoral system is based on party-list proportional representation, which means that parties are represented in proportion to their electoral support. For municipal councils there is a mixed-member system in which wards elect individual councillors alongside those named from party lists.
The Senate was the upper house of the Parliament of South Africa between 1910 and its abolition from 1 January 1981, and between 1994 and 1997.
The Senate of Zimbabwe is the upper of the two chambers in Zimbabwe's Parliament. It existed from independence in 1980 until 1989, and was re-introduced in November 2005. The other chamber of Parliament is the House of Assembly
The 1961 South African general election, held on 18 October of that year, was the first general election after South Africa became a republic following the 1960 South African referendum. The National Party under Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd won a majority in the House of Assembly.
The 1958 South African general election, held on 16 April of that year, led to a victory for the National Party, under the leadership of J.G. Strijdom, which took 103 seats in the House of Assembly. It was the first election in South Africa with a whites-only electorate, following the removal of the Cape Qualified Franchise in the late 1950s to be replaced by four (white) MPs elected to represent Coloured voters in separate constituencies.
The 1966 South African general election, on 30 March 1966, resulted in another comprehensive victory for the National Party under Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd.
The House of Representatives is the lower house of the National Assembly of Thailand, the legislative branch of the Thai government. The system of government of Thailand is that of a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy. The system of the Thai legislative branch is modelled after the Westminster system. The House of Representatives has 500 members, all of which are democratically elected: 375 members were directly elected through single constituency elections, while the other 125 are elected through party-list proportional representation. The roles and powers of the House of Representatives were enshrined in the Constitution of 2017.
The South Africa Act 1909 was an Act of the British Parliament which created the Union of South Africa from the British colonies of the Cape of Good Hope, Natal, Orange River Colony, and Transvaal. The Act also made provisions for admitting Rhodesia as a fifth province of the Union in the future, but Rhodesian colonists rejected this option in a referendum held in 1922. The South Africa Act was the third major piece of legislation passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom with the intent of uniting various British colonies and granting them some degree of autonomy. Earlier, the British North America Act, 1867 had united three colonies and the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900 had united the Australian colonies.
The system of racial segregation in South Africa known as apartheid was implemented and enforced by many acts and other laws. This legislation served to institutionalise racial discrimination and the dominance by white people over people of other races. While the bulk of this legislation was enacted after the election of the National Party government in 1948, it was preceded by discriminatory legislation enacted under earlier British and Afrikaner governments. Apartheid is distinguished from segregation in other countries by the systematic way in which it was formalised in law.
The House of Assembly was the lower house of the Parliament of South Africa from 1910 to 1981, the sole parliamentary chamber between 1981 and 1984, and latterly the white representative house of the Tricameral Parliament from 1984 to 1994, when it was replaced by the current National Assembly. Throughout its history, it was exclusively constituted of white members who were elected to office predominantly by white citizens, though until 1960 and 1970, respectively, some Black Africans and Coloureds in the Cape Province voted under a restricted form of suffrage.
The Constitution of 1961 was the fundamental law of South Africa for two decades. Under the terms of the constitution South Africa left the Commonwealth and became a republic.
The provincial councils were the legislatures of the four original provinces of South Africa. They were created at the foundation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, and abolished in 1986 when they were replaced by a strengthened executive appointed by the State President. The four provincial councils were the Cape Provincial Council, the Natal Provincial Council, the Transvaal Provincial Council and the Orange Free State Provincial Council.
The Cape Qualified Franchise was the system of non-racial franchise that was adhered to in the Cape Colony, and in the Cape Province in the early years of the Union of South Africa. Qualifications for the right to vote at parliamentary elections were applied equally to all men, regardless of race.
The Coloured vote constitutional crisis, also known as the Coloured vote case, was a constitutional crisis that occurred in the Union of South Africa during the 1950s as the result of an attempt by the Nationalist government to remove Coloured voters in the Union's Cape Province from the common voters' rolls. It developed into a dispute between the judiciary and the other branches of government over the power of Parliament to amend an entrenched clause in the South Africa Act and the power of the Appellate Division to overturn the amendment as unconstitutional. The crisis ended when the government enlarged the Senate and altered its method of election, allowing the amendment to be successfully enacted.
The 1955 election for the sixth Senate of South Africa occurred because of the wish of National Party Prime Minister Johannes Strijdom to amend one of the entrenched clauses in the Constitution, to separate Coloured voters from whites. However, since his party did not have the constitutionally required two-thirds majority in a joint session of both houses of Parliament, it was decided to alter the composition and electoral system for the Senate, to enable the Separate Representation of Voters Act 1951 to be validated. Consequently, Strijdom had the Senate Act 1955 passed to amend the constitution.
The election for the seventh Senate of South Africa took place on October 26, 1960, with the appointment of nominated Senators by the Governor-General taking place on November 16, 1960.
The election for the eighth Senate of South Africa took place on November 26, 1965, the first election to that body to be held under the 1961 republican constitution and the first in which a representative of the coloured community was not elected. The result was a victory for the ruling National Party, winning 30 out of the 43 elected seats and 40 out of the total 53 seats.
The election for the ninth Senate of South Africa took place on November 16, 1970. The result was a victory for the ruling National Party, winning 31 out of the 44 elected seats and 41 out of the total 54 seats.
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