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
While most of Natal's white population (and, consequently, most of its electorate during the pre-1994 era) was English-speaking, the northwest of the province was more mixed, and Vryheid had a large Afrikaner presence throughout its existence. This made its politics (along with the neighbouring seats of Klip River and Newcastle) different from those of Natal as a whole, and the National Party had a significant foothold in the seat from its founding. It was first taken by the party in 1921, with Ernest George Jansen, who would represent Vryheid until 1943 and serve as Speaker of the House of Assembly for a large part of that period. A loyal ally of J. B. M. Hertzog, Jansen followed Hertzog into the United Party in 1934, then back out of it in 1939 after South Africa declared war on Germany, but stayed on as Speaker until 1943 despite being an opposition MP. In that year's general election, he was defeated by the United Party's Louis Stefanus Steenkamp, but the UP lost Vryheid again, along with many other rural seats, in 1948. It passed to former Hoopstad MP Johannes Hendrikus Viljoen, who was initially elected for the Afrikaner Party, but joined the National Party soon after. Viljoen served as a cabinet minister under Malan and Strijdom, dying in office in December 1957, close enough to the expiry of the 1953-58 parliament that no by-election was held.
The National Party won every subsequent election in Vryheid, though none of its subsequent members served in cabinet. Its final MP, Jurie Mentz, was first elected in 1978, and served in a leadership role in the NP parliamentary caucus until January 1993, at which point he defected to the Inkatha Freedom Party out of a desire to strengthen anti-communist forces in post-apartheid South Africa. [3] He was elected to the National Assembly for the IFP in 1994, and served a single term in the new non-racial parliament.
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