South African general elections of 1948-Wikipedia

The 1948 South African general elections represented a political turning point in the history of South Africa.
They took place the May 26, 1948 , mainly opposing the coalition led by the united party of the outgoing Prime Minister Jan Smuts to that led by the reunited national party of Daniel François Malan.

The lower bedroom of the Assembly has 150 seats in 1948 (not to mention the three deputies representing the black populations).

Pursuant to the South Africa Act of 1910, electoral suffrage is reserved for whites and, in the CAP province, under certain conditions, for people of colors (Coloured).
The black populations of this province elected on separate lists, and under certain conditions, 3 white representatives responsible for defending their interests in Parliament.

The voting system applied since the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910 is that of the majority uninominal election in a turn by constituencies. His advantage is to allow the election of a candidate who will have obtained the most votes on his electoral district but his main defect is also to allow the election of a candidate who can prove to be a minority when he did not get Over 50% of votes.

The delimitation of electoral districts also promotes the rural electorate.

The UNI Party has been in power since its constitution in 1935 and Jan Smuts have managed the government since 1939.

Its main opposition is the reunited national party (HNP) led by Daniel François Malan, former minister and former preacher of the Dutch reformed church. He combined with the small Afrikaner party of Nicolaas Havenga, trained following the dissent of several former elected officials of the Uni Party, hostile to the participation of South Africa in the Second World War.

The electoral campaign focuses on the policy of integration or segregation of colored populations, the government’s controversial immigration policy and the relationship with communism. The HNP accuses in particular its opponent of preparing the advent of a government not dominated by whites in South Africa (the black danger or black danger). It is the first time that the theme of relations between whites and blacks has imposed itself in an electoral campaign and has passed the traditional rivalry between Afrikaners and Anglo-South Africans in the second rank. This paradigm shift results from concern within the white population caused by the growing urbanization of the black population. Thus, at the end of the Second World War, it became majority for the first time in urban areas. In March 1948, in response to the Fagan commission, mandated by Smuts, which advocated liberalization of the racial system starting with the abolition of ethnic reserves as well as the end of rigorous control of migrant workers, the Paul Sauer commission, mandated by The national party, advocates apartheid, a term recently entered into the South African political vocabulary and which aims to irreparably institutionalize racial segregation and to perpetuate the political, economic and social domination of the whites of South Africa, without however Present a ready -to -use overall plan ^{[ first ]} .

The immigration program in South Africa is also a source of controversy, in particular because they would encourage the British to come and settle in the country thus jeopardizing jobs and the preponderance of Afrikaners within the white community. As for the good relations developed between Smuts and Joseph Stalin during the war against Nazi Germany, they are also vilified by the National Party and its allies.

Another major institutional theme of the national party also goes into the background, namely the transformation of Dominion into a Republic and the dissolution of links with Great Britain. This theme is one of the great subjects of divergences between the UNI Party and the reunited national party. The mooding of republican claims reveals Malan’s desire to attract the moderate vote of the Anglo-Afrikaners to its movement which do not want to cut the bridges with the old colonial power. By conceding that South Africa could still remain a Dominion within the Commonwealth, he obtained the rallying of many traditional supporters of the Uni Party, especially in the Cape Province.

The SMUT government is also blamed for the economic difficulties that have occurred after or because of the war as the rationing of gasoline or wheat and the priority given to exports of foods to Great Britain and the Netherlands. The country then experienced strong inflation, a shortage of meats, bread and health housing.

On the evening of the elections, the Uni Party obtained the majority of votes but loses the majority of the seats in the House of the Assembly in the face of the nationalist coalition. Thus with 42% of the votes, the nationalist coalition won 79 seats (70 elected officials for the reunited national party and 9 elected officials to its ally of the Afrikaner party), 53% of the seats of the Parliament. Opposite, the Uni Party (49% of the vote) caps at 65 seats while their Labor Party allies save only 6 elected officials (4% of the vote).

Most of the seats won by the National Party have been in rural areas while those won by the UNI Party come from urban constituencies. However, the over-representation of rural areas in number of electoral seats allows the coalition of the national party, although a minority in voice, to prevail against the Uni Party.

Apart from 3 independent, all other political parties fail to elect their representatives. Jan Smuts is himself beaten by 224 votes in his own district of Standerton by Wentzel du Plessis. He announces his withdrawal of political life before changing himself under pressure from his supporters and benefits from a by -election July 14, 1948 To be elected deputy for the district of Pretoria-Est and return to Parliament as chief of the parliamentary opposition.

The election of the three deputies of deputies representing the black populations of the CAP province took place the November 17, 1948 . Two of the outgoing independent deputies find their seats (W.H. Stuart for the TRANSKEI and Margaret BALLINGER territories for the Aboriginal constituency of CAP-Oriental). The third elected deputy is Sam Kahn, a member of the South African Communist Party, elected as an independent in the Aboriginal district of Cap-Western.

In 1950, six seats were created to represent the 24,000 white voters in the South West African (1 elected for 4,000 voters against 1 elected pou 9,000 voters in South Africa ^{[ 2 ]} ). During the by -elections organized on August 31 this year, these six seats are won by members of the national party.

When D.F. Malan is appointed Prime Minister the June 4, 1948 , he is already 74 years old. By finally taking power after thirty years of parliamentary career, he exclaims “Today South Africa belongs to us once again … May God grant us that it is always ours. »» ^{[ 3 ]} . This We designates Afrikaners. And the government he forms comprises exclusively Afrikaners, all members of Afrikaner Broededresse, with the exception of two of them, Eric Louw and Nicolaas Havenga (his Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance). The policy he will initiate by settling in the Union Buildings of Pretoria will be known worldwide under the name of apartheid.