Liberal Party of South Africa

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The Liberal Party of South Africa ( LPSA for short or Liberal Party, Afrikaans Liberale Party; German for example: Liberal Party of South Africa) was a party in South Africa that existed from 1953 to 1968. It broke up because an apartheid law banned party members of different ethnic groups.

history

In 1951, numerous liberal people met in Pietermaritzburg to react to the increasing consolidation of apartheid by the ruling National Party (NP). These included writers Alan Paton , Peter Brown (1924-2004), and Henry Selby Msimang , one of the few blacks at the gathering. In response to the renewed election victory of the NP in April 1953, they founded the South African Liberal Party on May 9, 1953 in Cape Town . Margaret Ballinger (1894–1980) became president of the party and was also a member of the National Assembly as a member of parliament for blacks . Alan Paton was a vice-president. In the founding year, the party leadership met for an exchange with the leadership of the opposition African National Congress . From 1954 to 1967 the magazine Contact appeared, which was close to the party and was edited for several years by Patrick Duncan .

In the first few years the party was rather moderate, especially the members from the Cape Province . The party's earliest demands included the inclusion of a Bill of Rights in the constitution , an independent constitutional court, and initially expanded class suffrage . The political discussion of the party in 1954 was increasingly shaped by the idea of ​​a new right to vote independent of belonging to "races". At its congress in Durban in July of the same year , it decided to work closely with representative organizations of the non-European population and sought a revision of the electoral law. In the beginning, the LPSA had not yet advocated universal suffrage , but was now calling for it to be introduced in stages.

In 1956 Paton became National Chairman and thus de facto party leader. In 1958 he gave the office to Peter Brown to continue working as a writer, and remained as President and the highest representative of the party until 1968 . In 1958, the two LPSA MPs for the black population in the Transkei and Cape Eastern constituencies were re-elected. However, the party won only 0.25 percent of the vote in the election for the seats of the white population and thus no further seat. When the Progressive Party split from the United Party in 1959, the Liberal Party moved to the left. Because of its anti-communism , the LPSA was temporarily closer to the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) than to the ANC, which pacted with the South African Communist Party . On December 7, 1959, the ANC, the South African Indian Congress and the LPSA jointly appealed to the British public to boycott South African products. LPSA member Patrick van Rensburg played an important role in this.

After the Sharpeville massacre and the subsequent state of emergency , over 40 party members, most of them leading, were arrested and banned . Some of them have been accused of supporting the goals of communism . In 1960 the parliamentary mandates for white representatives of the black population were abolished, so that the two LPSA politicians had to leave the National Assembly. For the 1961 parliamentary election, the LPSA ran in two constituencies so that it could express its views publicly. At the end of the Rivonia Trial in 1964, it was Alan Paton who, by appearing in court, advocated a lighter sentence for Nelson Mandela and his co-defendants. Paton was also monitored by the security police; among other things, his phone was bugged. The proportion of non-white LPSA members increased. The LPSA did not run for the 1966 election.

In 1968 the government passed the Prohibition of Political Interference Act ( Act No. 51/1968), which forbade South African parties from having members of different skin colors to provide support for other political parties Members do not belong to the “racial” group (defined by the Population Registration Act ) of their own membership, accept money from sources outside the country and participate in the events of other cooperation partners prohibited by this law. This law generated further impetus for the intended division of South African civil society. In connection with the interference with their political self-determination and will-formation , a supplementary law ( Act No. 50/1968 ) to the Separation of Voters Act , the Colored Persons Representative Council Act ( Act No. 52/1968 ) and the South African were passed this year Indian Council Act ( Act No. 31/1968 ) passed. In the political reality, further political groups were formed which, while recognizing the principle of “ separate development ”, claimed group-specific representation claims for themselves and were aligned in conformity with the government. One example of this is the Federale Kleuring Volksparty with Tom Swartz at the helm.

Since the Liberal Party did not want to bow to this dictation, unlike the Progressive Party, it broke up at a meeting in the Guildhall in Durban.

See also

literature

  • Randolph Vigne: Liberals against Apartheid. A History of the Liberal Party of South Africa, 1953-1968. St. Martin's Press, New York 1997, ISBN 0-312-17738-0 .
  • Michael Cardo: Opening Men's Eyes: Peter Brown and the Liberal Struggle for South Africa. Jonathan Ball, Johannesburg 2010, ISBN 978-1-86842-392-7 .

Web links

Commons : Liberal Party of South Africa  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e History of the LP at sahistory.org.za (English), accessed on May 30, 2013
  2. ^ Nelson Mandela : Long Walk to Freedom. Little, Brown and Company, New York City 2008, ISBN 978-0-316-03478-4 , p. 218.
  3. ↑ a b Peter Brown: Alan Paton's Political Life in the Liberal Party of South Africa ( Memento of April 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (English, PDF file; 31 kB; archive version), accessed on December 21, 2015
  4. ^ SAIRR : A Survey of Race Relations in South Africa 1953-1954 . Johannesburg 1954, p. 6
  5. ↑ Laudation for receiving the Right Livelihood Award 1981 ( Memento of the original from December 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English), accessed January 26, 2014 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rightlivelihood.org
  6. ^ Newell Maynard Stultz: Afrikaner politics in South Africa, 1934-1948. Berkeley 1974, ISBN 0-520-02452-4 , p. 170 .
  7. ^ SAIRR : A Survey of Race Relations in South Africa 1968 . Johannesburg 1969, pp. 5-6, 10-11, 13-16