Separate Representation of Voters Act

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The Separation of Voters Act , Act No. 46/1951 ( Afrikaans : Wet op Afsonderlike verteenwoordiging van Kieser ; German as: "Law for the separate representation of voters") was a law which on 18 June 1951 by Parliament in the Union of South Africa was adopted. In common parlance it was called the Colored Franchise Bill .

Purpose and goals

With this law, colored , male South Africans should be entered on their own (separate) electoral roll in the Cape Province , whereby in the event of an election they could only vote for white representatives, who would then act as mediators between their population group and the government agencies. Four of these were white representatives of the lower house ( House of Assembly ), one for the Senate and three for the Kapländischen Provincial Council ( Cape Provincial Council provided).

In addition, the establishment has a Committee on the Affairs of Coloreds ( Board of Colored Affairs provided), which was led by a white commissioner. Eight colored people from the Cape Province and three representatives nominated by the government for the provinces of Natal , Orange Free State and Transvaal should be assigned to it. Its area of ​​responsibility was designed to advise the South African government and act as a mediator between the parties involved.

Effects

Protests rose against this legislative initiative at home, including by political organizations of the white population, which until then had received votes from the colored population group. As a result, the Supreme Court of South Africa declared the law to be invalid in 1952 . As a result of this decision, the South African government restructured the court (High Court of Parliament Act, 1952), which led to new constitutional relationships. In 1956, the Separate Representation of Voters Act was replaced by new laws ( South Africa Act Amendment Act, No. 9/1956 and Separate Representation of Voters Amendment Act, No. 30/1956 ), which made minor changes to those made by Parliament 1951 intended regulations were introduced legally binding.

Through this law and the domestic political dispute connected with it, a process within the apartheid policy was accelerated , which aimed to restrict the exercise of democratic voting rights for the non-white part of the population. The protest formed from the white population through the members of Black Sash , who, however, represented a minority position. As early as 1936, the black population's right to vote was massively reduced in a similar manner with the Representation of Natives Act .

The Separation of Voters Act , with the Asiatic Law Amendment Act, No. 47 of 1948 already had a similar forerunner, which met comparable restrictions for the Transvaal and Natal.

The voter rankings according to the former electoral law in South Africa came to a head in 1968 to an internal and extra-parliamentary debate, in the course of which members of the Liberal Party of South Africa proved to be critical actors.

Legislative follow-up developments

In 1968 the Separation of Voters Amendment Act ( Act No. 50/1968 ) together with the Colored Persons Representative Council Amendment Act ( Act No. 52/1968 ) repealed the indirect parliamentary representation of the Coloreds by the white representatives they elected .

The Colored Persons Representative Council Act ( Act No. 49/1964 ), which was passed in 1964 but only came into force in 1968 , now installed its own Colored Persons Representative Council (CRC) as a new political body, which, however, was not a parliamentary group subsequently remained largely ineffective. For the formation of this council it was planned to let 40 members be elected by the population group and a further 20 were appointed by the president.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Edgar Bernstein: Union of South Africa . In: American Jewish Year Book, 1952 (Vol. 53), p. 387 (accessed January 25, 2010; PDF; 177 kB)
  2. ^ Neil Roos: Ordinary Springboks: White Servicemen and Social Justice in South Africa, 1939-1961 . Ashgate, Aldershot, Hants, England 2005, ISBN 0-7546-3471-X , pp. 131–134 (English, 233 pages, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  3. ↑ 1968. Separation Representation of Voters Amendment Act No 50. at www.nelsonmandela.org
  4. ↑ 1968. Colored Persons Representative Council Amendment Act No 52. at www.nelsonmandela.org
  5. ↑ Christoph Sodemann: The laws of apartheid . Bonn 1986, p. 89, ISBN 3-921614-15-5