Commissioner Street (House of Assembly of South Africa constituency)

Commissioner Street
Commissionerstraat
Former constituency for the South African House of Assembly
Location of Commissioner Street within Johannesburg (1910)
Province	Transvaal
Electorate	3,123 (1921)
Former constituency
Created	1910
Abolished	1924
Number of members	1
Last MHA	Harry Graumann (SAP)

Commissioner Street (Afrikaans: Commissionerstraat) was a constituency in the Transvaal Province of South Africa, which existed from 1910 to 1924. Named after Commissioner Street, one of the main thoroughfares of the Johannesburg CBD, it covered the southern and southwestern parts of the CBD. Throughout its existence it elected one member to the House of Assembly and one to the Transvaal Provincial Council.

When the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910, the electoral qualifications in use in each pre-existing colony were kept in place. In the Transvaal Colony, and its predecessor the South African Republic, the vote was restricted to white men, and as such, elections in the Transvaal Province were held on a whites-only franchise from the beginning. 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. Non-whites remained disenfranchised until the end of apartheid and the introduction of universal suffrage in 1994.^[1]

Commissioner Street was a largely working-class seat, and was closely fought between the Labour Party and various non-socialist candidates, changing hands at every election during its existence. Its first representative was Harry Sampson, a trade union organiser and leading figure of the Transvaal Independent Labour Party, who won the seat by a narrow margin over the Unionist candidate. In 1915, Sampson moved to the new constituency of Siemert, and Labour’s new candidate C. H. Hayward lost the seat to the South African Party candidate Harry Graumann.

In 1920, the seat was redrawn to include a large part of the abolished Ophirton constituency, greatly increasing its surface area and bringing in a number of additional voters. On these boundaries, Labour candidate John Henry Scott Gow gained the seat back in 1920, as part of a nationwide wave of success for the party. However, he would lose it once again in 1921 to Graumann, who served as the seat’s MP until its abolition in 1924.

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