Fordsburg (House of Assembly of South Africa constituency)

Fordsburg
Former constituency for the South African House of Assembly
Location of Fordsburg within Johannesburg (1910)
Province	Transvaal
Electorate	9,313 (1943)
Former constituency
Created	1910
Abolished	1948
Number of members	1
Last MHA	D. C. Burnside (Lab)

Fordsburg was a constituency in the Transvaal Province of South Africa, which existed from 1910 to 1948. It covered parts of the inner western suburbs of Johannesburg, centred on the suburb of Fordsburg. 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]

Fordsburg was a largely working-class seat, and was closely fought between the Labour Party and various non-socialist candidates. Its first MP was a young Patrick Duncan, later a cabinet minister under Jan Smuts and Governor-General for much of the Second World War. Its long-serving Nationalist MP, Jacobus Stephanus François Pretorius, followed J. B. M. Hertzog into the United Party in 1934, and was succeeded by party colleague Ben Schoeman (later a cabinet minister for the National Party) in 1938. In 1943, it was given to Labour as part of an electoral pact between them and the UP, and former Umbilo MP D. C. Burnside held the seat until its abolition in 1948.

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