Johannesburg North (House of Assembly of South Africa constituency)

Johannesburg North
Former constituency for the South African House of Assembly
Location of Johannesburg North within the Witwatersrand (1981)
Province	Transvaal
Electorate	19,114 (1989)
Former constituency
Created	1920
Abolished	1994
Number of members	1
Last MHA	P. G. Soal (DP)
Replaced by	Gauteng

Johannesburg North (Afrikaans: Johannesburg-Noord) was a constituency in the Transvaal Province of South Africa, which existed from 1915 to 1966. As the name indicates, it covered parts of the northern suburbs of Johannesburg. 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]

Like most of Johannesburg's northern suburbs, Johannesburg North had a largely English-speaking and liberal electorate. It was a safe seat for each main pro-British party in South Africa, first the Unionists, then the South African Party and finally the United Party. Its most notable MP during this era was Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr, cabinet minister and close ally of Jan Smuts, who died just a few months after Smuts and the UP lost the 1948 general election. His successor, Bailey Bekker, was kicked out of the UP in 1954 for proposing a compromise with the government over the Coloured vote question, and founded the short-lived centrist National Conservative Party. The party went nowhere and Bekker retired at the 1958 general election, which was won handily by the UP candidate.

In 1974, Johannesburg North was one of five seats lost by the UP to the growing Progressive Party, which took a clearer stance against apartheid and folded into the Progressive Federal Party after the UP's dissolution in 1977. The PFP and their successors, the Democratic Party, held the seat by strong margins until the end of apartheid.

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