Oudtshoorn (House of Assembly of South Africa constituency)

Oudtshoorn
Former constituency for the South African House of Assembly
Location of Oudtshoorn within South Africa (1981)
Province	Cape of Good Hope
Electorate	12,943 (1989)
Former constituency
Created	1910
Abolished	1994
Number of members	1
Last MHA	A. J. de Jager (NP)
Replaced by	Western Cape

Oudtshoorn was a constituency in the Cape Province of South Africa, which existed from 1910 to 1994. The constituency covered a rural area along the Swartberg mountain range, centred on the town of Oudtshoorn. Throughout its existence it elected one member to the House of Assembly and one to the Cape 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. The Cape Colony had implemented a “colour-blind” franchise known as the Cape Qualified Franchise, which included all adult literate men owning more than £75 worth of property (controversially raised from £25 in 1892), and this initially remained in effect after the colony became the Cape Province. As of 1908, 22,784 out of 152,221 electors in the Cape Colony were “Native or Coloured”. Eligibility to serve in Parliament and the Provincial Council, however, was restricted to whites from 1910 onward.

The first challenge to the Cape Qualified Franchise came with the Women's Enfranchisement Act, 1930 and the Franchise Laws Amendment Act, 1931, which extended the vote to women and removed property qualifications for the white population only – non-white voters remained subject to the earlier restrictions. In 1936, the Representation of Natives Act removed all black voters from the common electoral roll and introduced three “Native Representative Members”, white MPs elected by the black voters of the province and meant to represent their interests in particular. A similar provision was made for Coloured voters with the Separate Representation of Voters Act, 1951, and although this law was challenged by the courts, it went into effect in time for the 1958 general election, which was thus held with all-white voter rolls for the first time in South African history. The all-white franchise would continue until the end of apartheid and the introduction of universal suffrage in 1994.^[1]

Like many rural constituencies across the Cape, Oudtshoorn was a conservative seat with a largely Afrikaans-speaking electorate. Its most notable and longest-serving MP, Stephanus Petrus le Roux, was first elected in a 1923 by-election and represented the seat until 1958, being one of the 19 Nationalist MPs who joined D. F. Malan’s Purified National Party in 1934, and serving as Minister for Agriculture in Malan and J. G. Strijdom’s cabinets. His successor, P. K. Le Roux, also served as a cabinet minister for much of his time representing Oudtshoorn. By this time, the seat was rarely even contested by the opposition – in fact, the only contest in the seat between 1958 and 1981 was the 1972 by-election following P. K. Le Roux’ retirement. In the 1980s, the Conservative Party made some inroads, but Oudtshoorn remained an NP seat until the end of apartheid.

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