Page 7 - Constitutional Model for a Democratic South Africa By Prof Vuyisle Dlova

constitution which, with a few amendments by Downing Street, was adopted by the British
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Parliament in 1909 as the South Africa Act.
According to this Act, which was to be the constitution of South Africa, South Africa was to be
a unitary state. With regard to franchise rights it was provided that each territory would be
allowed to retain the franchise system it practiced at the time of the establishment of the
Union. The franchise rights of the non-whites (Indians, Coloureds and Africans) were
however to be entrenched in the case of the Cape (a colony that exercised a form of qualified
franchise based on wages and property ownership). 3

The Cape Africans were disenfranchised in 1935 with the requisite parliamentary majority of
two-thirds. An attempt to challenge this act of disenfranchisement in the South African Courts
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failed.
The process of disenfranchisement of people of mixed races proved more difficult for the
government of the National Party that had campaigned and won the whites-only elections in
1948 on a ticket of racial purity. The government could not muster the two-thirds majority
required in the constitution for it to carry out its electoral promise. It decided to engage in
exercises of legislative evasion including a decision to increase the number of its supporters
in the non-elected upper house and also attempted to remove the jurisdiction, on
constitutional matters, from the Courts. Finally, it increased the panel of judges in the Appeal
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Court for cases where constitutional issues were to be decided.
In 1961, after a referendum of the white settlers, South Africa was proclaimed a Republic. In
1983 the government reversed its earlier initiatives and again enfranchised people of mixed
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races and also those of Indian descent. A complex tricameral structure was set up by the
1983 Constitution to accommodate the change of policy. The indigenous African majority
were still to remain outside the constitutional process.

Political Forces

Within the settler community the most important and most popular party is the Nationalist
Party. Its popularity amongst the majority of the settlers is regularly tested and proved in
periodically held whites-only elections.

The Nationalist Party has an overwhelming majority in Parliament and has been in
government without interruption since 1948. It draws most of its supporters from the settlers
of Dutch, French and German descent, who call themselves Afrikaners. It won the 1948
election on the ticket of white domination but today it says it is committed to “pluralism” and
“consociatialism”. It is opposed to majoritarianism as this is bound, in its view, to result in
black domination.

The second most important, though far smaller, party is the Progressive Federal Party (PFP).
The Party is committed to multiracialism and promotion of free enterprise or capitalist system.
It draws most of its supporters from settlers of British descent.

The indigenous community, on the other hand, is organised into numerous political groupings.
At the national level, however, two trends predominate, namely, the Africanist school, on the
one hand, represented by the Pan Africanist Congress, and the National Forum (that includes
AZAPO and AZANYU) and the South African school of thought represented by the ANC and
the United Democratic Front on the other.