Union of South Africa

Coordinates: 30°S 25°E / 30°S 25°E / -30; 25
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the steam locomotive, see LNER Class A4 4488 Union of South Africa.

Union of South Africa
Unie van Zuid-Afrika (
Afrikaans
)
1910–1961
Motto: 
parliamentary constitutional monarchy
Monarch 
• 1910–1936
George V
• 1936
Edward VIII
• 1936–1952
George VI
• 1952–1961
Elizabeth II
C. R. Swart
Prime Minister 
• 1910–1919 (first)
Louis Botha
• 1958–1961 (last)
Hendrik Verwoerd
Legislature
House of Assembly
History 
• Union
31 May 1910
22 August 1934
31 May 1961
Area
• Total
2,045,329 km2 (789,706 sq mi)
Population
• 1960 census
15,994,000
CurrencySouth African pound (1910–61), South African rand (1961)
Preceded by		 Succeeded by
Cape Colony
Natal Colony
Orange River Colony
Transvaal Colony
South Africa
Today part ofNamibia
South Africa

The Union of South Africa (

Cape, Natal, Transvaal, and Orange River colonies.[4] It included the territories that were formerly a part of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State
.

Following World War I, the Union of South Africa was a signatory of the Treaty of Versailles and became one of the founding members of the League of Nations. It was mandated by the League with the administration of South West Africa (now known as Namibia). South West Africa became treated in most respects as another province of the Union, but it never was formally annexed.

Like

Republic of South Africa
rejoined the Commonwealth on 1 June 1994.

Constitution

Union of South Africa red ensign (1910–1912)
Union of South Africa blue ensign (1910–1928)
Main article: South Africa Act 1909

Main features

The provinces of the Union

The Union of South Africa was a

Senate, with members of the parliament being elected mostly by the country's white minority.[6] During the course of the Union, the franchise changed on several occasions always to suit the needs of the government of the day.[7] Parliamentary sovereignty was a convention of the constitution, inherited from the United Kingdom; save for procedural safeguards in respect of the entrenched sections of franchise and language, the courts were unable to intervene in Parliament's decisions.[8]

Capitals

Owing to disagreements over where the Union's

Appellate Division would be in Bloemfontein[11] (Orange Free State), while archives would be in Pietermaritzburg (Natal).[citation needed] Bloemfontein and Pietermaritzburg were given financial compensation.[12] Since South West Africa was never officially annexed as a fifth province, its capital, Windhoek
, was never officially recognized as the country's fifth capital.

Relationship to the Crown

The Union initially remained under the

Royal Assent
. The governor-general was now required to sign or veto bills passed by Parliament, without the option of seeking advice from London.

The monarch was represented in South Africa by a

Afrikaner and English-speaking British diaspora
communities.

Prosecutions before courts were instituted in the name of the Crown (cited in the format Rex / Regina v Accused) and government officials served in the name of the Crown.

Historical states
in present-day
South Africa
before 1600
1600–1700
1700–1800
1800–1850
1850–1875
1875–1900
1900–present
flag South Africa portal

Languages

An

Dutch and English as official languages of the Union, but the meaning of Dutch was changed by the Official Languages of the Union Act, 1925 to include both Dutch and Afrikaans.[15]

Final days of the South Africa Act and legacy

Most English-speaking whites in South Africa supported the

Second World War
.

Most English-speaking South Africans were opposed to the creation of a

Natal Covenant in opposition to the plans for a republic.[17]

Subsequently, the National Party government had passed a Constitution that repealed the South Africa Act. The features of the Union were carried over with very little change to the newly formed Republic. The decision to transform from a Union to Republic was narrowly decided in the referendum. The decision together with the South African Government's insistence on adhering to its policy of apartheid resulted in South Africa's de facto expulsion from the Commonwealth of Nations.

Segregation

Encyclopedia Britannica Films documentary about South Africa from 1956

The

Prime Minister at the time, John X. Merriman
, fought hard, but ultimately unsuccessfully, to extend this system of multi-racial franchise to the rest of South Africa.

Second it made "native affairs" a matter for the national government. The practice therefore was to establish a

Minister of Native Affairs
.

According to Stephen Howe, "colonialism in some cases—most obviously among white minorities in South Africa — meant mainly that these violent settlers wanted to maintain more racial inequalities than the colonial empire found just".[20]

Previous attempts at unification

Several previous unsuccessful attempts to unite the colonies were made, with proposed political models ranging from

unitary, to loosely federal
.

Early unification attempt under Sir George Grey (1850s)

Sir

Governor of Cape Colony from 1854 to 1861, decided that unifying the states of southern Africa would be mutually beneficial. The stated reasons were that he believed that political divisions between the white-controlled states "weakened them against the natives", threatened an ethnic divide between British and Boer, and left the Cape vulnerable to interference from other European powers. He believed that a united "South African Federation", under British control, would resolve all three of these concerns.[21]

His idea was greeted with cautious optimism in southern Africa; the

British Colonial Office
which ordered him to desist from his plans. His refusal to abandon the idea eventually led to him being recalled.

The imposition of confederation (1870s)

Holiday Time in Cape Town (1891-1899) depicted an imagined future united South Africa at a time when the idea was being widely debated in the Cape Colony.

In the 1870s, the London Colonial Office, under

John Molteno of the Cape Colony called the idea badly informed and irresponsible. In addition, many local leaders resented the way it was imposed from outside without understanding of local issues.[22] The Confederation model was also correctly seen as unsuitable for the disparate entities of southern Africa, with their wildly different sizes, economies and political systems.[23]

The Molteno Unification Plan (1877), put forward by the Cape government as a more feasible

unitary alternative to confederation, largely anticipated the final act of Union in 1909. A crucial difference was that the Cape's liberal constitution and multiracial franchise were to be extended to the other states of the union. These smaller states would gradually accede to the much larger Cape Colony through a system of treaties, whilst simultaneously gaining elected seats in the Cape parliament. The entire process would be locally driven, with Britain's role restricted to policing any set-backs. While subsequently acknowledged to be more viable, this model was rejected at the time by London.[24] At the other extreme, another powerful Cape politician at the time, Saul Solomon, proposed an extremely loose system of federation, with the component states preserving their very different constitutions and systems of franchise.[25]

Lord Carnarvon rejected the (more informed) local plans for unification, as he wished to have the process brought to a conclusion before the end of his tenure and, having little experience of southern Africa, he preferred to enforce the more familiar model of confederation used in Canada. He pushed ahead with his Confederation plan, which unraveled as predicted, leaving a string of destructive wars across southern Africa. These conflicts eventually fed into the first and second

Anglo-Boer Wars, with far-reaching consequences for the subcontinent.[26]

Second Boer War (1899–1902)

Main article: Second Boer War

After the discovery of gold in the 1880s, thousands of British immigrants flocked to the gold mines of the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State. The newly arrived miners, though needed for the mines, were distrusted by the politically dominant Afrikaners, who called them "uitlanders", imposed heavy taxes on them and granted them very limited civil rights, with no right to vote. The British government, interested in profiting from the gold and diamond mines there and highly protective of its own citizens, demanded reforms, which the Afrikaners rejected. A small-scale private British effort to overthrow Transvaal's President Paul Kruger, the Jameson Raid of 1895, proved a fiasco, and presaged full-scale conflict as diplomatic efforts all failed.[27][28][29]

The Second Boer War started on 11 October 1899 and ended on 31 May 1902. The United Kingdom gained the support of its Cape Colony, of its Colony of Natal and of some African allies. Volunteers from across the British Empire further supplemented the British war effort. All other nations remained neutral, but public opinion in them was largely hostile to Britain. Inside Britain and its Empire there was also significant opposition to the Second Boer War, spearheaded by anti-war activists such as Emily Hobhouse.[30]

At the onset of the war, the British were both overconfident about the chances of success in a military confrontation with the Boer republics and underprepared for a long-term conflict. British Prime Minister

Boer soldiers refused to surrender and took to the countryside to carry out guerrilla operations against the British, who responded by implementing scorched earth tactics. These tactics included interning Afrikaner civilians from the Boer republics in concentration camps (in which roughly 28,000 people died) and destroying homesteads owned by Afrikaners to flush out the guerillas and deny them a base of civilian support. Using these tactics combined with a system of blockhouses and barriers to seal off Boer holdouts, the British were able to gradually track down and defeat the guerillas. In the 1902 Treaty of Vereeniging, the British formally annexed the Boer republics into the Cape Colony, ending the war.[31]

History of the Union of South Africa

Main article: History of South Africa (1910–1948)
The first Union cabinet

National Convention

The

British Parliament's adoption of the South Africa Act, which ratified the Union. The four colonies that would become South Africa were represented, along with a delegation from Rhodesia. The 33 delegates assembled behind closed doors, in the fear that a public affair would lead delegates to refuse compromising on contentious areas. The delegates drew up a constitution that would, subject to some amendments by the British government, become the South Africa Act, which was South Africa's constitution between 1910 and 1961, when the country became a republic under the Constitution of 1961
.

Union of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia

In 1922 the colony of

referendum. The referendum resulted from the fact that by 1920 British South Africa Company rule in Southern Rhodesia was no longer practical with many favouring some form of 'responsible government'. Some favoured responsible government within Southern Rhodesia while others (especially in Matabeleland) favoured membership of the Union of South Africa. Politician Sir Charles Coghlan claimed that such membership with the Union would make Southern Rhodesia the "Ulster of South Africa".[33]

Prior to the referendum, representatives of Southern Rhodesia visited Cape Town where the Prime Minister of South Africa, Jan Smuts, eventually offered terms he considered reasonable and which the United Kingdom government found acceptable. Although opinion among the United Kingdom government, the South African government and the British South Africa Company favoured the union option (and none tried to interfere in the referendum), when the referendum was held the results saw 59.4% in favour of responsible government for a separate colony and 40.6% in favour of joining the Union of South Africa.

Union of South Africa and South West Africa

Background

Main article: Palgrave Commission

The inhospitable coast of what is now the

Republic of Namibia
remained uncolonised up until the end of the 19th century.

From 1874, the leaders of several indigenous peoples, notably Maharero of the Herero nation, approached the Cape Parliament to the south. Anticipating invasion by a European power and already suffering Portuguese encroachment from the north and Afrikaner encroachment from the south, these leaders approached the Cape Colony government to discuss the possibility of accession and the political representation it would entail. Accession to the Cape Colony, a self-governing state with a system of multi-racial franchise and legal protection for traditional land rights, was at the time considered marginally preferable to annexation by either the Kingdom of Portugal or the German Empire.

In response, the

Damara and the Herero responded positively (October 1876), other reactions were mixed. Discussions regarding the magisterial structure for the area's political integration into the Cape dragged on until, from 1876, it was blocked by Britain. Britain relented, insofar as allowing the Cape to incorporate Walvis Bay as an exclave, which was brought under the magisterial district of Cape Town, but when the Germans established a protectorate over the area in 1884, South West Africa was predominantly autonomous.[34][35][36]

Thereafter, South West Africa became a German colony, except for Walvis Bay and the Offshore Islands which remained part of the Cape, outside of German control.

South African occupation

South West Africa stamp: Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret on the 1947 Royal Tour of South Africa

Following the outbreak of the

Class C Mandate to administer South West Africa "under the laws of the mandatory (South Africa) as integral portions of its territory".[38]
Subsequently, the Union of South Africa generally regarded South West Africa as a fifth province, although this was never an official status.

With the creation of the

Trusteeship
agreement instead. This invitation was in turn rejected by the Union, which subsequently did not modify the administration of South West Africa and continued to adhere to the original mandate. This caused a complex set of legal wranglings that were not finalised when the Union was replaced with the Republic of South Africa. In 1949, the Union passed a law bringing South West Africa into closer association with it including giving South West Africa representation in the South African parliament.

Walvis Bay, which is now in Namibia, was originally a part of the Union of South Africa as an exclave as it was a part of the Cape Colony at the time of Unification. In 1921, Walvis Bay was integrated with the Class C Mandate over South West Africa for the rest of the Union's duration and for part of the republican era.

Statute of Westminster

The

coloured-vote constitutional crisis of the 1950s wherein the right of coloureds to vote in the main South African Parliament was removed and replaced with a separate, segregated, and largely powerless assembly.[citation needed
]

Military

Main article: Union Defence Force (South Africa)

The military of the Union of South Africa was the Union Defence Force (UDF) until 1957, when it became the South African Defence Force.

Flags/coats of arms

Main articles:
South Africa Red Ensign, Flag of South Africa (1928–1994), and Coat of arms of South Africa (1910–2000)
  • De facto flag (1910–1912)
    De facto flag
    (1910–1912)
  • De facto flag (1912–1928)
    De facto flag
    (1912–1928)
  • Blue ensign (1910-1928)
    Blue ensign (1910-1928)
  • Flag (1928–1994)
    Flag
    (1928–1994)
  • Coat of arms (1910–1930)
    Coat of arms
    (1910–1930)
  • Coat of arms (1930–1932)
    Coat of arms
    (1930–1932)
  • Coat of arms (1932–2000)
    Coat of arms
    (1932–2000)

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Remained the royal anthem until 1961.

References

  1. ^ "South Africa Will Play Two Anthems Hereafter". The New York Times. New York. 3 June 1938. p. 10. Archived from the original on 2 May 2019. Retrieved 31 October 2018.
  2. ^ travelfilmarchive (8 November 2012). "The Union of South Africa, 1956". Archived from the original on 30 October 2021 – via YouTube.
  3. ^ darren lennox (23 February 2017). "British Empire: The British Colony of the Union Of South Africa 1956". Archived from the original on 30 October 2021 – via YouTube.
  4. ^ "Union of South Africa". www.britishempire.co.uk. Archived from the original on 2 October 2022. Retrieved 18 November 2022.
  5. ^ South Africa Act, 1909, Part V, sections 68 to 94.
  6. ^ "The South Africa Act, 1909". The American Journal of International Law. 1 January 1910 – via Internet Archive.
  7. ^ See Representation of Natives Act, No. 12 of 1936 and Separate Representation of Voters Act, No. 46 of 1951.
  8. ^ Hahlo & Kahn, Union of South Africa, Stevens & Sons Limited, London, 1960, pp. 146 to 163.
  9. ^ Section 18 of South Africa Act, 1909.
  10. ^ Section 23 of South Africa Act, 1909.
  11. ^ Section 109 of South Africa Act, 1909.
  12. ^ "The South Africa Act, 1909". The American Journal of International Law. 1 January 1910 – via Internet Archive.
  13. ^ Hahlo & Kahn, supra, p. 146 et seq.
  14. ^ "The South Africa Act, 1909". The American Journal of International Law. 1 January 1910 – via Internet Archive.
  15. ^ "The South Africa Act, 1909". The American Journal of International Law. 1 January 1910 – via Internet Archive.
  16. Saskatoon Star-Phoenix
    , 11 October 1960
  17. ISBN 9780719038730
    .
  18. ^ Robertson, Janet (1971). Liberalism in South Africa: 1948–1963. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  19. ^ "EISA South Africa: Historical franchise arrangements". Eisa.org.za. Archived from the original on 9 May 2013. Retrieved 1 July 2013.
  20. ^ Howe, Stephen (2002). Empire A very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 75.
  21. ^ V.C. Malherbe: What They Said. 1795–1910 History Documents. Cape Town: Maskew Miller. 1971.
  22. ISBN 1-4367-2682-4
  23. Van Riebeeck Society
    , 1969
  24. ^ Frank Richardson Cana: South Africa: From the Great Trek to the Union. London: Chapman & Hall, ltd., 1909. Chapter VII "Molteno's Unification Plan". p.89
  25. ^ Solomon, W. E. C: Saul Solomon – the Member for Cape Town. Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1948.
  26. ISBN 0-947008-90-X
    . p.182, "Confederation from the Barrel of a Gun"
  27. ^ J.A.S.Grenville, Lord Salisbury, and Foreign Policy (1964) pp 235–64.
  28. ^ Iain R. Smith, The Origins of the South African War, 1899–1902 (1996).
  29. ^ William L. Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism (1950), pp. 605–28, 651–76
  30. ^ Judd, Denis; Surridge, Keith (2002). The Boer War: A History (revised ed.). London: Bloomsbury Publishing (published 2013). pp. 1–54.
    ISBN 9780857722317
    . Retrieved 19 December 2019.
  31. ^ Judd, Denis; Surridge, Keith (2002). The Boer War: A History (revised ed.). London: Bloomsbury Publishing (published 2013). pp. 55–302.
    ISBN 9780857722317
    . Retrieved 19 December 2019.
  32. ^ Minutes of Proceedings with Annexures (Selected) of the South African National Convention held at Durban, Cape Town and Bloemfontein, 12th October, 1908, to 11th May, 1909. Cape Town: Cape Times Limited Government Printers. 1910.
  33. ISBN 0719038731
    .
  34. ^ Mccarney, David (1978). "Smuts, South West Africa and the League of Nations, 1919 - 1924" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 February 2014. Retrieved 12 June 2012.
  35. ^ P. A. Molteno: The life and times of Sir John Charles Molteno, K. C. M. G., First Premier of Cape Colony, Comprising a History of Representative Institutions and Responsible Government at the Cape. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1900. Vol.I. p.284.
  36. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 February 2014. Retrieved 14 June 2012.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  37. ^ "German South West Africa". Away from the Western Front. Retrieved 13 May 2023.
  38. ^ "South-West Africa". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved 13 May 2023.

Bibliography

Wikimedia Atlas of Union of South Africa

  • Beck, Roger B. The History of South Africa (Greenwood, 2000).
  • Davenport, Thomas, and Christopher Saunders. South Africa: A modern history (Springer, 2000).
  • Eze, M. Intellectual history in contemporary South Africa (Springer, 2016).
  • Robinson, G. G. (1905). "The Prospects of a United South Africa" . The Empire and the century. London: John Murray. pp. 521–538.
  • Ross, Robert. A Concise History of South Africa (2009)
  • Thompson, Leonard, and Lynn Berat. A History of South Africa (4th ed. 2014)
  • Thompson, Leonard. The Unification of South Africa 1902 – 1910 (Oxford UP, 1960).
  • Welsh, Frank. A History of South Africa (2000).

External links

Wikisource has several original texts related to Union of South Africa.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Union of South Africa.

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