The Union of South Africa (; , ) was a British Dominion and, later, a Commonwealth realm in southern Africa from 1910 to 1961. It was the historical predecessor to the present-day Republic of South Africa. It came into existence on 31 May 1910 with the unification of the Cape, Natal, Transvaal, and Orange River colonies. It included the territories that were formerly 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.
The Union of South Africa was a self-governing dominion of the British Empire. Its full sovereignty was confirmed with the Balfour Declaration of 1926 and the Statute of Westminster 1931. It was governed under a form of constitutional monarchy, with the Crown being represented by a governor-general. The Union came to an end with the enactment of the constitution of 1961, by which it became a republic and left the Commonwealth of Nations. The Republic of South Africa rejoined the Commonwealth on 1 June 1994.
Constitution
Main features
The Union of South Africa was a unitary state, rather than a federation like Canada and Australia, with each colony's parliaments being abolished and replaced with provincial councils.South Africa Act, 1909, Part V, sections 68 to 94. A bicameral parliament was created, consisting of the House of Assembly and Senate, with members of the parliament being elected mostly by the country's white minority. During the course of the Union, the franchise changed on several occasions always to suit the needs of the government of the day.See Representation of Natives Act, No. 12 of 1936 and Separate Representation of Voters Act, No. 46 of 1951. 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.Hahlo & Kahn, Union of South Africa, Stevens & Sons Limited, London, 1960, pp. 146 to 163.
Capitals
Pretoria was the seat of government,Section 18 of South Africa Act, 1909. while the Parliament sat in Cape TownSection 23 of South Africa Act, 1909. and the Appellate Division in Bloemfontein.Section 109 of South Africa Act, 1909.
Relationship to the Crown
The Union initially remained under the British Crown as a self-governing dominion of the British Empire. With the passage of the Statute of Westminster in 1931, the Union and other dominions became equal in status to the United Kingdom, and the Parliament of the United Kingdom could no longer legislate on behalf of them.Hahlo & Kahn, supra, p. 146 et seq. This had the effect of making the Union and the other dominions de jure sovereign nations. The Status of the Union Act, passed by the South African Parliament in 1934, incorporated the applicable portions of the Statute of Westminster into South African law, underscoring its status as a sovereign nation. It removed what remaining authority Whitehall had to legislate for South Africa, as well as any nominal role that the United Kingdom had in granting 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 governor-general, while effective power was exercised by the Executive Council, headed by the prime minister. Louis Botha, formerly a Boer general, was appointed the first prime minister of the Union, heading a coalition representing the white 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.
Languages
An entrenched clause in the Constitution mentioned 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.
Final days of the South Africa Act and legacy
Most English-speaking whites in South Africa supported the United Party of Jan Smuts, which favoured close relations with the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, unlike the Afrikaans-speaking National Party, which had held anti-British sentiments and was opposed to South Africa's intervention in the Second World War. Some Nationalist organisations, like the Ossewabrandwag, were openly supportive of Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Additionally, most English-speaking South Africans were opposed to the creation of a republic, many of them voting "no" in the 5 October 1960 referendum. But due to the much larger number of Afrikaans-speaking voters, the referendum passed, leading to the establishment of a republic on 31 May 1961. The government led by the National Party consequently withdrew South Africa from the Commonwealth. Following the results of the referendum, some whites in Natal, which had an English-speaking majority, called for secession from the Union. Five years earlier, some 33,000 Natalians had signed the Natal Covenant in opposition to the plans for a republic.
Subsequently, the National Party government had passed a Constitution that repealed the South Africa Act 1909. 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
The South Africa Act 1909 dealt with race in two specific provisions. First it entrenched the liberal (by South African standards) Cape Qualified Franchise system of the Cape Colony which operated free of any racial considerations (although due to socio-economic restrictions no real political expression of non-whites was possible). The Cape 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".
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 George Grey, the 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.V.C. Malherbe: What They Said. 1795–1910 History Documents. Cape Town: Maskew Miller. 1971.
His idea was greeted with cautious optimism in southern Africa; the Orange Free State agreed to the idea in principle and the Transvaal may also eventually have agreed. However, he was overruled by 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)
In the 1870s, the London Colonial Office, under Secretary for the Colonies Lord Carnarvon, decided to apply a system of confederation onto southern Africa. On this occasion, however, it was largely rejected by southern Africans, primarily due to its very bad timing. The various component states of southern Africa were still simmering after the last bout of British expansion, and inter-state tensions were high. The Orange Free State this time refused to even discuss the idea, and Prime Minister 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.P.A. Molteno: A Federal South Africa. Sampson Low, Marston & Co, 1896. The Confederation model was also seen as unsuitable for the disparate entities of southern Africa, with their wildly different sizes, economies and political systems.Phyllis Lewsen (ed.). Selections from the correspondence of John X. Merriman, 1905–1924. South Africa: Van Riebeeck Society, 1969
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.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 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.Solomon, W. E. C: Saul Solomon – the Member for Cape Town. Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1948.
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.Illustrated History of South Africa. The Reader's Digest Association South Africa (Pty) Ltd, 1992. . p.182, "Confederation from the Barrel of a Gun"
Second Boer War (1899–1902)