Brits (House of Assembly of South Africa constituency)

Brits was a constituency in the Transvaal Province of South Africa, which existed from 1929^[1] to 1994. It covered a rural area west of Pretoria, centred on the town of Brits. 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.^[2]

Like most of the rural Transvaal, Brits was a conservative seat with a largely Afrikaans-speaking electorate. It was held for nearly its entire existence by the National Party, with two exceptions. The first exception was the period from 1934 to 1943, after J. B. M. Hertzog and Jan Smuts joined forces to create the United Party. Brits' Nationalist MP, Jan Harm Grobler, joined the new party and successfully defended his seat in 1938 against Purified National Party opposition. He left the party after South Africa joined World War II, and stood for re-election in 1943 as an independent, but the Herenigde Nasionale Party took the seat with Jacobus Ernst Potgieter as their candidate. Potgieter held the seat until 1977, becoming one of South Africa's longest-serving parliamentarians.

In 1977, Potgieter retired and Johannes Petrus Grobler took over as MP for Brits. He served two terms and retired in 1987, at which point the rising Conservative Party took the seat with Andrew Gerber - one of many rural Transvaal seats to fall to the new party.

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