Troyeville (House of Assembly of South Africa constituency)

Troyeville was a constituency in the Transvaal Province of South Africa, which existed from 1910 to 1958. It covered a part of the inner eastern suburbs of Johannesburg, centred on the suburb of Troyeville. 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.^[1]

Troyeville was a largely working-class constituency, and followed the general trend of such areas across South Africa's major cities. Its first MP, John William Quinn of the Unionist Party, left parliament in 1915, and the resulting by-election (not held until 1917) was won by Frederic Creswell, the leader of the Labour Party, who had lost his seat in Bezuidenhout at the previous general election. Creswell represented Troyeville until 1921, when he was defeated by the recently-reunited South African Party, and would represent three more constituencies through his long parliamentary career. At the 1924 election, Labour retook the seat with Morris Kentridge, who would represent Troyeville until the abolition of the constituency in 1958, after defecting to the SAP in 1933 and joining the United Party on that party's formation. Having already served intermittently in parliament starting in 1914, Kentridge retired from politics on his seat's abolition. His son, Sydney Kentridge, became a notable defence lawyer and anti-apartheid activist, defending Nelson Mandela in the 1956 Treason Trial and representing Steve Biko's family at the inquest into his death in 1978.

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