Yeoville (House of Assembly of South Africa constituency)

Yeoville was a constituency in the Transvaal Province of South Africa, which existed from 1910 to 1994. It covered a part of Johannesburg's inner northern suburbs centred on the suburb of Yeoville. 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]

Like most of Johannesburg's northern suburbs, Yeoville had a largely English-speaking and liberal electorate. It was won at every election by whatever the main pro-British or liberal party was in South Africa at the time - first the Unionists, then the South African Party, then the United Party, then the PFP and finally the Democrats. Several of its MPs reached prominent positions in South African politics: Patrick Duncan served in cabinet under Jan Smuts and J. B. M. Hertzog, and resigned in 1937 to take up the post of Governor-General, the first South African citizen to hold that office. Henry Gluckman served in cabinet during Smuts' second administration, becoming South Africa's first Jewish cabinet minister, and was noted for his support for racial equality and universal health care. Marais Steyn was chairman of the Transvaal UP and a standard-bearer of the party's conservative faction, later defecting to the governing National Party and being elevated to cabinet under John Vorster and P. W. Botha. His successor both as provincial party chair and MP for Yeoville, Harry Schwarz, was a committed liberal and opponent of apartheid, who broke away from the declining UP in 1975 to form the Reform Party. After a series of mergers, this became the Progressive Federal Party, of which Schwarz was one of the leading figures (though never the party leader). He left parliament in 1991 to take up the position of Ambassador to the United States, and the seat was taken by Douglas Gibson in a by-election left unopposed by the National Party as a condition of Schwarz taking up the ambassadorship.

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