The House of Assembly was the lower house

Lower house

A lower house is one of two chambers of a bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the upper house.Despite its official position "below" the upper house, in many legislatures worldwide the lower house has come to wield more power...

 of the Parliament

Parliament of South Africa

The Parliament of South Africa is South Africa's legislature and under the country's current Constitution is composed of the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces....

 of South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

 from 1910 to 1984, and latterly the white representative house of the Tricameral Parliament

Tricameral Parliament

The Tricameral Parliament was the name given to the South African parliament and its structure from 1984 to 1994, established by the South African Constitution of 1983...

 from 1984 to 1994, when it was replaced by the current National Assembly. Throughout its history, it was exclusively constituted of white members who were elected to office predominantly by white citizens.

Method of election

The members were elected on a first-past-the-post

First-past-the-post

First-past-the-post voting refers to an election won by the candidate with the most votes. The winning potato candidate does not necessarily receive an absolute majority of all votes cast.-Overview:...

 basis from single-member constituencies. Following the abolition of the Senate

Senate of South Africa

The Senate was the upper house of the Parliament of South Africa between 1910 and its abolition from 1 January 1981, and between 1994 and 1997.-1910-1981:...

 in 1981, the membership of the House of Assembly was enlarged, with eight additional indirectly elected members, being elected by other members by means of proportional representation, and four being appointed by the State President

State President of South Africa

State President, or Staatspresident in Afrikaans, was the title of South Africa's head of state from 1961 to 1994. The office was established when the country became a republic in 1961, and Queen Elizabeth II ceased to be head of state...

.

Franchise

The South Africa Act 1909

South Africa Act 1909

The South Africa Act 1909 was an Act of the British Parliament which created the Union of South Africa from the British Colonies of the Cape of Good Hope, Natal, Orange River Colony, and the Transvaal Colony. The Act also made provisions for admitting Rhodesia as a fifth province of the Union in...

 provided that the franchise in each province should be the same as that in the corresponding colony before the Union, until altered by the Union Parliament. The Act included entrenching clauses, providing that black and coloured voters could only be removed from the common voters roll in the Cape of Good Hope, by legislation passed by a two-thirds majority by both houses of Parliament in joint session.

The franchise, in all parts of the Union, was initially limited to men over the age of 21. White women were enfranchised in 1929 and the remaining property and income qualifications affecting white men were abolished in 1930. The voting age was reduced to 18 in the 1960s. There were some additional qualifications and disqualifications which varied between provinces.

The voters in the Orange Free State, Transvaal and South-West Africa had to be qualified white people, throughout the whole period when those areas were represented in the House of Assembly.

Cape Franchise

The Cape of Good Hope had a franchise based on property and wage qualifications, open to people of all races. At the time of the National Convention in 1908, which drafted the terms of what became the South Africa Act, “22,784 Native and Coloured persons out of a total of 152,221 electors” were entitled to vote in Cape elections.

From 1930, the traditional Cape franchise only affected non-white electors. The 1929 and 1930 extensions of white voting rights were not granted to the non-white majority of the population.

Until 1937, a small number of blacks in the Cape Province

Cape Province

The Province of the Cape of Good Hope was a province in the Union of South Africa and subsequently the Republic of South Africa...

 were included on the common voters' roll. Under the Representation of Natives Act (1936), three white members were elected to represent black voters in the province, with the voters' roll being limited to only 11 000.
In 1960, these seats were abolished.

Similarly the coloured voters in Cape Province were removed from the common (or general roll), under the Separate Representation of Voters Act

Separate Representation of Voters Act

The Separate Representation of Voters Act No. 46 was introduced in South Africa on 18 June 1951. Part of the legislation during the apartheid era, the National Party introduced it to enforce racial segregation, and was the start of a deliberate process to remove all non-white people from the...

 1951, although as the Act was challenged and not completely enforced until the later 1950ths, the last year to see non-whites participate in a general election was in 1953

South African general election, 1953

The 1953 South African general election consolidated the position of the National Party under DF Malan, who won an absolute majority of the 156 seats in the House of Assembly...

. Coloured electors complying with qualifications were subsequently given four white MPs between 1958 and 1970. These seats were abolished in 1968 through the Coloured Persons Representative Council Amendment Act

Coloured Persons Representative Council Amendment Act

The Coloured Persons Representative Council Amendment Act was adapted by the South African House of Assembly in 1968, by the B J Vorster government...

, enacted on behalf of Prime Minister B. J. Vorster, removing all political representation for non-whites in South Africa.

Natal Franchise

Natal had a theoretically non-racial franchise, which was similar to (but different in detail) from the property and income based franchise of the Cape. In practice, few non-white electors ever qualified to vote under it. It was estimated, in 1908, that “200 non-Europeans out of a total of 22,786 electors had secured franchise rights”.

In 1935, there was one black elector in Natal. He retained the general roll franchise when the Cape black voters lost it.

South-West Africa

From by-elections in 1950 to 1977, six additional seats were given to members elected from South West Africa

South West Africa

South-West Africa was the name that was used for the modern day Republic of Namibia during the earlier eras when the territory was controlled by the German Empire and later by South Africa....

's white minority.

Tricameral Parliament

In the Tricameral Parliament

Tricameral Parliament

The Tricameral Parliament was the name given to the South African parliament and its structure from 1984 to 1994, established by the South African Constitution of 1983...

, the House of Assembly (by this time numbering 178 members) was retained as the whites-only chamber while the House of Representatives

House of Representatives

House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national states. In some countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often called a "senate". In other countries, the House of...

 and House of Delegates

House of Delegates

The House of Delegates is the name given to the lower house of the legislature in three U.S. states – Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia.House of Delegates may also refer to:...

 were designated to Coloureds

Coloured

In the South African, Namibian, Zambian, Botswana and Zimbabwean context, the term Coloured refers to an heterogenous ethnic group who possess ancestry from Europe, various Khoisan and Bantu tribes of Southern Africa, West Africa, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaya, India, Mozambique,...

 and Asians respectively.

Composition by election, province and type

Election	No.	Cape	Nat	OFS	SWA	Tvl	Total gen.	CCRM	CNRM	Total MPs
1910, 15 September	1	51	17	17	-	36	121	-	-	121
1915, 20 October	2	51	17	17	-	45	130	-	-	130
1920, 20 March	3	51	17	17	-	49	134	-	-	134
1921, 08 February	4	51	17	17	-	49	134	-	-	134
1924, 19 June	5	51	17	17	-	50	135	-	-	135
1929, 14 June	6	58	17	18	-	55	148	-	-	148
1933, 17 May	7	61	16	16	-	57	150	-	-	150
1938, 18 May	8	59	16	15	-	60	150	-	3	153
1943, 17 July	9	56	16	14	-	64	150	-	3	153
1948, 26 May	10	55	16	13	-	66	150	-	3	153
1953, 15 April	11	54	15	13	6	68	156	-	3	159
1958, 16 April	12	52	16	14	6	68	156	4	3	163
1961, 08 October	13	52	16	14	6	68	156	4	-	160
1966, 30 March	14	54	18	15	6	73	166	4	-	170
1970, 22 April	15	54	18	15	6	73	166	-	-	166
1974, 24 April	16	55	20	14	6	76	171	-	-	171
1977, 30 November	17	55	20	14	-	76	165	IE	Nom	165
1981, 29 April	18	55	20	14	-	76	165	8	4	177
1987, 6 May	19	56	20	14	-	76	166	8	4	178
1989, 6 September	20	56	20	14	-	76	166	8	4	178

Abbreviations and notes:

• General roll electoral divisions (contested at general elections)
• Cape: Cape of Good Hope
• Nat: Natal
• OFS: Orange Free State
• SWA: South-West Africa (represented in the House 1950–1977)
• Tvl: Transvaal

• Non-general roll seats (not filled at general elections)
• CCRM: Cape Coloured representative members (represented in the House 1958–1970)
• CNRM: Cape Native representative members (represented in the House 1937–1960)
• IE: Indirectly elected, by the directly elected MPs (represented in the House January 1981–1994)
• Nom: Nominated by the State President, one per province (represented in the House January 1981–1994)