Question 4

The 1910 Constitution of the Union was designed to unite South

Africa and govern the different racial groups within the country. In
order to assess in what ways the Constitution attempted to regulate
and contain the interests of South Africa’s different racial groups we
must examine the main points of the Constitution. The Boer War, 1899
– 1902, had divided and devastated South Africa. Although the Boers
surrendered through the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging in May
1902, they remained a very influential and powerful group, which
formed over 50 per cent of the white population in Southern Africa. The
Union Constitution was required to unite all the different ethnic groups
in the four main provinces to create a secure and prosperous country.
Moreover, the Constitution was viewed as a way of protecting British
economic interests in South Africa.
The 1910 Union of SA(South Africa) Constitution was designed to
protect the interests of white South Africans by uniting the Afrikaners
and British. As a result the needs of the whites were met at the
expense of the Africans. Indeed, some historians contend that the
Constitution laid the foundations of apartheid by encouraging the
concept of white supremacy and black inferiority.

The Constitution contained four key principals, which were

designed to regulate and control the interests of the main racial groups
within South Africa. The first major principal was concerned with the
establishment of a political system based on the British model,
therefore creating a unitary state with parliamentary sovereignty. The
once independent states of the cape Colony, the Transvaal, Orange
Free State and Natal became provinces within the Union of South
Africa. Each province had its own local government; however central
government had legal supremacy over all local institutions. As in Great
Britain, the executive was directly responsible to a majority in the
lower house, known as the House of Assembly. The Senate was the
upper house and was indirectly elected and therefore had less power
than the House of Assembly. One of the most notable features of the
governmental system was that, with two exceptions, laws amending
the Constitution could be enacted in the same way as any other laws –
by a simple majority vote in both Houses of Parliament. Therefore,
there was little to control any extremist parties that may come into
power.

The second point of the Constitution further reinforced the

concept of containing and regulating the South Africa’s different racial
groups. The Constitution allowed the four provinces to establish their
own franchise laws. Therefore, the franchise laws varied greatly in the
different provinces. In the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, all
white men, and white men alone were allowed to vote and become
Members of Parliament. As a result, the government was able to
control the lives of Africans and Coloureds by denying them any
political representation. In Natal white men were allowed to vote if
they satisfied low economic criteria.

In the Cape Colony the franchise laws were still non-racial,

despite the efforts of the Rhodes’s administration to reduced African
representation during the 1890s. The law dictated that any man could
vote or become a Member of Parliament, provided that he was barely
literate and earned a minimum level of income per annum or owned
property worth that was worth the standards of the communal land in
the African reserves. Moreover, the white population had almost total
control of the political system.
The third part of the Constitution dictated that at regular
intervals, judicial commissions were to divide the country into electoral
divisions for elections to the House of Assembly. The judicial
commissions were meant to ensure that the divisions contained the
same number of voters, but they were permitted to vary the size of
divisions by up to fifteen per cent either way to take in a number of
variables, including ‘sparsity or density of population’. The third point
of the Constitution attempted to regulate the racial groups by giving
disproportionate political power to whites in rural areas – the
Afrikaners. These franchise laws, enshrined in the Constitution, meant
that Parliament would always be dominated by an Afrikaner Party. As a
result of the judicial commission’s ability to favour rural voters, the
Afrikaners were able to dominate the government and therefore pass
legislation that controlled the lives of other racial groups, while at the
same time benefiting themselves. The fourth point of the Constitution
aimed to satisfy the demands of both Afrikaners and British by
recognising both English and Dutch as official languages. Thompson
maintains that Hertzog had understood the importance of language to
the survival of the Afrikaner culture and had refused to support the
unification of South Africa without a guarantee that measures would be
taken to protect the Dutch language. Therefore, a language clause,
which could not be amended without a two-thirds majority in both
houses, was included in the Constitution to satisfy the interests of the
Afrikaner community. However, a fundamental flaw of the clause was
the failure to recognise that Afrikaans was actually the language
spoken by most Afrikaners and Dutch was not generally used by
Afrikaners. Historians claim that the language clause caused
bitterness between the British and the Afrikaners because it
demonstrated the ignorance of the British towards the needs of the
Afrikaners, and disqualified Afrikaners from many high profile jobs
because Afrikaans was not recognised as an official language.
However, the clause was later amended in 1926 to replace Dutch with
Afrikaans. In an attempt to contain the interests of the Afrikaners, the
Constitution had tried to incorporate their language into the South
African culture. However, a failure to fully understand the needs of the
Afrikaners meant that they received only limited benefits from the
language clause.

Taken overall, the evidence above demonstrates that the 1910

Constitution of the Union was designed to regulate and contain
interests of South Africa’s different racial groups. The 1910
Constitution merely reinforced the concept of white supremacy by
furthering the interests of whites at the expense of Africans and
Coloureds.

Question 5

Question 5

This crucial failing to check and limit the power of the governing
party supports arguments that the Constitution laid the foundations of
apartheid by allowing an extremist party to implement racist and
discriminatory legislation. A further failing of the first point of the
Constitution was the exclusion of a Bill of Rights. Therefore, there was
nothing to protect the rights of vulnerable groups in society such as
Africans and Coloureds. It is argued that the fundamental failure to
include a Bill of Rights in the 1910 Constitution allowed the
government to pass legislation such as the Native’s Land Act, 1913.
Thompson maintains that this was a very significant law, enacted by
the government without consultation with Africans, which was
designed to regulate and control areas in which Africans were allowed
to live. The act set aside 22 million acres, approximately sever per cent
of the area of the Union of South Africa, for the creation of reserves in
which Africans were allowed. The act also banned sharecropping in the
Orange Free State and prohibited Africans from purchasing or leasing
land out with the reserves from anyone who was not an African. The
first point of the Constitution had allowed the government to introduce
legislation which would have a dramatic impact on the lives of Africans
across South Africa. Moreover, the Constitution had enabled the
government to regulate and control the interests of South Africa’s
largest racial group – the Africans.
 Question 1

The discovery of diamonds in 1867 and gold I 1886 dramatically

altered the economic and political structure of southern Africa.
Discoveries of gold and diamonds in South Africa exceeded those in
any other part of the world, and more foreign capital had been
invested in south Africa than in the rest of Africa Combined. In the
Transvaal, the site of the gold discoveries, the white population
expanded eightfold, while hundres of tousands of africns sought work
each year in the newly developed mines and cities of industrializing
areas. The British in the 1870s and 1880s conquered the still-
independent African states in southern Africa, confiscated the bulk of
the land and imposed cash taxation demands. The discovery of
minerals also exacerbated tensions between the British and boers.
Gold had been discovered in the Transvaal, and that ws beyod the
reach of British Rule. The Capital invested in the mines, and thus the
ownership of the gold industry, was primarlily British controlled. Boers
sought to gain access to some of this wealth through taxation policies.
POLITCAL FACTORS Since the beors always have close ties to the
germans they were scared that the um Transvaal was going to ally the
Germans and this would give the germans access to the coast and
would give them more power so this another factor that led the british
to think that it was dangerous to leave Transvaal independent.