Apartheid in South Africa - Institution of Apartheid - Disenfranchisement of Coloured Voters

Disenfranchisement of Coloured Voters

In 1950, D F Malan announced the NP's intention to create a Coloured Affairs Department. J.G. Strijdom, Malan's successor as Prime Minister, moved to strip voting rights from black and coloured residents of the Cape Province. The previous government had first introduced the Separate Representation of Voters Bill in parliament in 1951; however, a group of four voters, G Harris, WD Franklin, WD Collins and Edgar Deane, challenged its validity in court with support from the United Party. The Cape Supreme Court upheld the act, but the Appeal Court reversed on appeal, finding the act invalid because a two-thirds majority in a joint sitting of both Houses of Parliament was needed in order to change the entrenched clauses of the Constitution. The government then introduced the High Court of Parliament Bill (1952), which gave parliament the power to overrule decisions of the court. The Cape Supreme Court and the Appeal Court declared this invalid too.

In 1955 the Strijdom government increased the number of judges in the Appeal Court from five to eleven, and appointed pro-Nationalist judges to fill the new places. In the same year they introduced the Senate Act, which increased the senate from 49 seats to 89. Adjustments were made such that the NP controlled 77 of these seats. The parliament met in a joint sitting and passed the Separate Representation of Voters Act in 1956, which transferred coloured voters from the common voters' roll in the Cape to a new coloured voters' roll. Immediately after the vote, the Senate was restored to its original size. The Senate Act was contested in the Supreme Court, but the recently enlarged Appeal Court, packed with government-supporting judges, rejected the application by the Opposition and upheld the Senate Act, and also the Act to remove coloured voters.

The 1956 law allowed Coloureds to elect four whites to represent them in Parliament, but a 1969 law abolished those seats and stripped Coloureds of their right to vote. Since Asians had never been allowed to vote, this resulted in whites being the sole enfranchised group in the country.