Founding and Early History
The National Party was founded in Bloemfontein in 1915 by Afrikaner nationalists soon after the establishment of the Union of South Africa. Its founding was rooted in disagreements among South African Party politicians, particularly Prime Minister Louis Botha and his first Minister of Justice, J.B.M. Hertzog. After Hertzog began speaking out publicly against the Botha government's "one-stream" policy in 1912, Botha removed him from the cabinet. Hertzog and his followers in the Orange Free State province subsequently moved to establish the National Party to oppose the government by advocating a "two-stream" policy of equal rights for the English and Afrikaner communities. Afrikaner nationalists in the Transvaal and Cape provinces soon followed suit, so that three distinct provincial NP organizations were in existence in time for the 1915 general elections.
The NP first came to power in coalition with the Labour Party in 1924, with Hertzog as Prime Minister. In 1930, the Hertzog government worked to undermine the vote of Coloureds (South Africans of mixed white and non-white ancestry) by granting the right to vote to white women, thus doubling white political power. In 1934, Hertzog agreed to merge his National Party with the rival South African Party of Jan Smuts to form the United Party. A hardline faction of Afrikaner nationalists, led by D. F. Malan, refused to accept the merger and maintained a rump National Party called the Gesuiwerde Nasionale Party (Purified National Party). The Purified National Party used opposition to South African participation in World War II to stir up anti-British feelings amongst Afrikaners. This led to a reunification of the Purified Nationalists with the faction that had merged with the South African Party; together, they formed the Herenigde Nasionale Party (Reunited National Party), which went on to defeat Smuts' United Party in 1948.
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