What If the United Party won in 1948
- Thread starter omi
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I was reading a biography of Smuts and this was certainly possible, but would have required a certain political urgency that the old man felt was unnecessary.
South African electoral districts had an unusual dichotomy. Due to the lacks of early communication methods, it was hard for candidates to tour rural constituencies. As a result, rural constituencies had fewer voters than urban ones --- I believe the permitted variations were as much as forty percent from an ideal evenly balanced constituency size.
As a result, the Nationalist Party and its ally the Afrikaner Party won a small but clear majority of seventy nine seats out of a hundred fifty-three, with just under forty-one percent of the votes, as opposed to the United Party, which received forty-nine percent of the vote --- and sixty five seats.
There was also a "separate-but-equal" African (as they said then) election roll; the few of them who qualified for the vote could vote for a separate set of (all white) candidates. There were four of these seats; Smuts had been asked to increase them to ten, but decided not to.
So, genuine proportional redistricting, an increase in "African" seats, or preferably both would have increased the odds of the United Party remaining in power. However, such changes could have led to an increased Nationalist vote --- the Nationalists campaigned heavily on the platform of
. Would that have been enough?
Now what would have happened if Smuts had pulled off a victory was another matter. He was getting tired; the party was going in various directions; and there was a great fear of Communism, made worse by Smuts's wartime record of positive attitudes towards Stalin.
However, they would not have passed the Apartheid laws.
IIRC when the Nationalists won they made some fairly significant changes to the citizenship laws, previously as part of the Empire there were few hurdles to British emigrants and after two years residence they automatically got the right to vote. Seems some of the Afrikaners were worried about being swamped by British immigrants and possibly losing their favoured electoral position. If Smuts and the United Party of South Africa then I can't see these changes being made so it's likely that immigration still continues, which is going to decrease the power of the Afrikaners and could well swing the referendum on becoming a republic to keeping the monarchy as there was only something like four percentage points in it in our timeline. As Major Major notes the rural constituencies were smaller compared to the urban ones so I can easily see that being changed in the 50s since the old reasoning is no longer valid.
Which is a long way of getting around to how it might affect apartheid.
Now there are already some laws on the books which I've heard referred to as 'petty apartheid' and I can't see them disappearing all that fast, what people think of when you say the word apartheid in the form of 'grand apartheid' though could be either seriously mitigated or mostly avoided altogether. It's certainly not going to be a multicultural wonderland but hopefully wouldn't go anywhere near as far and then start getting rid of them sooner, think other British African colonies but trailing them by 15-20 years or so.
Which is a long way of getting around to how it might affect apartheid.
Now there are already some laws on the books which I've heard referred to as 'petty apartheid' and I can't see them disappearing all that fast, what people think of when you say the word apartheid in the form of 'grand apartheid' though could be either seriously mitigated or mostly avoided altogether. It's certainly not going to be a multicultural wonderland but hopefully wouldn't go anywhere near as far and then start getting rid of them sooner, think other British African colonies but trailing them by 15-20 years or so.