Newcastle (House of Assembly of South Africa constituency)

Newcastle
Former constituency for the South African House of Assembly
Location of Newcastle within South Africa (1981)
Province	Natal
Electorate	17,472 (1989)
Former constituency
Created	1910
Abolished	1994
Number of members	1
Last MHA	Adriaan Blaas (NP)
Replaced by	KwaZulu-Natal

Newcastle was a constituency in the Natal Province of South Africa, which existed from 1910 to 1994. It covered a region of northwestern Natal centred on its namesake town. Throughout its existence it elected one member to the House of Assembly.

When the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910, the electoral qualifications in use in each pre-existing colony were kept in place. The franchise used in the Natal Colony, while theoretically not restricted by race, was significantly less liberal than that of the Cape, and no more than a few hundred non-white electors ever qualified. In 1908, an estimated 200 of the 22,786 electors in the colony were of non-European descent, and by 1935, only one remained.^[1] By 1958, when the last non-white voters in the Cape were taken off the rolls, Natal too had an all-white electorate. The franchise was also restricted by property and education qualifications until the 1933 general election, following the passage of the Women's Enfranchisement Act, 1930 and the Franchise Laws Amendment Act, 1931. From then on, the franchise was given to all white citizens aged 21 or over, which remained the case until the end of apartheid and the introduction of universal suffrage in 1994.^[2]

While most of Natal's white population (and, consequently, most of its electorate during the pre-1994 era) was English-speaking, the northwest of the province was more mixed, and Newcastle had a large Afrikaner presence throughout its existence. This made its politics (along with the neighbouring seats of Klip River and Vryheid) different from those of Natal as a whole, and the National Party had a significant foothold in the seat from its founding. In the early years, however, this foothold was never quite enough to dislodge the South African Party, whose candidates held the seat throughout the party's existence. When it merged into the United Party in 1934, Newcastle MP Overbeek Radyn Nel came along, and from 1938 onwards, Newcastle was a bellwether seat, always held by the governing party of the day. For most of that period, that meant the National Party, which captured it as part of their nationwide advance in 1948 and held it for the remainder of its existence. Unlike some other NP safe seats, Newcastle never went fully unopposed, but in 1977 and 1981, its MPs faced only token opposition from the Herstigte Nasionale Party, and in 1987 and 1989 the Conservative Party formed the main opposition in the seat.

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