Parktown (House of Assembly of South Africa constituency)

Parktown
Former constituency for the South African House of Assembly
Location of Parktown within Johannesburg (1915)
Province	Transvaal
Electorate	18,010 (1989)
Former constituency
Created	1915
Abolished	1994
Number of members	1
Last MHA	Zach de Beer (DP)
Created from	Braamfontein
Replaced by	Gauteng

Parktown was a constituency in the Transvaal Province of South Africa, which existed from 1915 to 1994. It covered parts of the inner northern suburbs of Johannesburg centred on the suburb of Parktown. Throughout its existence it elected one member to the House of Assembly and one to the Transvaal Provincial Council.

When the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910, the electoral qualifications in use in each pre-existing colony were kept in place. In the Transvaal Colony, and its predecessor the South African Republic, the vote was restricted to white men, and as such, elections in the Transvaal Province were held on a whites-only franchise from the beginning. 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. Non-whites remained disenfranchised until the end of apartheid and the introduction of universal suffrage in 1994.^[1]

Like most of Johannesburg's northern suburbs, Parktown had a largely English-speaking and liberal electorate. Among other things, it was notable for being the first constituency to elect a woman - Leila Reitz - to serve in parliament, in 1933, at the first election after women were granted the vote. Reitz, like all her predecessors, was elected for the South African Party, and joined the United Party on its formation in 1934 - that party would supply her successors for thirty years after her resignation in 1943. In 1974, it was one of a handful of north Johannesburg seats to reject the UP in favour of the more outspokenly anti-apartheid Progressive Party, and in 1977 it elected its final MP - Zach de Beer, who at the time represented the Progressive Party's successor, the Progressive Federal Party. In 1988, de Beer became leader of the PFP, and went into the final whites-only general election as co-leader of the new Democratic Party, which aimed to unite the liberal opposition to the governing National Party - this met with only marginal success, but de Beer held his seat by a strong margin, and represented it until the end of apartheid.

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