The 1958 South African general election led to a victory for the National Party

National Party (South Africa)

The National Party is a former political party in South Africa. Founded in 1914, it was the governing party of the country from 4 June 1948 until 9 May 1994. Members of the National Party were sometimes known as Nationalists or Nats. Its policies included apartheid, the establishment of a...

, under the leadership of J.G. Strijdom, which took 103 seats in the House of Assembly

House of Assembly of South Africa

The House of Assembly was the lower house of the Parliament of South Africa from 1910 to 1984, and latterly the white representative house of the Tricameral Parliament from 1984 to 1994, when it was replaced by the current National Assembly...

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Native Representative Members

The third term of the (white MPs) elected to represent black voters, from special electoral districts in Cape Province under the Representation of Natives Act 1936, expired on 30 June 1954. These seats were not vacated by a dissolution of Parliament, so they were not contested at the 1953 general election.

The three representative seats were filled by elections on 1 December 1954. Two Liberal Party of South Africa MPs (A.W.P. Stanford of Transkei and Mrs V.M.L. Ballinger of Cape Eastern) were returned. Stanford took his seat from an Independent. Ballinger had been elected as an Independent at the three previous representative elections, before becoming the first President of the Liberal Party, when it was formed on 9 May 1953. The third seat was taken by L.B. Lee-Warden, an Independent candidate.

The term of these members expired on 30 June 1960 (the first 30 June to fall after five years from the date of election). The Native Representative Members seats were to be abolished in 1960, at the end of the current term.

Coloured Representative Members

The Separate Representation of Voters Act

Separate Representation of Voters Act

The Separate Representation of Voters Act No. 46 was introduced in South Africa on 18 June 1951. Part of the legislation during the apartheid era, the National Party introduced it to enforce racial segregation, and was the start of a deliberate process to remove all non-white people from the...

 1951, had provided for coloured voters in Cape Province to be removed from the general voters rolls and placed on a separate roll. The coloured voters lost the right to participate in general roll elections and were given four (white) representative members in Parliament.

The implementation of the 1951 Act was delayed, due to legal arguments about whether Parliament had complied with the requirement for a two-thirds majority in joint session, before it could remove the coloured voters from the general roll.

Eventually legislation to change the size and electoral system for the Senate was enacted, which the courts accepted as enabling the 1951 Act to be validated by the constitutionally required margin.

The Coloured Representative Members were elected, for the first time, on 3 April 1958, for a term expiring with the next dissolution of Parliament. Four supporters of the United Party were elected to fill the new seats.

Reduction in voting age

Under the Electoral Law Amendment Act, No. 30 of 1958 the minimum voting age was reduced from 21 to 18.

Delimitation of electoral divisions

The South Africa Act 1909

South Africa Act 1909

The South Africa Act 1909 was an Act of the British Parliament which created the Union of South Africa from the British Colonies of the Cape of Good Hope, Natal, Orange River Colony, and the Transvaal Colony. The Act also made provisions for admitting Rhodesia as a fifth province of the Union in...

 had provided for a delimitation commission to define the boundaries for each electoral division, for general roll voters in the four provinces. The representation by province, under the eleventh delimitation report of 1958, is set out in the table below. The figures in brackets are the number of electoral divisions in the previous (1953) delimitation. If there is no figure in brackets then the number was unchanged.

Provinces	Cape	Natal	Orange Free State	Transvaal	Total
Divisions	52 (54)	16 (15)	14 (13)	68	150

Composition at the dissolution

At the end of the 11th Union Parliament, when it was dissolved in 1958, the House of Assembly consisted of two types of members. White voters were represented by 156 members and black voters in Cape Province by three white MPs (known at the time as Native Representative Members). A third type of MP was about to be elected, so that four white MPs would represent coloured voters in Cape Province. They were known as the Coloured Representative Members (CRM).

The general election, on 16 April 1958, only affected the representatives of white voters. The other members were elected on different dates (see above).

The representation by party and province, at the dissolution was:-

Province	National	United	Independents	Labour	Liberal	Total
Cape (general)	31	23	-	-	-	54
Cape (NRM)	-	-	1	-	2	3
Natal	2	11	1	1	-	15
Orange FS	13	-	-	-	-	13
SW Africa	6	-	-	-	-	6
Transvaal	44	18	3	3	-	68
Total	96	52	5	4	2	159

Abbrieviations in the province list.

• Orange FS: Orange Free State
• SW Africa: South-West Africa
• NRM: Native Representative Members

Results

The general election, for 156 seats in the 12th Union Parliament, was the first in South African history when only voters classified as white took part. In the eleven previous general elections, the Cape Province and Natal general electoral roll had included some black (until 1938 in the Cape), asian (until 1948) and coloured electors.

The vote totals in the table below may not give a complete picture of the balance of political opinion, because of unopposed elections (where no votes were cast) and because contested seats may not have been fought by a candidate from all major parties.

The total registered electorate was 1,563,426. The votes cast were 1,162,576 (including 7,573 spoilt votes).

	Party	Seats	Seats %	Votes	Votes %	Leader
	National Party National Party (South Africa) The National Party is a former political party in South Africa. Founded in 1914, it was the governing party of the country from 4 June 1948 until 9 May 1994. Members of the National Party were sometimes known as Nationalists or Nats. Its policies included apartheid, the establishment of a...	103	66.03	642,006	55.34	J.G. Strijdom Johannes Gerhardus Strijdom Johannes Gerhardus Strijdom, commonly called JG Strydom or Hans Strydom , nicknamed the Lion of the North, was Prime Minister of South Africa from 30 November 1954 to 24 August 1958...
	United Party United Party (South Africa) The United Party was South Africa's ruling political party between 1934 and 1948. It was formed by a merger of most of Prime Minister Barry Hertzog's National Party with the rival South African Party of Jan Smuts, plus the remnants of the Unionist Party...	53	33.97	503,648	43.57	Sir de Villiers Graaff
	Independents and Others	-	-	4,745	0.41	-
	Liberal Party	-	-	2,934	0.25	Margaret Ballinger Margaret Ballinger Margaret Ballinger was the first President of the Liberal Party of South Africa and a South African Member of Parliament. In 1944, Ballinger was referred to as the "Queen of the Blacks" by TIME magazine...
	Labour Party Labour Party (South Africa) The South African Labour Party, formed in March 1910 following discussions between trade unions and the Independent Labour Party of Transvaal, was a professedly democratic socialist party representing the interests of the white working class.-History:...	-	-	2,670	0.23	Alex Hepple
	Total	156

The overall composition of the House, after the general election, was as below. There were boundary changes, from the delimitation of seats in the previous Parliament, so no attempt is made to identify changes.

Province	National	United	Liberal	Independents	Total
Cape (general)	33	19	-	-	52
Cape (NRM)	-	-	2	1	3
Cape (CRM)	-	4	-	-	4
Natal	2	14	-	-	16
Orange FS	14	-	-	-	14
SW Africa	6	-	-	-	6
Transvaal	48	20	-	-	68
Total	103	57	2	1	163