Roodepoort (House of Assembly of South Africa constituency)

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]

The mines of the Witwatersrand were an early stronghold of South African trade unionism, and this made Roodepoort fertile ground for the Labour Party. At its first election, it was won by an Independent Labour candidate, Charles Henry Haggar, who narrowly defeated a Unionist candidate and held the seat until its abolition at the 1915 delimitation.

Roodepoort's absence from the electoral map wouldn't be long-lived, however, and the seat returned in 1920, once again as a Labour safe seat. Its new MP, Reverend John Mullineux, was elected comfortably over a divided opposition in 1920, and held the seat by good margins in 1921 and 1924. In 1929, with the Labour Party in civil war over whether to continue supporting the J. B. M. Hertzog-led coalition government, Mullineux stood down and the seat was won by Charles Stallard of the South African Party. Stallard was one of a handful of English-speaking SAP politicians to reject the party's merger into the United Party, forming the Dominion Party to advocate for his pro-British beliefs. The Dominion Party quickly became a Natal-centric party, but Stallard stood for re-election in Roodepoort in 1938, losing to the UP candidate by a smaller margin than any other Dominion candidate in the Transvaal.

Over time, like many other working-class seats on the Rand, Roodepoort became a safe seat for the governing National Party. Its longest-serving MP, Michiel Coenraad Botha, served in cabinet under John Vorster and retired in 1977. His successor, Willem Jacobus Cuyler, went unopposed in 1981, but this doesn't seem to have indicated lasting support for the governing party in the constituency, because in 1987 he lost it to the rising Conservative Party. Roodepoort was one of only three seats in major urban areas (along with Brakpan and Pretoria West) to vote for that party, and they held it until the end of apartheid.

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