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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 Cape Colony had implemented a “colour-blind” franchise known as the Cape Qualified Franchise, which included all adult literate men owning more than £75 worth of property (controversially raised from £25 in 1892), and this initially remained in effect after the colony became the Cape Province. As of 1908, 22,784 out of 152,221 electors in the Cape Colony were “Native or Coloured”. Eligibility to serve in Parliament and the Provincial Council, however, was restricted to whites from 1910 onward.
The first challenge to the Cape Qualified Franchise came with the Women's Enfranchisement Act, 1930 and the Franchise Laws Amendment Act, 1931, which extended the vote to women and removed property qualifications for the white population only – non-white voters remained subject to the earlier restrictions. In 1936, the Representation of Natives Act removed all black voters from the common electoral roll and introduced three “Native Representative Members”, white MPs elected by the black voters of the province and meant to represent their interests in particular. A similar provision was made for Coloured voters with the Separate Representation of Voters Act, 1951, and although this law was challenged by the courts, it went into effect in time for the 1958 general election, which was thus held with all-white voter rolls for the first time in South African history. The all-white franchise would continue until the end of apartheid and the introduction of universal suffrage in 1994.
History
The seat was a stronghold for the United Party and its predecessors, who held the seat from its creation until the party's collapse in the 1970s. Its first MP was Leander Starr Jameson, leader of the Unionist Party, who won it unopposed in the first general election, and uncontested elections were the norm throughout the seat's early existence – the South African Party contested it in 1915 and the National Party in 1953, but other than that the seat was only contested by independents for the first fifty years of its existence.
Starting from 1966, the National Party began contesting Albany regularly, but the UP maintained enough of a hold on the seat that it only ever became marginal. Errol Moorcroft, Albany's final MP, first won the seat in 1981, initially representing the Progressive Federal Party and later joining the Democratic Party. He was defeated by the National Party's J. H. van de Vyver in 1987, but returned in 1989. In this, the last election held under apartheid and with a first-past-the-post electoral system, it was the only rural seat in the Cape to be won by the DP.
Location of Albany within South Africa (1981)