United Party (South Africa)
Encyclopedia
The United Party was South Africa's
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

 ruling political party between 1934 and 1948. It was formed by a merger of most of Prime Minister Barry Hertzog's
James Barry Munnik Hertzog
James Barry Munnik Hertzog, better known as J. B. M. Hertzog was a Boer general during the second Anglo-Boer War who later went on to become Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1924 to 1939...

 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...

 with the rival South African Party
South African Party
The South African Party was a political party that existed in the Union of South Africa from 1911 to 1934.-History:The outline and foundation for the party was realized after the election of a 'South African party' in the 1910 South African general election under the leadership of Louis Botha...

 of Jan Smuts
Jan Smuts
Jan Christiaan Smuts, OM, CH, ED, KC, FRS, PC was a prominent South African and British Commonwealth statesman, military leader and philosopher. In addition to holding various cabinet posts, he served as Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 until 1924 and from 1939 until 1948...

, plus the remnants of the Unionist Party
Unionist Party (South Africa)
The Unionist Party of South Africa was a pre-apartheid South African political party, which contested elections to the Union of South Africa parliament from the 1910 South African general election until its merger into the South African Party just before the 1921 South African general...

. Its full name was the United National South African Party, but it was generally called the, "United Party." The party drew support from several different parts of South African society, including English-speakers, Afrikaners and 'Coloureds'.

Hertzog led the party until 1939. In that year, Hertzog refused to commit South Africa to Britain's war effort against Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

. Many Afrikaners who had fought in the Second Boer War
Second Boer War
The Second Boer War was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State...

 were still alive, and the atrocities committed by the British during that conflict were fresh in their memory. Hertzog felt that siding with the former enemy would be unacceptable to Afrikaners. Furthermore, he could see little benefit for South Africa in taking part in a war that he saw as an essentially European affair.

The majority of the United Party caucus were of a different mind, however, and Hertzog resigned. Jan Smuts succeeded him and led the party and the country throughout World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 and the immediate post-war years.

Decline

Smuts and the United Party lost the 1948 election to the National Party. It was never to hold power again. J.G.N. Strauss succeeded Smuts in 1950, and was in turn replaced by Sir de Villiers Graaff in 1956 until 1977. Attrition characterized his leadership years, as the party slowly declined because of electoral gerrymandering
Gerrymandering
In the process of setting electoral districts, gerrymandering is a practice that attempts to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating geographic boundaries to create partisan, incumbent-protected districts...

, changes to South Africa's voting laws, including the removal of the 'Coloureds' - South Africans of mixed ancestry, who had been staunch United Party supporters - from the electoral rolls, and defections to other parties.

Schwarz breakaway

There was much division in the party, between liberals
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

 and conservatives
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...

. Divisions came to a head in 1972 when Harry Schwarz
Harry Schwarz
Harry Heinz Schwarz was a South African lawyer, statesman and long-time political opposition leader against apartheid, who eventually served as the South African ambassador to the United States during the country’s transition to representative democracy.Schwarz rose from the childhood poverty he...

, leader of the liberal "Young Turks" within the party, wrestled the leadership of the party in the Transvaal from Marais Steyn. His victory was a visible sign of strength from the liberals within the party. On January 4 1974, he met with Mangosuthu Buthelezi
Mangosuthu Buthelezi
Inkosi Mangosuthu Buthelezi is a South African Zulu politician who founded the Inkatha Freedom Party in 1975 and continues to lead the party today.His praise name is Shenge.-Early life:...

 and signed a five-point plan for racial peace in South Africa, which came to be known as the Mahlabatini Declaration of Faith
Mahlabatini Declaration
The Mahlabatini Declaration of Faith was a statement of core principles laid down by South African political leaders Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Harry Schwarz on 4 January 1974. It was signed in Mahlabatini, KwaZulu-Natal, hence its name...

. It was the first occasion in apartheid South Africa's history where the principles of peaceful transition and equality had been enshrined in a document which had been jointly signed by acknowledged black and white political leaders in South Africa. The declaration, however provoked an angry response from the conservative "Old Guard" in the party, including the party's leader.

In 1975 Harry Schwarz along with three other Members of Parliament
Parliament of South Africa
The Parliament of South Africa is South Africa's legislature and under the country's current Constitution is composed of the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces....

 (MPs) were expelled from the United Party. Further resignations followed, which included two Senators, ten members of the Transvaal Provincial Council, 14 out of the 36 Johannesburg City Councillors and four Randburg City Councillors. This made it the official opposition in the Transvaal Provincial Council. The formed the Reform Party
Reform Party (South Africa)
The Reform Party was an anti-apartheid political party that existed for just five months in 1975 and is one of the predecessor parties to the Democratic Alliance...

 of which Schwarz was elected leader. Schwarz's breakaway would see the demise of the United Party and realign opposition politics in South Africa.

In 1977, the United Party was renamed the New Republic Party
New Republic Party
The New Republic Party was a South African political party. It was formed as the successor to the disbanded United Party in 1977. After the UP wound up, initially the last UP leader, Sir de Villiers Graaff served as the interim national leader of the new party, with Radclyffe Cadman as...

, but a significant number of its parliamentarians refused to remain with the renamed party; some joined the anti-apartheid Progressive Federal Party and others eventually joined the ruling National Party. Elections in late 1977 left the New Republic Party gutted, with only 10 parliamentary seats, down from the 41 the United Party had held previously.

The UP's position on race relations in South Africa was a complex one; while the UP was more liberal in character than the National Party, it never clearly articulated its views on the best approach to them. Smuts himself alluded to the fact that at some unspecified point in the future, black South Africans might be asked to share power with the white minority, provided Black politicians demonstrated their commitment to 'civilized' norms of political and personal conduct. Generally, though, the UP seemed to have little difficulty in tacitly supporting apartheid. One of the reasons the UP fared so disastrously in the 1948 election
South African general election, 1948
The parliamentary election in South Africa on 26 May 1948 represented a turning point in the country's history. The United Party, which had led the government since its foundation in 1933 and its leader, incumbent Prime Minister Jan Smuts was ousted by the Reunited National Party , led by Daniel...

 was its lack of commitment to a clear policy on race relations. This stood in contrast to the National Party, which was firmly and unequivocally behind the notion of preserving white supremacy at all costs.

The UP was against apartheid as a system, but also favoured the continuation of white minority rule. During the late 1960s the party tried to gain support by its resistance to the National Party's politics on giving land to the bantustans.

The party supported links with the Commonwealth
Commonwealth of Nations
The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...

, and unsuccessfully campaigned against the establishment of a republic
Republic
A republic is a form of government in which the people, or some significant portion of them, have supreme control over the government and where offices of state are elected or chosen by elected people. In modern times, a common simplified definition of a republic is a government where the head of...

 in the whites-only referendum held on October 5, 1960.

See also: List of political parties in South Africa

External links

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