Elections in South Africa

Elections are held on a five-year cycle and are conducted by the Electoral Commission (IEC), which is an independent body established by the constitution.

For municipal councils there is a mixed-member system in which wards elect individual councillors alongside those named from party lists.

When the British took over the Cape, first in 1795 and then more permanently in 1806, they inherited a large, thinly populated pastoral society that depended on the labour of slaves and a rural workforce of indigenous Khoekhoe whose condition was akin to serfdom.

[1] In 1807, the British government ended the slave trade and, finally, in 1833 outlawed the practice of slavery throughout the Empire.

[citation needed] Under pressure from the humanitarian lobby in the UK, acting in concert with a local missionary campaign, the government abolished the Khoekhoe's serf-like status by the declaration of Ordinance 50 of 1828.

Although the uprising was defeated, it did influence the minds of colonial officials and politicians who were responsible for drawing up the 1853 constitution.

'[5] In terms of the constitution of 1853, any man who owned property worth at least £25 was entitled to vote for or stand in the Cape's Parliament.

By 1886 Africans made up 43 per cent of the vote in six constituencies of the Eastern Cape, and were a real political force.

The passage of the Franchise and Ballot Act, which raised the property qualification from £25 to £75 in 1892, met with an angry response from African and Coloured voters.

The abolition of slavery, the declaration of Ordinance 50, and the accompanying extension of rights to the black population, were deeply resented by the white Dutch farmers of the Cape as undermining their way of life.

Starting in 1834, thousands of these Boers set out on the Great Trek in the hope of leaving British control behind them.

[citation needed] After the Second Anglo-Boer War, the white peoples made peace and came together at the National Convention in October 1909.

Black men had enjoyed the vote in the Cape since the 1850s and – as long as they had sufficient property, income and education – continued to do so.

[10] Africans and Coloured people would retain most of their voting rights in the Cape, but would not receive them in any other part of the Union.

The delegation was unsuccessful in its appeal, despite receiving considerable support from the infant Labour Party and other liberal British organisations.

In 1983 a referendum on constitutional reform was held, as a result of which the Tricameral Parliament was formed, consisting of three separate houses to represent white, coloured and Indian South Africans.

It introduced universal suffrage on a non-racial basis, and replaced first-past-the-post voting with party-list proportional representation.

In the post-apartheid era, the Constitutional Court has struck down two attempts by the government to deny the vote to convicted criminals in prison.

[13] Voters who are outside their registered district on election day may vote at another polling station, but additional paperwork is required.

[15] The district boundaries are set by the Electoral Commission's Delimitation Directorate, and are reviewed and adjusted before each election.