South African Party (Cape Colony)

The party had its origins in the liberal tradition that arose in the western half of the Cape Colony in its early parliamentary history.

In the 1890s, the liberal Afrikaans politician Jacobus W. Sauer led a "South African Political Association" in an attempt to unite the Cape's anti-imperialist opposition.

[1] As a formal party however, it was first founded by William Philip Schreiner, as a means of countering the aggressive imperialist policies of Cecil Rhodes.

The party's platform brought together many of the policies that dated back to the Molteno Ministry, the first elected government of the Cape Colony, such as an emphasis on locally driven development, anti-imperialism, free trade, compulsory education, peaceful relations with neighbouring states and an inclusive attitude to race relations.

During the National Convention on Union, Merriman and other South African Party representatives fought to extend the Cape's multi-racial franchise system (whereby minor property and literacy suffrage qualifications applied equally to all male citizens, regardless of race) to the rest of South Africa, post-union.