Meanwhile, after 1939 the policy of the UNSWP tended to follow Gen. Smuts instead of Gen. Hertzog, in part because of the fear of a new German interest in the territory.
Despite good organization and the support of over 40% of South-West Africans in the first three of those elections, the party never succeeded in sending a single representative to the House of Assembly.
Under the terms of the South-West Africa Constitution Act of 1925, the South African Parliament granted a Legislative Assembly to the mandate area, conditioning the informal politics of the region's white settlers along more conventional partisan lines.
Prime Minister Daniel Malan passed legislation making the growing region the Union of South Africa's fifth province, and that year the NP won six local seats in the House of Assembly, both local Senate seats, and 15 out of 18 constituencies in the Legislative Assembly.
The South West African seats averaged half the population compared to those in the Union proper.
With this legislation, Malan made South West Africa in effect the fifth province in the Union, defying the 1946 United Nations agreement with Smuts that forbade such annexation.
The UP, though in principle supportive of representation for South West Africa, opposed the high number of seats relative to the local white population but did not wish to alienate local voters by opposing it strongly, and hoped its leaders' role in occupying the former German colony in 1915 would work in its favor.
The incumbent UP local government had always resisted efforts to place South West Africa under UN trusteeship, but nevertheless agreed to submit annual reports to the UN.
The majority verdict of the court in July 1950 stated that while the Union was not obliged to submit the area to full UN administration, it was still to be overseen along the lines of the old League of Nations mandate.