Umvoti (House of Assembly of South Africa constituency)

Umvoti was a constituency in the Natal Province of South Africa, which existed from 1910 to 1929. It covered a rural area surrounding Pietermaritzburg, the provincial capital. Throughout its existence it elected one member to the House of Assembly.

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 franchise used in the Natal Colony, while theoretically not restricted by race, was significantly less liberal than that of the Cape, and no more than a few hundred non-white electors ever qualified. In 1908, an estimated 200 of the 22,786 electors in the colony were of non-European descent, and by 1935, only one remained.^[1] By 1958, when the last non-white voters in the Cape were taken off the rolls, Natal too had an all-white electorate. The franchise was also restricted by property and education qualifications until the 1933 general election, following the passage of the Women's Enfranchisement Act, 1930 and the Franchise Laws Amendment Act, 1931. From then on, the franchise was given to all white citizens aged 21 or over, which remained the case until the end of apartheid and the introduction of universal suffrage in 1994.^[2]

As in most of Natal, the electorate of Umvoti was largely English-speaking and conservative. Its first MP was George Leuchars, who briefly served in cabinet under Louis Botha, before resigning in protest against the anti-British standpoints of J. B. M. Hertzog and others in Botha's cabinet. He continued to represent Umvoti until 1924, and in the subsequent by-election, his South African Party held the seat with William Arthur Deane, who had previously contested it as an independent in 1915. In 1929, Umvoti was abolished and largely replaced by the new Pietermaritzburg District seat, although Deane moved to Pietermaritzburg North and then the unified Pietermaritzburg seat, finally retiring from parliament in 1943.

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