Provincial council (South Africa)
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The provincial councils were the legislatures of the four original provinces of South Africa. They were created at the foundation of the
Union of South Africa The Union of South Africa ( nl, Unie van Zuid-Afrika; af, Unie van Suid-Afrika; ) was the historical predecessor to the present-day Republic of South Africa. It came into existence on 31 May 1910 with the unification of the Cape, Natal, Trans ...
in 1910, and abolished in 1986 when they were replaced by a strengthened executive appointed by the
State President The State President of the Republic of South Africa ( af, Staatspresident) was the head of state of South Africa from 1961 to 1994. The office was established when the country became a republic on 31 May 1961, albeit, outside the Commonweal ...
. The four provincial councils were the
Cape Provincial Council The Cape Provincial Council was the provincial council of the Cape Province of South Africa. It was created by the South Africa Act 1909, with effect from the formation of the Union of South Africa on 31 May 1910. The first election to the provinc ...
, the
Natal Provincial Council The Natal Provincial Council was the provincial council of Natal Province in South Africa. It was created by the South Africa Act 1909, with effect from the formation of the Union of South Africa on 31 May 1910. The Provincial Council continued t ...
, the
Transvaal Provincial Council The Transvaal Provincial Council was the provincial council of the Transvaal Province in South Africa. It was created by the South Africa Act 1909, from the formation of the Union of South Africa on 31 May 1910, and replaced the Transvaal Legisla ...
and the
Orange Free State Provincial Council The Orange Free State Provincial Council was the provincial council of the Orange Free State Province in South Africa. It was created by the South Africa Act 1909, with effect from the formation of the Union of South Africa on 31 May 1910. The pr ...
.


History

The
Union of South Africa The Union of South Africa ( nl, Unie van Zuid-Afrika; af, Unie van Suid-Afrika; ) was the historical predecessor to the present-day Republic of South Africa. It came into existence on 31 May 1910 with the unification of the Cape, Natal, Trans ...
was created in 1910 in terms of the
South Africa Act 1909 The South Africa Act 1909 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which created the Union of South Africa from the British Cape Colony, Colony of Natal, Orange River Colony, and Transvaal Colony. The Act also made provisions for pote ...
. Four British colonies
Cape Colony The Cape Colony ( nl, Kaapkolonie), also known as the Cape of Good Hope, was a British Empire, British colony in present-day South Africa named after the Cape of Good Hope, which existed from 1795 to 1802, and again from 1806 to 1910, when i ...
,
Transvaal Colony The Transvaal Colony () was the name used to refer to the Transvaal region during the period of direct British rule and military occupation between the end of the Second Boer War in 1902 when the South African Republic was dissolved, and the ...
,
Natal Colony The Colony of Natal was a British colony in south-eastern Africa. It was proclaimed a British colony on 4 May 1843 after the British government had annexed the Boer Republic of Natalia, and on 31 May 1910 combined with three other colonies to ...
and
Orange River Colony The Orange River Colony was the British colony created after Britain first occupied (1900) and then annexed (1902) the independent Orange Free State in the Second Boer War. The colony ceased to exist in 1910, when it was absorbed into the Unio ...
became provinces of the new country, and the colonies' parliaments were abolished and most of their powers transferred to the new Parliament of the Union. The provincial councils were created to legislate on those matters which the South Africa Act allocated to the provinces. When South Africa became a republic in 1961, the Constitution of 1961 preserved the provincial councils unchanged, except that the powers previously vested in the
Governor-General Governor-general (plural ''governors-general''), or governor general (plural ''governors general''), is the title of an office-holder. In the context of governors-general and former British colonies, governors-general are appointed as viceroy t ...
now vested in the
State President The State President of the Republic of South Africa ( af, Staatspresident) was the head of state of South Africa from 1961 to 1994. The office was established when the country became a republic on 31 May 1961, albeit, outside the Commonweal ...
. In 1973 the law relating to the delimitation of electoral divisions and the dissolution of provincial councils was altered by the Constitution and Elections Amendment Act, 1973, as described below. The Constitution of 1983, which created the
Tricameral Parliament The Tricameral Parliament, officially the Parliament of the Republic of South Africa, was the legislature of South Africa between 1984 and 1994, established by the South African Constitution of 1983, which gave a limited political voice to t ...
, preserved those sections of the 1961 constitution dealing with the provincial councils under the name of the Provincial Government Act, 1961. The State President was given the power to remove matters from the jurisdiction of the provincial councils and instead place them under the jurisdiction of the individual racially segregated Houses of Parliament as "own affairs". The provincial councils were entirely abolished by the Provincial Government Act, 1986, which provided for an executive council for each province to be appointed by the State President. The legislative powers of each provincial council were transferred to the Administrator of the province, subject to the approval of Parliament. In 1994, on the commencement of the
Interim Constitution A provisional constitution, interim constitution or transitional constitution is a constitution intended to serve during a transitional period until a permanent constitution is adopted. The following countries currently have,had in the past,such a c ...
, the four original provinces were dissolved to be replaced by the nine provinces now existing. Each new province has a provincial legislature which has considerably broader legislative powers than the old provincial councils, and is elected by all citizens of the province regardless of race.


Election

The provincial council was composed of members elected by
first-past-the-post In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast their ...
voting in single-member electoral divisions. In provinces which elected at least 25 members to the national
House of Assembly House of Assembly is a name given to the legislature or lower house of a bicameral parliament. In some countries this may be at a subnational level. Historically, in British Crown colonies as the colony gained more internal responsible governme ...
(i.e. the Cape and Transvaal), the number of provincial councillors was the same as the number of Assembly members, and the same electoral districts were used for both. In provinces with less than 25 Assembly seats (i.e. Natal and the Orange Free State), there were 25 provincial councillors and separate districts were delimited for their election. This formula was altered by the Constitution and Elections Amendment Act, 1973, so that provinces electing 20 or more Assembly members would have corresponding Assembly and provincial council divisions, while provinces with fewer than 20 Assembly seats would have two provincial council divisions for each Assembly division. The result was that Natal, with exactly 20 Assembly seats, saw its provincial council shrink from 25 to 20 members; while the Orange Free State, with 14 Assembly seats, saw its provincial council grow from 25 to 28 members. The qualifications required to vote in provincial council elections were initially the same as those that had applied to elections in the four colonies. This meant that the franchise in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State was restricted by law to white men, and in Natal the franchise was effectively limited to white men. Only in the Cape were there significant numbers of non-white voters, although they were limited by property and education qualifications. In 1930 all white women were given the right to vote, and in 1931 all remaining property and education qualifications were removed for white men. In 1936, under the
Representation of Natives Act The Representation of Natives Act No 12 of 1936 (commenced 10 July) was legislation passed in South Africa which further reduced black rights at the time. The Cape province had a qualified franchise which had allowed a small number of blacks in t ...
, black voters in the Cape Province were removed from the common voters' roll and instead allowed to separately elect two members of the provincial council. In 1956, under the
Separate Representation of Voters Act The Separate Representation of Voters Act No. 46 was introduced in South Africa on 18 June 1951. Part of the legislation during the apartheid era, the National Party introduced it to enforce racial segregation, and was part of a deliberate proc ...
,
coloured Coloureds ( af, Kleurlinge or , ) refers to members of multiracial ethnic communities in Southern Africa who may have ancestry from more than one of the various populations inhabiting the region, including African, European, and Asian. South ...
voters in the Cape were similarly removed from the common roll and allowed to separately elect two members. The members representing black voters were removed in 1959 and those representing coloured voters were removed in 1968. Originally the term of the provincial council was five years, from the first meeting of the council after it was elected. The administrator of the province fixed the date for the meeting, but the provincial council had to meet at least once a year. The South African Parliament could alter the term by legislation (as it did when the provincial elections due in 1941 were postponed until 1943), but there was no general power to dissolve a provincial council before its statutory term expired. Under the Constitution and Elections Amendment Act, 1973, the State President was given the power to dissolve the provincial councils at the same time as the House of Assembly, so that the subsequent provincial election could take place on the same day as a parliamentary general election.''South Africa 1982'', page 153 (provisions in the 1909 and 1973 Acts, about the terms of provincial councils)


Powers

The provincial councils had the power to make laws, known as "ordinances", dealing with certain topics listed in the
South Africa Act The South Africa Act 1909 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which created the Union of South Africa from the British Cape Colony, Colony of Natal, Orange River Colony, and Transvaal Colony. The Act also made provisions for pote ...
and in the Constitution Act that replaced it when South Africa became a republic. These topics were: * Education, except for higher education; the education of black people was removed from provincial responsibility in 1953, as was the education of
coloured Coloureds ( af, Kleurlinge or , ) refers to members of multiracial ethnic communities in Southern Africa who may have ancestry from more than one of the various populations inhabiting the region, including African, European, and Asian. South ...
and
Indian Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ...
people in 1963 and 1965 respectively. * Agriculture * Hospitals and charities * Local government and, from 1926, local public health * Local infrastructure, except for railways and harbours * Roads *
Markets Market is a term used to describe concepts such as: * Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand * Market economy *Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market Geography *Märket, a ...
and pounds * Fish and game preservation * Taxation for provincial purposes and the borrowing of money for provincial purposes * The punishment of violations of provincial ordinances * Other matters which the national executive determined were of a purely local nature, or in which Parliament delegated legislative power to the provincial councils. The provincial councils were always subordinate to
Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...
, which could overrule provincial ordinances. Further, while acts of Parliament could not be questioned by the courts, provincial ordinances were subject to
judicial review Judicial review is a process under which executive, legislative and administrative actions are subject to review by the judiciary. A court with authority for judicial review may invalidate laws, acts and governmental actions that are incompat ...
to determine whether they were ''
ultra vires ('beyond the powers') is a Latin phrase used in law to describe an act which requires legal authority but is done without it. Its opposite, an act done under proper authority, is ('within the powers'). Acts that are may equivalently be termed ...
''.


Executive committee

The provincial executive committee consisted of an Administrator appointed by the national executive and four members elected by the provincial council. These members were elected by
single transferable vote Single transferable vote (STV) is a multi-winner electoral system in which voters cast a single vote in the form of a ranked-choice ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vote may be transferred according to alternate p ...
, so were not necessarily all from the same party. The executive committee was responsible for the administration of provincial affairs. Executive powers were shared by the administrator and an executive committee. This arrangement was neither the traditional Westminster system (such as that which existed at the national level of government) or a United States style separation of powers between the executive and legislative parts of the government. The Administrator, who was appointed by the national government for a five-year term, was the official in whose name all provincial executive acts were carried out. He was not responsible to the provincial council and it had no power to remove him from office; he could only be removed by the national government. The administrator was the chairman of the provincial executive committee and had both an original and casting vote in its deliberations.


See also

*
Parliament of South Africa The Parliament of the Republic of South Africa is South Africa's legislature; under the present Constitution of South Africa, the bicameral Parliament comprises a National Assembly and a National Council of Provinces. The current twenty-seve ...
*
South Africa Act 1909 The South Africa Act 1909 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which created the Union of South Africa from the British Cape Colony, Colony of Natal, Orange River Colony, and Transvaal Colony. The Act also made provisions for pote ...
*
South African Constitution of 1961 The Constitution of 1961 (formally the Republic of South Africa Constitution Act, 1961) was the fundamental law of South Africa for two decades. Under the terms of the constitution South Africa left the Commonwealth and became a republic. Le ...
*
Provincial legislature (South Africa) In South Africa, a provincial legislature is the legislative branch of the government of a province.'' Chapter 6: Provinces'', Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996. The provincial legislatures are unicameral and vary in size from 30 ...


References

{{Reflist
Council A council is a group of people who come together to consult, deliberate, or make decisions. A council may function as a legislature, especially at a town, city or county/shire level, but most legislative bodies at the state/provincial or natio ...
Defunct unicameral legislatures History of South Africa 1910 establishments in South Africa 1986 disestablishments in South Africa