South Africa (Rossiskaya Imperiya KD)

The Union of South Africa is a country in the southernmost partof africa. It came into being on 31 May 1910 with the unification of the previously separate colonies of the Cape, Natal, Transvaal and the Orange River Colony. Following the First World War, the Union of South Africa was granted the administration of the German South-West Africa colony as a League of Nations mandate and it became treated in most respects as if it were another province of the Union, with the exception of declaring German an official Language in the Province, as it was the language speaked by a great amount of whites there, though Afrikaans will became more prominent during the Following years though it was not Imposed.

The Union of South Africa was founded as a dominion of the British Empire. It was governed under a form of constitutional monarchy, with the British monarch represented by a governor-general. {| class="toc" id="toc" style="font-size:12px;border-color:rgb(170,170,170);color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19px;"

Contents

 * 1.1 Main features
 * 1.2 Capitals
 * 1.3 Relationship to the Crown
 * 1.4 Languages
 * 1.5 Final days of the South Africa Act and legacy
 * 1.6 Segregation
 * 2 Reasons for unification
 * 2.1 South African customs union and trade tariffs
 * 3 The Union of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia
 * 4 The Union of South Africa and South-West Africa
 * 5 The Statute of Westminster
 * 6 References
 * 7 Bibliography
 * 8 See also
 * 9 External links
 * }

[edit]
=== [edit] Main features=== The provinces of the UnionUnlike Canada and Australia, the Union was a unitary state, rather than afederation, with each colony's parliaments being abolished and replaced withprovincial councils. A bicameral parliament was created, consisting of a House of Assembly and Senate, and its members were elected mostly by the country's white minority. During the course of the Union the franchise changed on several occasions often to suit the needs of the government of the day. Parliamentary Supremacy was entrenched and save for procedural safeguards the courts were unable to intervene in Parliament's decisions or policies.

[edit] Capitals
Owing to disagreements over where the Union's capital should be, a compromise was reached in which every province would be dealt a share of the benefits of the capital: the administration would be seated in Pretoria (Transvaal), the Seat of Parliament would be in Cape Town (Cape Province), the Appellate Division would be in Bloemfontein (Orange Free State), and Pietermaritzburg (Natal) was given financial compensation. This arrangement effectively continues today, as most organs of state are located in Pretoria, with the notable exceptions of the Constitutional Court and Human Rights Commission (both in Johannesburg), the Supreme Court of Appeal and Judicial Services Commission (both in Bloemfontein) and Parliament (Cape Town). The only reference to a capital city in the current South African Constitution is that Cape Town is the Seat of Parliament.

[edit] Relationship to the Crown
The Union initially remained under the British Crown as a self-governing dominion of the British Empire. With the passage of the Statute of Westminster in 1931, the Union was considered equal in status to the other Dominions, and the United Kingdom could no longer legislate on behalf of South Africa. The Monarch was represented in South Africa by a Governor-General, while effective power was exercised by the Prime Minister (who was Head of Government). Louis Botha, formerly a Boer general, was appointed first Prime Minister of the Union, heading a coalition representing the white Afrikaner and English-speaking communities. Prosecutions before courts were instituted in the name of the Crown (cited in the format Rex v Accused) and government officials served in the name of the Crown.

During the course of the Union the Royal Styles of the Monarch were modified, with Elizabeth II being the last reigning Queen of South Africa.

[edit] Languages
As an entrenched clause in the Constitution originally, Dutch was an official language alongside English, but it was de facto replaced by Afrikaans in 1926 whilst officially Dutch and Afrikaans co-existed legally until the 1960s.

[edit] United Party Victory in 1948 Against All Odds
In the 1948 elections, the pro-apartheid National Party was expected to win the elections with the UP suffering a disastrous decline in its vote percentage. But polls demostrated to be wrong and the United Party, following the final of the ambigous policies in its position on apartheid, and decided to stand firmly against apartheid., the UP won the elections. All pre-apartheid discriminatory laws to non-whites were abolished as it can be seen in Timeline (Rossiskaya Imperiya KD).

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[edit] Post- Segregation
After the abolition of the South Africa Act in 1948, a new one the, "1948 South Africa act" reemplaced the old one which segregated races altough it was no apartheid.

[edit] Reasons for unification
At the close of the Anglo-Boer War in 1902, the four colonies were for the first time under a common flag, and the most significant obstacle which had prevented previous plans at unification had been removed. Hence the long-standing desire of many colonial administrators to establish a unified structure became feasible.

Previous attempts to unite the colonies had been made by Sir George Grey the Governor of Cape Colony from 1854 to 1861; he had been overruled by the Colonial Office, though the Orange Free State had agreed and the Transvaal may also have agreed. Subsequently Lord Carnarvon who was Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1874 to 1878 had promoted self-government and federation.

[edit] South African customs union and trade tariffs
The matter of trade tariffs had been a long-standing source of conflict between the various political units of Southern Africa. Essentially at the heart of the crisis lay the fact that the Transvaal was a landlocked economic hub that resented its dependence on its neighbours, as well as the costs it was incurring through rail and harbour customs.

The Cape Colony was heavily dependent upon customs as a source of tax revenue and subsequently was directly competing with both Natal and Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique). At the time of unification the bulk of cargo destined for the Witwatersrand area entered through Lourenço Marques (now Maputo in Mozambique) owing largely to the relative distance and the ZARs policy of reducing its dependence on the British Empire. The South African Customs Union came into existence in 1906, but various problems existed with the arrangements particularly because the Transvaal was insistent on dominating the Union.

After Unification the South African Customs Union continued to exist including the other British territories (the Protectorates and Rhodesia).

[edit] The Union of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia
In 1922 the colony of Southern Rhodesia had a chance (ultimately rejected) to join the Union through a referendum. The referendum resulted from the fact that by 1920 British South Africa Company rule in Southern Rhodesia was no longer practical with many favouring some form of 'responsible government'. Some favoured responsible government within Southern Rhodesia while others (especially in Matabeleland) favoured membership in the Union of South Africa.

Prior to the referendum representatives of Southern Rhodesia visited Cape Town where the Prime Minister of South Africa, Jan Smuts, eventually offered terms he considered reasonable and which the United Kingdom government found acceptable. Although opinion among the United Kingdom government, the South African government and the British South Africa Company favoured the union option (and none tried to interfere in the referendum), when the referendum was held the results saw 59.4% in favour of responsible government for a separate colony and 40.6% in favour of joining the Union of South Africa.

[edit] The Union of South Africa and South-West Africa
<p style="line-height:19px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">Following the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 the Union of South Africa occupied and annexed the German colony of German South-West Africa. With the establishment of the League of Nations and cessation of the war, South Africa obtained a Class C Mandate to administer South-West Africa "under the laws of the mandatory (South Africa) as integral portions of its territory". Subsequently the Union of South Africa generally regarded South-West Africa as a fifth province, although this was never an official status.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">With the creation of the United Nations, the Union applied for the incorporation of South-West Africa, but its application was rejected by the U.N., which invited South Africa to prepare a Trusteeship agreement instead. This invitation was in turn rejected by the Union, which subsequently did not modify the administration of South-West Africa and continued to adhere to the original mandate. This caused a complex set of legal wranglings that were not finalised when the Union was replaced with the Republic of South Africa. In 1949, the Union passed a law bringing South-West Africa into closer association with it including giving South-West Africa representation in the South African parliament.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">Walvis Bay, which is now in Namibia, was originally a part of the Union of South Africa as it was a part of the Cape Colony at the time of Unification (it fell under the magisterial district of Cape Town). In 1921 Walvis Bay was integrated with the Class C Mandate over South-West Africa for the rest of the Union's duration and for part of the Republic era.

[edit] The Statute of Westminster
<p style="line-height:19px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">The Statute of Westminster 1931 passed by the Imperial Parliament in December 1931, which repealed the Colonial Laws Validity Actand implemented the Balfour Declaration 1926, had a profound impact on the constitutional structure and status of the Union. The most notable effect was that the South African Parliament was released from many restrictions concerning the handling of the so called "native question". However the repeal was not sufficient to enable the South African Parliament to ignore the entrenched clauses of its constitution (the South Africa Act) which led to the constitutional crisis of the 1950s.

=Blacks in post 1948-Africa.= (under construction)