Liberal Party of South Africa

The Liberal Party of South Africa was a South African political party from 1953 to 1968.

Founding

The party was founded on 9 May 1953 at a meeting of the South African Liberal Association in Cape Town. Essentially, it grew out of a belief that the United Party was unable to achieve any real liberal progress in South Africa. Its establishment occurred during the "Coloured Vote" Constitutional Crisis of the 1950s, and the division of the Torch Commando on the matter of mixed membership.

Founding members of the party included (original positions in the party given):

Margaret Ballinger (South African MP) – President of party
Alan Paton (novelist) – Vice-President
Hilda Kuper

History

thumbnail|Party members put up posters in [[Sea Point during the 1959 provincial election campaign]]

For the first half of its life, the Liberal Party was comparatively conservative and saw its task primarily in terms of changing the minds of the white electorate. It leaned towards a qualified franchise.

This changed in 1959–1960. The Progressive Party, formed from a number of disgruntled United Party MPs in 1959, emerged on the political ground the Liberal Party had occupied up until then. In 1960, the Sharpeville massacre and consequent State of Emergency, during which black organisations were banned and several Liberal Party members were detained, changed the outlook of the party. Another factor was the use of simultaneous translation equipment at party congresses, which enabled black rural members to speak uninhibitedly for the first time. The party reached a peak of four MPs in the South African House of Assembly, all of them from the "Native" representatives, elected under the Cape Qualified Franchise.

In 1960, after the passing of the Promotion of Bantu Self-government Act, the Native representative MPs were abolished, and so the Liberal Party was left without parliamentary representation. The Progressive Party, following the split, had seven but lost all but one in the 1961 general election. The Progressive Party hence came to emerged as the more "relevant" political arm against apartheid, although its programme was more modest, favouring a qualified (but strictly non-racial) franchise akin to the old Cape franchise, indeed similar to that enacted in Rhodesia in 1961.

Bibliography