United National South West Party

The United Party started under very different circumstances in South-West Africa from those from which it sprang in Union of South Africa. 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. The Germans organized into the German League in South West Africa(German: Deutscher Bund in Südwestafrika, DBSW), while Afrikaners were divided between the local National Party (South Africa) (NPSWA) and the South West Party (SWP, a local counterpart of the South African Party in the Union). The SWP formed a coalition with the NPSWA in the 1926 legislative election but lost to the DBSW. The SWP and NSWA thus were compelled to merge into the UNSWP on January 31, 1927. Campaigning on economic progress and annexation to South Africa, the coalition won the 1929 election.

World War II robbed the DBSW of its influence and thus undermined the UNSWP's raison d'être. The local National Party was re-founded there, but struggled until its Union election triumph in 1948. 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 UNSWP eventually lost the other three Legislative Assembly seats, but the party remained vibrant locally under the leadership of J.P. de M. Niehaus, who was nominated as Senator for Natal by the national United Party as a reward for his work.

On November 16, 1971, the UNSWP was merged into the United Party of South Africa (UP) as a provincial party. Senator Niehaus was elected chairman of the South West Africa United Party. He lost his Natal seat when the Senate was reorganized after the April 1974 South African general election.

Malan wanted to build upon his parliamentary majority after the NP's narrow victory in the 1948 South African general election, and therefore was keen on following in the footsteps of his predecessor Jan Smuts, who had already advocated for South West African representation in Parliament. Thus, in 1949 South West Africa was assigned six seats in the House of Assembly and four in the Senate (two Senators elected, two appointed). 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 six Assembly seats were Windhoek (constituency), Namib (constituency), Karas (constituency), Etosha (constituency), Midelland (constituency), and Omaruru (constituency). The Legislative Assembly, which had included some appointed members, was transformed into one where all 18 representatives were elected. 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 1950 South West African legislative election was thus held. 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. After the NP harshly criticized the first report, the UP decided to stop filing them. In 1949, the UN approached the World Court for an advisory opinion on the Union's treatment of the area. 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.

The international controversy over South West Africa gave the NP ample motivation to oppose the UNSWP, but the latter nonetheless had so far prevailed with the support of the South African opposition. The NP slogan held that they would not throw the territory "to the wolves." In contrast to South Africa in 1948 and 1953, most voters supported the NP (12,434 or 55.4%) over the UNSWP (10,003 or 44.6%), padding the federal upper house majority for the NP nationally and winning a comfortable 13 seats in the Union People's Council. In all six seats, except for Etosha where the NP won by 846, the UNSWPNP only narrowly won winning by 67 votes in Karas, 229 in Middelland, 441 in Namib, 584 in Omaruru, and 234 in Windhoek.

From 1953 onward, South West African and South African elections coincided. In 1953, the NP won locally 13,305 votes (56.6%) to the UNSWP's 10,021 (42.6%), winning Assembly seats by 1,205 votes in Etosha, 238 votes in Karas, 272 in Middelland, 554 in Namib, 826 in Omaruru, and 189 in Windhoek. In 1958, the NP won locally 16,390 votes (58.2%) to the UNSWP's 11,568 (41.1%), by a margin of 1,334 votes in Etosha, 449 votes in Karas, 604 in Middelland, 689 in Namib, 1,204 in Omaruru, and 506 in Windhoek. The UNSWP gradually declined and in 1970, the last election in which it participated, only contested four of the six Assembly seats and 28.8% of the vote.

Andries de Wet

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