A South African election
Richard Cavendish remembers the Union of South Africa's first election campaign in September 1910.
Sept 15th 1910
The second Boer War ended in a British victory in 1902. Defeat reinforced Afrikaner (Boer) nationalism and the bitter resentments the war left behind were still festering when the new Union of South Africa came formally into existence on May 31st, 1910 as a self-governing British dominion. Uniting the former colonies of the Cape, the Orange River, the Transvaal and Natal, the Union had a population of almost six million. There were some four million black Africans, more than one and a quarter million whites of British or Afrikaner descent, about half a million ‘coloureds’ and 150,000 Asians.
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