1977 South African General Election
General elections were held in South Africa on 30 November 1977. The National Party (South Africa), National Party, led by John Vorster, B. J. Vorster won a landslide victory in the House of Assembly (South Africa), House of Assembly. The newly formed Progressive Federal Party, led by Colin Eglin became the official opposition. The New Republic Party, successor to the United Party (South Africa), United Party, won only 10 seats, all but one of them in Natal Province. Once again, the Herstigte Nasionale Party failed to win any seats. In the 1977 elections, the National Party received its best-ever result with support of 65% of the vote and (after a by-election) 135 seats in parliament out of 165. However, Vorster resigned as prime minister for alleged health reasons on 28 September 1978. Background On 11 February 1975 four liberal MPs led by Harry Schwarz broke away from the United Party (South Africa), United Party and created the Reform Party (South Africa), Reform Party. The p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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House Of Assembly (South Africa)
The House of Assembly (known in Afrikaans as the , or "People's Council") was the lower house of the Parliament of South Africa from 1910 to 1981, the unicameralism, sole parliamentary chamber between 1981 and 1984, and latterly the white representative house of the Tricameral Parliament from 1984 to 1994, when it was replaced by the current National Assembly of South Africa, National Assembly. Throughout its history, it was exclusively constituted of white members who were elected to office predominantly by White South African, white citizens, though until 1960 and 1970, respectively, some Black Africans and Coloureds in the Cape Province voted under a restricted form of suffrage. The old House of Assembly chamber was severely damaged in a 2022 Parliament of South Africa fire, fire in January 2022. Method of election The members were elected by first-past-the-post voting in single-member district, single-member electoral divisions. Following the abolition of the Senate of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Reform Party (South Africa)
The Reform Party () was an anti-apartheid political party that existed for just five months in 1975 and is one of the predecessor parties to the Democratic Alliance. The Reform Party was created on 11 February by a group of four Members of Parliament (MPs) who left the United Party under the guidance of the leader of the United Party in the Transvaal, Harry Schwarz, who became the party's leader. Schwarz and others were staunchly opposed to apartheid and called for a much more rigorous opposition to the National Party. They said that they no longer felt the UP was "the vehicle in which we can travel the path of verligtheid". The party had four MPs, two senators, ten members of the Transvaal Provincial Council, 14 out of the 36 Johannesburg City Councillors and four Randburg City Councillors. This made it the official opposition in the Transvaal Provincial Council. Formation There was much division in the United party, between liberals and conservatives in the 1960s and ea ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1977 Elections In South Africa
Events January * January 8 – 1977 Moscow bombings, Three bombs explode in Moscow within 37 minutes, killing seven. The bombings are attributed to an Armenian separatist group. * January 10 – Mount Nyiragongo erupts in eastern Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). * January 17 – 49 marines from the and are killed as a result of a collision in Barcelona harbour, Spain. * January 18 ** Scientists identify a previously unknown Bacteria, bacterium as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires' disease. ** Australia's worst Granville rail disaster, railway disaster at Granville, a suburb of Sydney, leaves 83 people dead. ** SFR Yugoslavia Prime minister Džemal Bijedić, his wife and 6 others are killed in a plane crash in Bosnia and Herzegovina. * January 19 – An Ejército del Aire CASA C-207 Azor, CASA C-207C Azor (registration T.7-15) plane crashes into the side of a mountain near Chiva, Valencia, Chiva, on approach to Valencia Airport in Spain, killing all ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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General Elections In South Africa
A general officer is an officer of high rank in the armies, and in some nations' air and space forces, marines or naval infantry. In some usages, the term "general officer" refers to a rank above colonel."general, adj. and n.". OED Online. March 2021. Oxford University Press. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/77489?rskey=dCKrg4&result=1 (accessed May 11, 2021) The adjective ''general'' had been affixed to officer designations since the late medieval period to indicate relative superiority or an extended jurisdiction. French Revolutionary system Arab system Other variations Other nomenclatures for general officers include the titles and ranks: * Adjutant general * Commandant-general * Inspector general * General-in-chief * General of the Air Force (USAF only) * General of the Armies of the United States (of America), a title created for General John J. Pershing, and subsequently granted posthumously to George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant * (" general admiral ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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South African Party (Republic Of South Africa)
The South African Party was a small political party in South Africa from 1977 to 1980. It was formed by six self-described centrist MPs who had been expelled from the United Party on 19 January 1977 for refusing to accept the party's decision to accept the Marais plan to create a new united opposition party, which became the New Republic Party. The six constituted themselves as the Independent United Party. The party renamed itself the South African Party (SAP) and elected MP Myburgh Streicher as its leader at its founding conference held in Pretoria on 27 and 28 May 1977. The new party committed itself to a federal or confederal solution to the country's political future and to the maintenance of separate group identities under white leadership with the rejection of power-sharing at every level. The party contested the 1977 general election and won three seats in the House of Assembly, however, Streicher was defeated in his Cape Town constituency of Wynberg. John Wiley b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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New Republic Party (South Africa)
The New Republic Party (NRP) was a South African political party. It was formed as the successor to the disbanded United Party (UP) in 1977 and as a merger with the smaller Democratic Party. It drew its support mainly from the then Province of Natal, and tried to strike a moderate course between the apartheid policy of the ruling National Party (NP) and the liberal policies of the Progressive Federal Party (PFP). Background The United Party had been the main opposition in the House of Assembly since it lost power in the 1948 election, but it was severely weakened by a split in 1975. To gain new support, the UP then merged with the Democratic Party to form the New Republic Party in 1977. After the UP wound up, the last UP leader, Sir de Villiers Graaff served as the interim national leader of the new party, with Radclyffe Cadman as parliamentary leader. Before the 1977 election, Graaff resigned and Cadman became the national leader. However, a significant number of UP p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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South Africa Legislation, 1977
South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both west and east. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sunþaz'' ("south"), possibly related to the same Proto-Indo-European root that the word ''sun'' derived from. Some languages describe south in the same way, from the fact that it is the direction of the sun at noon (in the Northern Hemisphere), like Latin meridies 'noon, south' (from medius 'middle' + dies 'day', ), while others describe south as the right-hand side of the rising sun, like Biblical Hebrew תֵּימָן teiman 'south' from יָמִין yamin 'right', Aramaic תַּימנַא taymna from יָמִין yamin 'right' and Syriac ܬܰܝܡܢܳܐ taymna from ܝܰܡܝܺܢܳܐ yamina (hence the name of Yemen, the land to the south/right of the Levant). South is sometimes abbreviated as S. Navigation By convention, the ''bottom or down-f ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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White South Africans
White South Africans are South Africans of European descent. In linguistic, cultural, and historical terms, they are generally divided into the Afrikaans-speaking descendants of the Dutch East India Company's original colonists, known as Afrikaners, and the Anglophone descendants of predominantly British colonists of South Africa. White South Africans are by far the largest population of White Africans. ''White'' was a legally defined racial classification during apartheid. White settlement in South Africa began with Dutch colonisation in 1652, followed by British colonisation in the 19th century, which led to tensions and further expansion inland by Boer settlers. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, waves of immigrants from Europe and continued to grow the white population, which peaked in the mid-1990s. Under apartheid, strict racial classifications enforced a legal and economic order that privileged the white minority. Post-apartheid reforms such as Black Economic ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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First-past-the-post Voting
First-past-the-post (FPTP)—also called choose-one, first-preference plurality (FPP), or simply plurality—is a single-winner voting rule. Voters mark one candidate as their favorite, or first-preference, and the candidate with more first-preference votes than any other candidate (a ''plurality'') is elected, even if they do not have more than half of votes (a '' majority''). FPP has been used to elect part of the British House of Commons since the Middle Ages before spreading throughout the British Empire. Throughout the 20th century, many countries that previously used FPP have abandoned it in favor of other electoral systems, including the former British colonies of Australia and New Zealand. FPP is still officially used in the majority of US states for most elections. However, the combination of partisan primaries and a two-party system in these jurisdictions means that most American elections behave effectively like two-round systems, in which the first round ch ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Progressive Reform Party (South Africa)
The Progressive Reform Party () was a South African party that was formed on 26 July 1975 by the fusion of the Reform Party led by Harry Schwarz and the Progressive Party led by Colin Eglin Colin Wells Eglin (14 April 1925 – 29 November 2013) was a South African politician best known for having served as national leader of the opposition from 1977–79 and 1986–87. He represented Sea Point in the South African Parliament from 1 .... Harry Schwarz predicted that the merger would lead to a "new political dimension in South Africa." Colin Eglin was elected leader of the party while Harry Schwarz was made Chairman of the Federal Executive. In 1977, the United Party merged with another small party to form the New Republic Party. A number of United Party members left to form the Committee for a United Opposition, which then joined the Progressive Reform Party to form the Progressive Federal Party with Colin Eglin as its leader. References Political parties esta ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Progressive Party (South Africa)
The Progressive Party () was a liberal party in South Africa which, during the era of apartheid, was considered the left wing of the all-white parliament. The party represented the legal opposition to apartheid within South Africa's white minority. It opposed the ruling National Party's racial policies, and championed the rule of law. For 13 years, its only member of parliament was Helen Suzman. It was later renamed the Progressive Reform Party in 1975, and then Progressive Federal Party in 1977. The modern Democratic Alliance considers the party to be its earliest predecessor. The Progressive Party of South Africa is not to be confused with the much earlier Progressive Party of the Cape Colony, which was founded on very different, pro-imperialist policies and which became the "Union Party" in 1908. Creation The Progressive Party was formed by members who had left the United Party following the United Party Union Congress held in Bloemfontein starting on 11 August 1959 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |