ABSTRACT
This had been well established in 1910 with the vote being denied to people of colour in Natal, the OFS and Transvaal. The Cape African franchise was abolished in 1936. The process of racialised disfranchisement was taken further after 1948. Under the Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Act of 1946 Indians were to be offered token political representation (the right to elect five white representatives to parliament) as quid pro quo for restrictions on their land rights. The new NP government promptly abolished this token Indian franchise in 1948. It also set about disenfranchising coloured voters at the Cape. This turned out to be a long, fraught constitutional process requiring considerable machination and manipulation on the part of the government in order to obtain the necessary two-thirds parliamentary majority required for such a constitutional amendment. The Appeal Court was enlarged and packed with NP-aligned judges. So too was the membership of the senate increased, enabling the government to carry through coloured disenfranchisement in 1956.
