The document showing the clause, as revised by Jan Smuts in his own handwriting, stating that ‘the question regarding the franchise of natives will not be decided until after the introduction of self-government’. Thus the potentially divisive question of the black franchise was dodged in the name of white unity.
The attempts by South African politicians to bring about a union or a federation started when leading white political figures in South Africa – representing both the government and the opposition parties of the four colonies – were appointed by their respective parliaments to be delegates to the National Convention, which was to discuss the terms of unification. On 12 October 1908 it began its deliberations in Durban. Subsequent sessions followed in Cape Town from late November to February 1909. After the draft constitution had been referred to the colonial parliaments, the National Convention concluded its business in Bloemfontein in May 1909.
The constitution was drafted in the remarkably short time of less than eight months, compared to the period of about three years and ten years respectively it had taken Canada and Australia to draw up their federal constitutions. It was an indication of the unanimous agreement on the need to create one government for the sub-continent. It did not, however, mean that there were not formidable differences of opinion on various details of the constitution.
A basic matter to be settled, for example, was whether the constitutional form of the new nation would be a union or a federation. The only support for a federation was a vague, poorly presented case by the Natal delegates. Other controversial matters were the black franchise question, the division of parliamentary seats among the various provinces and the delimitation of constituencies within the provinces. But these matters were settled by compromise or by shelving them for future settlement.
The most dramatic moment of the convention was ex-President Steyn’s intervention in the debate about an official language. Referring to the Boers and the British as different races, as was the custom at the time, he asked delegates to expunge ‘the devil of race hatred’ that had plagued the country for so long. The way to do that was to place the two languages on a footing of ‘absolute equality in Parliament, in the Courts, in the schools and the public service – everywhere’. Smuts, who believed English should become the sole official language, kept silent. Steyn’s view found expression in Article 137. It decreed:
Both the English and Dutch languages shall be official languages of the Union and shall be treat on a footing of equality and possess and enjoy equal freedom, rights and privileges; all records, journals and proceedings of Parliament shall be kept in both languages, and all Bills, Acts and notices of general public importance or interest issued by the Government of the Union of South Africa shall be in both languages. Hertzog was convinced that effective equality of treatment had been secured and that if necessary the government would use compulsion to achieve it. Writing in The State, Gustav Preller called the Union’s promise to place the two official languages on a footing of ‘most perfect equality’ essential to Afrikaner support for the Union.
State feelings came so strongly to the fore in the discussions regarding the establishment of a capital city of the Union that a deadlock was only averted by another compromise, with Pretoria becoming the administrative capital, Cape Town the legislative capital and Bloemfontein the judicial capital.
