Elections in South Africa include elections for the National Assembly (the lower house of the Parliament of South Africa), the provincial legislatures, and municipal councils. Elections are held on a five-year cycle and are conducted by the Electoral Commission (IEC), which is an independent body established by the constitution. The most recent elections for the National Assembly and provincial legislatures were held in 2024, while the most recent elections for municipal councils were held in 2021.
In elections for the National Assembly, by voting for political parties and independent candidates, voters elect 400 Members of Parliament, who serve to represent their constituents throughout their terms of office.
In such elections, every South African citizen who is 18 or older is eligible to vote, including (since the 2014 election) those resident outside South Africa. Voters must be registered with the Electoral Commission and have a identity card or book.
In contrast, in elections for a provincial legislature or municipal council, only those resident within the respective province or municipality may vote.
The electoral system for the National Assembly and the provincial legislatures is based on party-list proportional representation, which means that parties are represented in proportion to their electoral support. Since 2024, independent candidates have also been able to stand for election. For municipal councils there is a mixed-member system in which wards elect individual councillors alongside those named from party lists. Changes to the electoral system were proposed in 2025 by an advisory body established by Parliament.
The next elections in South Africa will be the 2026 municipal elections, which are scheduled to take place on 4 November.
Latest general election
Result in history 1910 South Africa general election
1929 South Africa general election
1994 South Africa general election
History
Before the Union When the British took over the Cape, first in 1795 and then more permanently in 1806, they inherited a large, thinly populated pastoral society that depended on the labour of slaves and a rural workforce of indigenous Khoekhoe whose condition was akin to serfdom. In 1806 the entire population of the colony consisted of fewer than 80,000 people: 26,768 whites, 1,200 free blacks (manumitted slaves), 29,861 slaves and 20,426 Khoikhoi .Martin Legassick, The struggle for the Eastern Cape, 1800 – 1854, KMM Review Publishing Company, Johannesburg, 2010, p. 5 In 1807, the British government ended the slave trade and, finally, in 1833 outlawed the practice of slavery throughout the Empire.
Under pressure from the humanitarian lobby in the UK, acting in concert with a local missionary campaign, the government abolished the Khoekhoe's serf-like status by the declaration of Ordinance 50 of 1828.Report of Commission of Inquiry regarding Cape Coloured Population of the Union, U.G. 54 – 1937, Government Printer, Pretoria, 1937, p. 212, para. 1034 According to the government's instructions, 'all Hottentots and other free persons of colour, lawfully residing within the said Colony, are and shall be, in the most full and ample manner, entitled to all and every the rights, privileges and benefits of the law, to which any other His Majesty's subjects, lawfully residing within the said Colony, are or can be entitled.' This became known as the "Hottentots' Magna Carta". The equality of all people appeared to be assured. As a result, municipal boards set up in the colony's towns and villages from 1836 allowed any male resident who lived in a property with a yearly rent £10 or more to vote for his town board. From the very beginning, therefore, persons of color were able to participate in local elections.Report of Commission of Inquiry regarding Cape Coloured Population of the Union, U.G. 54 – 1937, Government Printer, Pretoria, 1937, p.213, para 1037
This principle of a non-racial franchise was to be entrenched when the Cape was granted representative government in 1853. Part of the reason may have been give propertied Khoekhoe a greater stake in the political system. In 1850 the Khoekhoe of the Kat River Settlement had risen in rebellion. Although the uprising was defeated, it did influence the minds of colonial officials and politicians who were responsible for drawing up the 1853 constitution. The Cape's Attorney General, William Porter said: 'I would rather meet the Hottentot at the hustings voting for his representative than meet the Hottentot in the wilds with a gun on his shoulder.'Stanley Trapido, The friends of the natives: merchants, peasants and the political and ideological structure of liberalism in the Cape, 1854-1910, in Shula Marks and Anthony Atmore (eds.), Economy and society in pre-industrial South Africa, Longman, London, 1980, p. 262 In terms of the constitution of 1853, any man who owned property worth at least £25 was entitled to vote for or stand in the Cape's Parliament. By 1886 Africans made up 43 per cent of the vote in six constituencies of the Eastern Cape, and were a real political force.Andre Odendaal, The Founders: The Origins of the ANC and the Struggle for Democracy in South Africa, Jacana, Auckland Park, 2012, p.96 It was not long before white politicians began challenging the rights of Coloureds and Africans to vote. The passage of the Franchise and Ballot Act, which raised the property qualification from £25 to £75 in 1892, met with an angry response from African and Coloured voters.Richard van der Ross, A Political and Social History of the Cape Coloured People, 1880 – 1970, Thesis submitted to the University of Cape Town, 1973, UCT Special Collections, p. 11
These developments were not without criticism or opposition. The abolition of slavery, the declaration of Ordinance 50, and the accompanying extension of rights to the black population, were deeply resented by the white Dutch farmers of the Cape as undermining their way of life. Starting in 1834, thousands of these Boers set out on the Great Trek in the hope of leaving British control behind them. In the interior of southern Africa they would establish independent states, the South African Republic (also called the Transvaal Republic) and the Orange Free State, whose constitutions enshrined the principle of inequality between white and black in church and state.
After the Second Anglo-Boer War, the white peoples made peace and came together at the National Convention in October 1909. It brought together politicians from the Cape, Transvaal, Natal and the Orange River Colony, as well as Rhodesia. They aimed to draw up a constitution for the Union of South Africa, uniting the British possessions. The result was the South Africa Act.
Only white men were present at the National Convention; women and all other racial groups were excluded. This was in some ways unusual. Black men had enjoyed the vote in the Cape since the 1850s and – as long as they had sufficient property, income and education – continued to do so. By 1909 there were 14,388 Coloured and 6,633 African voters in the Cape.L. M. Thompson, The Unification of South Africa, 1902 – 1910, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1960, p. 110 Between them they made up 14.8% of the electorate. In Natal African men also had the right to vote, but it was so constrained that it was almost theoretical. They had to prove they had property and that they were 'civilised' and had been so for seven years. The Governor might then grant them the vote. Indians also had to overcome obstacles designed to prevent them from being enfranchised.L. M. Thompson, The Unification of South Africa, 1902 – 1910, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1960, p. 111 In the Transvaal and Orange Free State, only white men could vote.
The Cape argued that their non-racial franchise should be extended across the proposed Union. This was rejected by the Transvaal and Orange Free State. Finally, a compromise was arrived at, maintaining the Cape's existing voting system without extending it to the rest of the country, but insisting that this compromise was entrenched in the constitution.National Archive, Secret Despatch from Selborne to Crewe, 24 October 1908, PRO CO 879/106/8 Africans and Coloured people would retain most of their voting rights in the Cape, but would not receive them in any other part of the Union.
African and Coloured politicians came together to resist these plans, and called on a former Cape Prime Minister, William Philip Schreiner, to lead a delegation to the UK to call for the Cape franchise to be implemented in the whole of South Africa. The delegation was unsuccessful in its appeal, despite receiving considerable support from the infant Labour Party and other liberal British organisations.Martin Plaut, Promise and Despair, the First Struggle for a Non-Racial South Africa, Jacana Press, 2016
At the Union The Union of South Africa was created on 31 May 1910 by the South Africa Act 1909, an act of the British Parliament. The House of Assembly (the lower house of the newly created Parliament of South Africa) and the provincial councils were elected by first-past-the-post voting in single-member electoral divisions. The franchise in these elections was initially the same as the franchise for the lower houses in the four colonies that had formed the Union, so there were different qualifications in different provinces.
In the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, the vote was limited by law to white men aged 21 or over. In Natal the vote was limited to men over 21 who met property and literacy qualifications; in theory, this could include non-white men but in practice only very small numbers managed to qualify: in 1910 over 99% of the electorate was white. In the Cape Province the franchise was also limited to men over 21 who met property and literacy qualifications, and non-white men did qualify in significant numbers, making up approximately 15% of the electorate in 1910. The qualifications in the Cape and Natal also excluded a substantial number of poorer white men. Only white men could stand for election to the House of Assembly, even from the Cape constituencies. The franchise rights of non-white voters in the Cape (but not in Natal) were entrenched in the South Africa Act by a provision that they could only be reduced by an act of Parliament passed by a two-thirds majority of both houses of Parliament sitting in a joint session.
Enfranchisement of white women and poor whites In 1930 the National Party government of J. B. M. Hertzog passed the Women's Enfranchisement Act, which extended the right to vote and the right to stand for election to all white women over the age of 21. In the following year the Franchise Laws Amendment Act lifted the property and literacy requirements for white male voters in the Cape and Natal, with the result that all white citizens over 21 were enfranchised. As the exclusion of women and the literacy and property qualifications continued to apply to non-white voters, these acts had the effect of diluting their electoral power by more than doubling the size of the white electorate.
At the next following general election in 1933, Leila Reitz was elected as the first female MP, representing Parktown for the South African Party.
Segregation of black voters