| Tricameral Parliament |
Website Links For Parliament |
Information AboutTricameral Parliament |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT TRICAMERAL PARLIAMENT | |
| historical legislatures | |
| defunct south african organisations | |
| apartheid government | |
| organizations associated with apartheid | |
| SHOPPER'S DELIGHT | |
|
The Tricameral Parliament can trace its origin back to 1980 , when the South African Senate was replaced with the President's Council (Afrikaans; Presidentsraad), which was an advisory body consisting of sixty nominated members from the White, Coloured, Indian and Chinese population groups. Following a request by P.W. Botha , the President's Council presented a set of proposals in 1982 for Constitutional and political reform. This proposal called for the implementation of "power sharing" between the White, Coloured and Indian communities. The right wing of the NP was very unhappy about this proposal and a group of its MPs , led by Dr. Andries Treurnicht , a Cabinet Minister and the leader of the NP in the Transvaal province, broke away to form the Conservative Party (CP) in order to fight for a return to Apartheid in its original form. However, Botha continued to be in favour of implementing the President's Council proposal and in 1983 the NP government introduced a new constitutional framework. This framework proposed a parliament with three separately elected chambers:
Each of these three chambers would have power over the "own affairs" (as it was termed) of the population group it represented, such as Education , Social Welfare , Housing , Local Government , Arts , Culture and Recreation . "General affairs", such as Defence , Finance , Foreign Policy , Justice , Law And Order , Transport , commerce and industry, manpower, internal affairs and Agriculture would required approval from all three chambers, after consideration by joint standing committees. Furthermore, the framework proposed that the government would be lead by an executive State President , which would be selected by an 88-member Electoral College . This college would be composed of 50 Whites, 25 Coloreds and 13 Indians, each group chosen by its respective house in parliament. The State President, who was given very broad executive power, would then appoint a Cabinet of ministers who would be in charge of "general affairs" as well as ''Ministers' Councils'' for each of the three parliamentary chambers to manage "own affairs". Cases of disagreements between the three houses of Parliament on specific legislation would be resolved by the President's Council. According to the constitutional proposal, this council would consist of 60 members – 20 members appointed by the House of Assembly, 10 by the House of Representatives, five by the House of Delegates and 25 directly by the State President. Although ostensibly based on population figures, the numerical composition of the electoral college and the President's Council chambers meant that the National Party in power in the White House of Assembly could not be outvoted by the combined Coloured and Indian representatives. In addition, the proposed constitution still made no provision for the representation of Black South Africans, as the NP still claimed that they belonged in their respective Homelands , in which they could exercise their political rights. In order to approve the proposed constitution, a referendum among White voters was held on 2 November 1983 . Both the Progressive Federal Party (PFP), which objected to the exclusion of Blacks, as well as the CP, which objected to the participation of Coloureds and Indians, campaigned for a "No" vote. However, many PFP followers and parts of the anti-government English Language Press supported the new constitution as "a step in the right direction". Consequently the "Yes" vote won the referendum by a wide margin, with 1,360,223 votes in favour (66.3%) and 691,577 against (33.7%). The turnout was 76%. The proposed constitution was consequently enacted by parliament as the Republic Of South Africa Constitution Act Of 1983 . The proposed elections for the House of Representatives and House of Delegates in August . P.W. Botha was subsequently re-elected as State President by the electoral college. The Indian and Coloured chambers of the Tricameral Parliament suffered from a crisis of credibility with election boycotts leading to notoriously low turnouts (the 1984 House of Delegates election achieved only a 16.2% poll {Link without Title} ). Elected officials in these houses were sometimes scorned for participating in the apartheid system. In 1987, Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert , the leader of the opposition in the White chamber, quit parliamentary politics as he saw it as increasingly irrelevant to South Africa's political future. In 1994 , ten years after the Tricameral Parliament was formed, one of the last pieces of legislation it passed was the Republic Of South Africa Constitution Act Of 1994 , which paved the way for the first non-racial elections that were held on 27 April of that year. The Tricameral Parliament was housed in a new building, designed and constructed for that purpose, only a short distance from the Houses of Parliament. Currently (2006) the National Assembly is housed in the building of the Tricameral Parliament while the Council Of Provinces is housed in the old Houses of Parliament. The decor of the current National Assembly still retains the theme incorporating wooden panels of Tessellating sets of three triangles. SEE ALSO |