South African general election, 1929

← 1924

12 June 1929 (1929-06-12)

1933 →

All 148 seats in the House of Assembly
75 seats needed for a majority

	First party	Second party	Third party

Leader	J. B. M. Hertzog	Jan Smuts	Disputed
Party	National Party	South African	Labour
Last election	63 seats	53 seats	18 seats
Seats won	78	61	8
Seat change	15	8	10
Popular vote	141,579	159,896	33,919
Percentage	41.16%	46.51%	9.86%
Swing	+5.91%	-0.54%	-4.49%

House of Assembly after the election

Prime Minister before election

J. B. M. Hertzog
National Party

Elected Prime Minister

J. B. M. Hertzog
National Party

In the 1929 South African general election, held on 12 June 1929, the National Party under James Barry Munnik Hertzog won an outright majority in the House of Assembly. Hertzog had the opportunity to form a government without the aid of the Labour Party. In fact the Pact government continued, with two ministers from the Creswell Labour faction remaining in office. The National Party remained the dominant party, for its second consecutive term.

Due to the split in the Labour Party, just eight MPs were elected for the party, of whom only four sat on the government benches.

The South Africa Act 1909 had provided for a delimitation commission to define the boundaries for each electoral division. The representation by province, under the fifth delimitation report of 1928, is set out in the table below. The figures in brackets are the number of electoral divisions in the previous (1923) delimitation. If there is no figure in brackets then the number was unchanged.

The vote totals in the table below may not give a complete picture of the balance of political opinion, because of unopposed elections (where no votes were cast) and because contested seats may not have been fought by a candidate from all major parties.

The total registered electorate was 461,820. The votes cast were 347,924 (including 4,027 spoilt votes).

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