Southern Rhodesian general election, 1928

The Southern Rhodesia general election of 19 September 1928 was the second election to the Legislative Assembly of Southern Rhodesia. The Rhodesia Party, who had won an overwhelming victory at the previous election, were re-elected with a slightly smaller majority.

At this election the franchise was codified for the first time by the Electoral Act, 1928. The basis for the Act was a consolidation of the previous regulations created by Order in Council, but the opportunity was taken by the Legislative Assembly to change some of the regulations which they had come to dislike. The principle change in the franchise was to restrict registration to British subjects only, whether by birth or naturalisation; previously, resident aliens could take an oath of allegiance to qualify themselves.

A change was also made to the literacy requirements for voters, where the test of writing fifty words of English at the dictation of the registering officer was dropped and the would-be voter merely had to be able to fill in the form in their own handwriting. The financial means qualification was the subject of a minor wording change, whereby the word "income" was added as an alternative to salary or wages.

The Electoral Act, 1928 added a procedure whereby electors could vote by post, but otherwise retained the same system as used previously.

Having previously elected the Legislative Assembly by means of 15 electoral districts each returning two members, in 1927 a Delimitation Board was established to recommend new districts. The Board intended to recommend 30 single-member districts, but found this to be impractical given the strong population growth around Salisbury and Bulawayo and therefore recommended 22 single-member districts and four two-member districts. The retention of two-member districts was controversial. The Board found its work hampered by the inaccuracy of the electoral roll, and as a result registration procedure was tightened up in the Electoral Act, 1928.

The development of political parties had advanced since the colony was granted self-government. The Progressive Party, an opposition group opposed to monopolies and advocating more development of Matabeleland, had been formed in June 1927 from a group of independent members, and was able to nominate 22 candidates for the 30 seats. The Rhodesia Labour Party had increased its strength in the towns.

...
Wikipedia