We should remember 31 May 2010 because it is the centenary of the day on which South Africa, as we know it, became a country. Whether or not the Union was conceived in sin, whether or not the offspring was legitimate, there can be no doubt that the infant that was born on that day established the form of the present South Africa. The decisions taken at the National Convention that preceded the birth of the Union also created the framework within which our subsequent history took place. Our history would have been very, very different had the delegates to the Union Convention failed to reach agreement or had they devised different ground rules for the new state.

The idea of union was vigorously promoted by the British imperialists of the time. There was a strong sense that the British colonies in South Africa - the Cape Colony, Natal, the Orange River Colony and the Transvaal Colony - should unite to form a new dominion in much the same manner as their counterparts in Canada and Australia had already done. The restoration of self-government to the two former Boer republics in 1907 was quickly followed by moves toward Union. A National Convention - including 33 representatives from the four colonies - was convened on 12 October 1908 and had by 11 May 1909 reached agreement on a draft constitution. The constitution - in the form of the South Africa Act - was adopted by the British Parliament on 20 September 1909. 31 May 1910 - the 8th anniversary of the Peace Treaty of Vereeniging - was set as the birth date for the new Union.

Decisions that were taken at the National Convention - and that were subsequently incorporated in the 1910 Constitution - created the framework for the following 84 years of our history. The most important was, perhaps, the decision that South Africa would be a union in which Parliament would be supreme. 
 
As commentators noted at the time, the new constitution possessed none of the characteristics of a federation: there was no supreme constitution; no distribution of real power between constituent states; and no supreme court to interpret the constitution and to limit the actions of the executive. Most notable was the fact that the new constitution included few if any guarantees for the rights of black, coloured and Indian South Africans. It endorsed the status quo that had existed in the four colonies before union. In the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony only whites could vote; in Natal blacks could qualify for the vote but under conditions that in practice made the franchise virtually impossible. Only in the Cape Colony was there any meaningful franchise for black and coloured people. The theoretical criterion was that any man of any race who could comply with certain property qualifications and who could write his name, could qualify for the vote.

As Keir Hardie, the Scottish Socialist leader, observed during the debate in Britain on the South Africa Act, the purpose of the Act was "to unify the white races, to disenfranchise the coloured races and not to promote union between the races of South Africa". His observation was accurate: everything in the new dispensation was geared to accommodating, and reconciling, the interests of the white groups - including recognition of the equal status of Dutch and English and protection of white economic interests. 

Nevertheless, for the subsequent fifty years South African politics was characterised by the continuing struggle for dominance between the two white communities - between Afrikaner nationalists on the one hand, and whites who favoured participation in the British Empire and Commonwealth, on the other. This struggle reached its conclusion in 1961 with the declaration of the Republic. 

After 1910 only limited attention was given to the position of black, Asian and coloured South Africans - while the existing franchise of blacks and coloureds in the Cape was relentlessly eroded and finally abolished. However, after 1961 the focus of domestic politics and international attention shifted inexorably to the constitutional position of blacks. The National Party's response was initially to try to dismember the geographic entity that had been created in 1910 by granting independence to black homelands. Transkei, Ciskei, Bophuthatswana and Venda accepted ‘independence' - but the remaining national states steadfastly refused to do so. In 1983 the Government tried to bring Coloured and Indian South Africans into the constitutional system by means of the Tricameral Parliament. However, the new dispensation was rejected by most of the supposed beneficiaries and led to increasingly vocal calls by the UDF and others for universal franchise. By 1986 the National Party had begun to accept the necessity of accommodating the political aspirations of all South Africans in a common constitutional system.

These developments finally culminated in the initiatives that F W de Klerk launched on 2 February 1990. The constitutional process that ensued differed fundamentally from the National Convention that had led to the creation of the Union of South Africa. Most notably, it included representatives of all South Africa's communities. Whereas the Union of South Africa had been conceived and finally approved by a foreign power, Britain, the negotiations that led to the establishment of the New South Africa were entirely home-grown. The Constitution that emerged in 1996 was very different from the 1910 Constitution: the Constitution - and not Parliament - was supreme; it contained a Bill or Rights that protected the fundamental rights of all South Africans; and it established a Constitutional Court with the power to ensure that all branches of government adhere to the Rule of Law and to the provisions of the Bill of Rights. Most importantly, the new Constitution recognised the equal rights and equal status of all South Africans, regardless of race, gender, language or sexual orientation.

We have travelled a long way since 31 May 1910. Although we are still confronted by many serious challenges, we have a moved to a system that it is inclusive and that is based on the rule of law. Nevertheless, none of this would have been possible - and the history of the past hundred years would have been dramatically different - had the 1908 National Convention not reached agreement on the union of the four colonies and the great variety of people who lived in them. For better or worse, 31 May 1910 was the birth date of South Africa and should be celebrated as such.