Since the beginning of a true parliamentary system in South Africa in the 1800s, it has undergone a series of gradual changes. It has become a hybrid system, but one still fundamentally based on the Westminster system. This system developed in the United Kingdom and spread to many British colonies. With their colonial expansion to southern Africa in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the British not only claimed South Africa as their own but, in addition, implemented their way of life, morals, values, virtues and system of politics. Although British colonial rule effectively ended in South Africa in 1910, the Westminster parliamentary system did not. This model of politics continued throughout most of the National Party’s (NP) years in power, with some changes in the 1960s and 1980s. With South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994, there was further change, towards a more ‘hybrid’ system, suitable to our new political dispensation.

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Written by Elaine Pypers, Research Intern, Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference Parliamentary Liaison Office (CPLO)

Pypers is studying towards her Master’s degree in Political Studies at the University of the Western Cape, as part of which she is completing a six-month internship at the CPLO.