National Party of South Africa

National Party of South Africa was an Afrikaner dominated white South African nationalist political party that controlled the South African government from 1948 to 1994.

National Party of South Africa Nasionale Party van Suid-Afrika
English name	National Party
Afrikaans name	Nasionale Party
Leader	J. B. M. Hertzog (1915–1934) Daniel Francois Malan (1934–1953) J. G. Strijdom (1953–1958) Hendrik Verwoerd (1958–1966) B. J. Vorster (1966–1978) P. W. Botha (1978–1989) F. W. de Klerk (1989–1997) Marthinus van Schalkwyk (1997–2005) (New National Party)
Founded	2 July 1915 (1915-07-02)
Dissolved	1997
Headquarters	Cape Town, Cape Province, South Africa
Ideology	Afrikaner nationalism Apartheid (until 1989) Conservatism Republicanism
Political position	Right-wing to Far-Right

History

Founding

It was founded in 1914 by J.B.M. Hertzog as a result of disagreements between him and the leaders of the South African Party, which he then was a member of.^[1]

Cold War

In 1948, its leader Daniel Francois Malan became the Prime Minister of South Africa, and the party began imposing the apartheid within South Africa.^[2] However, the apartheid was only one among a variety of issues that helped bring the National Party to power. Most people who voted for the National Party in 1948 were voting more against the previous United Party led by Jan Smuts than for Malan's National Party.

The reasons are said to be Smuts's support of the United Kingdom in the Second World War and other issues that had irritated Afrikaner voters, such as the poverty of Afrikaners, competition from native Africans for jobs, urbanization of Afrikaner towns and the threat of communism for which many Afrikaner voters blamed Smuts.^[3]

South African President F.W. de Klerk, the last South African government leader to belong to the party, disbanded apartheid in the 1990s and allowed all adults of all races to vote for the first time in 1994,^[4][5] which resulted in the National Party being voted out of office.^[4]