South African Party, former SAP1911–12, known as South African National PartySouth African political party formed in South Africa, founded by Louis Botha in conjunction with the creation of the November 1911, in the aftermath of the 1910 Union of South Africa in 1910. It strove to conciliate British South Africans and Boers within the framework of the British Commonwealth. The party was formed from the coalition that won control of the government in the elections of 1910, making Botha the first prime minister of the Union. Before long the party lost , by various parties allied to Louis Botha and Jan Smuts. It was the governing party in South Africa from 1911 to 1924 and laid the foundations of apartheid. The party ceased to exist in 1934 when it merged with J.B.M. Hertzog, a member of Botha’s first Cabinet, who in 1914 founded the opposition Hertzog’s National Party to express a more stridently Afrikaner perspectiveform the United Party.

The South African Party

, a strong supporter of the Allies in

stood for the mutual interests of South Africans of British descent and the Boers (also known as Afrikaners), in contrast to the imperialistic pro-British Unionist Party and, after 1914, the stridently pro-Afrikaner National Party. The SAP strongly supported the British in World War I,

stayed in power for 14 years. Jan Smuts became prime minister after Botha died in 1919. The party, led by Smuts, was strengthened in 1920–21 with the addition of members from the defunct Unionist Party, the strongly pro-British party of Cecil Rhodes and Leander Jameson.

A crisis in the mining industry, with resultant discontent among white labourers, contributed to the South African Party’s defeat in the elections of 1924. The victory went to the National Party; Hertzog became prime minister. The South African Party remained in opposition until 1933, when it formed a coalition with and then merged with the National Party—in difficulties because of economic depression—to form the United Party (in full, the United South African National Party)undertaking campaigns in German South West Africa and German East Africa. The party also supported a lenient peace with Germany in 1919.

Within South Africa, the SAP under Botha (prime minister 1910–19) and then Smuts (prime minister 1919–24) advocated complete racial segregation and passed some of the defining acts of what after 1948 came to be known as apartheid. These included the Natives Land Act of 1913, which segregated all land in South Africa, allocating more than 90 percent to whites; the Native Affairs Act of 1920, which established a nationwide system of “Native Reserves” for black South Africans and within them a system of government supervised by whites; and the Natives Urban Areas Act of 1923, which segregated residential areas within the urban areas and permitted the presence of black South Africans only while working for whites.

In 1920–21 the party was strengthened with the adhesion of members from the now defunct Unionist Party, but it began to lose popularity among the white electorate after the Rand Revolt of 1922, when the SAP-led government used artillery and aircraft to crush a revolt by white miners (protesting that they were to be replaced by lower-paid black miners) and their supporters on the Witwatersrand; more than 200 lives were lost. Similar excessive force was used against a religious sect known as the Israelites, who were squatting on a farm at Bulhoek near Queenstown in 1921, and to crush a rising among the Bondelswarts (a Nama group) in southern South West Africa (now Namibia) in 1922. In the former, a large force of several hundred officers attacked, using machine guns and artillery, killing more than 150 Israelites (armed only with ceremonial weapons) and wounded many more. In the latter, Bondelswarts rebelling against unfair treatment under South African administration were attacked by bombs dropped by aircraft and forces on the ground with machine guns; more than 100 Bondelswarts were killed.

The SAP lost the elections of 1924 to an alliance of the National Party and the Labour Party, though many Afrikaners remained loyal to the party and to the memory of Botha and Smuts. The SAP remained in opposition until 1934, when, as South Africa faced the crisis of the Great Depression, it fused with the National Party to form the United Party.