Marico was a constituency in the Transvaal Province of South Africa, which existed from 1910 to 1974. Named after the Marico River and/or the village of Groot Marico, it covered a rural area in the western Transvaal. Throughout its existence it elected one member to the House of Assembly and one to the Transvaal Provincial Council.

Franchise notes When the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910, the electoral qualifications in use in each pre-existing colony were kept in place. In the Transvaal Colony, and its predecessor the South African Republic, the vote was restricted to white men, and as such, elections in the Transvaal Province were held on a whites-only franchise from the beginning. The franchise was also restricted by property and education qualifications until the 1933 general election, following the passage of the Women's Enfranchisement Act, 1930 and the Franchise Laws Amendment Act, 1931. From then on, the franchise was given to all white citizens aged 21 or over. Non-whites remained disenfranchised until the end of apartheid and the introduction of universal suffrage in 1994.

History Like most of the rural Transvaal, Marico had a largely Afrikaans-speaking electorate. In its early years, it was a marginal seat with a slight lean towards the South African Party, whose leader Jan Smuts was popular in the Transvaal. Its first MP, Lodewijk Arnoldus Slabbert Lemmer, stood down in 1924, and at that election the seat was won by Johannes Jacobus Pienaar for the National Party. Pienaar followed J. B. M. Hertzog into the United Party in 1934, and held his seat in 1938, but left parliament shortly after the election. The resulting by-election was won by Reformed Church minister for the Purified National Party, the faction of the NP that had rejected the UP merger. From that point on, Marico was a Nationalist seat, though not a truly safe one until the UP decline of the 1950s. It was abolished in 1981, at which point most of it became part of the Lichtenburg constituency.

Members ElectionMemberParty 1910 L. A. S. Lemmer Het Volk 1915 South African 1920 1921 1924 J. J. Pienaar National 1929 1933 1934 United 1938 1938 by GNP 1943 D. C. S. Grobler HNP 1948 1953 J. A. de Kock National 1958 M. S. F. Grobler 1961 1966 1970 1974 1977 L. M. Theunissen 1981 Constituency abolished Schoeman, B.M. (1977). Parlementêre verkiesings in Suid-Afrika 1910-1976. Pretoria: Aktuele Publikasies. Standard Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa (1972). "House of Assembly" (vol. 5, pp. 617–636). Cape Town: Nasionale Opvoedkundige Uitgewery (Nasou). South Africa 1980/81: Official Yearbook of the Republic of South Africa. Johannesburg: Chris van Rensburg Publications.

Detailed results Elections in the 1910s

Elections in the 1920s

Elections in the 1930s

References