Pretoria District North (House of Assembly of South Africa constituency)

Pretoria District North (Afrikaans: Pretoria-Distrik-Noord) was a constituency in the Transvaal Province of South Africa, which existed from 1910 to 1929. It covered a rural area to the north of Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa. Throughout its existence it elected one member to the House of Assembly and one to the Transvaal Provincial Council.

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.^[1]

Pretoria District North, like most of the rural Transvaal, had a largely Afrikaans-speaking electorate, but it was influenced by its proximity to the capital. Its first MP, Thomas Cullinan, was a mine owner and the namesake of the Cullinan Diamond, the largest diamond ever discovered. He represented the provincial Het Volk party, which later merged into the South African Party, and lost the seat in 1915 but regained it in 1920. It was held by the National Party in its last two elections, and its final MP, Harm Oost, was re-elected to represent the unified Pretoria District seat in 1929.

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