 This Act, which essentially brought into being the South African state as it is known today, served as the South African constitution for over fifty years, during which time the Statute of Westminster greatly increased South Africa's independence from Britain.Although South Africa became a republic in 1961 and left the Commonwealth, the basic structure of the 1909 Act continued to live on in its replacement, the Republic of South Africa Constitution Act (32 of 1961).However, the last vestiges of the 1909 Act finally disappeared in 1983 when the apartheid-era government enacted a new constitution, the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act (110 of 1983).