ers of the two major parties. In March 1933, they formed a coalition
government, with Hertzog as prime minister and Smuts as deputy prime
minister. In an election later that year, the coalition parties won all but 14
of 158 seats in Parliament, and in December 1934, they merged to form the
United party. By that time, the Labour party, rent by disputes over the
government's labor legislation, had splintered, some of Smuts's former
followers in Natal had founded a British ethnic party, the Dominion party,
and a group of Afrikaners, led by D. F.Malan, a Dutch Reformed minister
and newspaper editor, had left Hertzog's camp and founded the Purified
National parry.-"
Until 1939, the United party maintained the drive to national autonomy
and white hegemony initiated by its predecessors. The Status of the Union
Act (1934) reinforced the Statute of Westminster, providing that acts of the
British Parliament would no longer be valid in South Africa unless they
were also enacted by the South African Parliament and that the governor-
general should act exclusively on the advice of his South African ministers.
The Natives Representation Act (1936) drastically weakened the political
rights of Cape Province Africans, removing those who were qualified to