The Parliament of the Republic of South Africa is South Africa's legislature. It is located in Cape Town; the country's legislative capital.
Under the present Constitution of South Africa, the bicameral Parliament comprises a National Assembly and a National Council of Provinces. The current twenty-eighth Parliament was first convened on 14 June 2024.
Tricameralism is the practice of having three legislative or parliamentary chambers. It is contrasted with unicameralism and bicameralism, which are both far more common.
No national government is currently organized along tricameral lines. The word could describe the Ancien Régime era French Estates-General, though similar semantic arguments are applied since it sometimes met in joint session. The South African Parliament established under the apartheid regime's 1983 constitution was tricameral, as was the Chinese 1947 Constitution and Simón Bolívar's model state. A common feature in these bodies, which also casts some doubt on the appropriateness of the name, is that in several cases one of the three legislatures is not principally concerned with legislating.
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. Its nine provinces are bounded to the south by 2,798 kilometres (1,739 miles) of coastline that stretches along the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean; to the north by the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe; to the east and northeast by Mozambique and Eswatini; and it encloses Lesotho.
Covering an area of 1,221,037 square kilometres (471,445 square miles), the country has a population of over 63 million people (the 6th largest in Africa). Pretoria is the administrative capital, while Cape Town, as the seat of Parliament, is the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein is regarded as the judicial capital. The largest, most populous city is Johannesburg, followed by Cape Town and Durban.
Cape Town is the legislative capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's second-largest city by population, after Johannesburg, and the largest city in the Western Cape. The city is part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality.
The city is known for its harbour, its natural setting in the Cape Floristic Region, and for landmarks such as Table Mountain and Cape Point. Cape Town has been named the best city in the world, and world's best city for travelers, numerous times, including by The New York Times in 2014, Time Out in 2025, and The Telegraph for the past 8 years (2017 through 2025).
The Republic of South Africa is a unitary parliamentary democratic republic. The President of South Africa serves both as head of state and as head of government. The President is elected by the National Assembly (the lower house of the South African Parliament) and must retain the confidence of the Assembly in order to remain in office. South Africans also elect provincial legislatures which govern each of the country's nine provinces.
Since the end of apartheid in 1994, the African National Congress (ANC) has dominated South Africa's politics. The ANC is the ruling party in the national legislature, as well as in most provinces. The ANC received 40.18% of the vote during the 2024 general election. The main challenger to the ANC's rule is the Democratic Alliance (DA), led by John Steenhuisen, which received 21.81% of the vote in the 2024 election. Other major political parties represented in Parliament includes uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK Party), Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). The formerly dominant New National Party (NNP), which both introduced and ended apartheid through its predecessor the National Party (NP), disbanded in 2005 to merge with the ANC.
The Women's Enfranchisement Act, 1930, was an act of the Parliament of South Africa which granted white women aged 21 and older the right to vote and to run for office. It hence diluted the voting power of non-white people in the Cape Province by effectively doubling the number of white voters. It was enacted by the National Party government of Prime Minister J. B. M. Hertzog.
The first general election at which women could vote was the election of 17 May 1933. At that election Leila Reitz (wife of Deneys Reitz) was elected as the first female MP, representing Parktown for the South African Party.
The Constitution of South Africa is the supreme law of the Republic of South Africa. It provides the legal foundation for the existence of the republic, it sets out the human rights and duties of its citizens, and defines the structure of the Government. The current constitution, the country's fifth, was drawn up by the Parliament elected in 1994 general election. It was promulgated by President Nelson Mandela on 18 December 1996 and came into effect on 4 February 1997, replacing the Interim Constitution of 1993. The first constitution was enacted by the South Africa Act 1909, the longest-lasting to date.
Since 1997, the Constitution has been amended by eighteen amendments. The Constitution is formally entitled the "Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996." It was previously also numbered as if it were an Act of Parliament – Act No. 108 of 1996 – but, since the passage of the Citation of Constitutional Laws Act, neither it nor the acts amending it are allocated act numbers.
The president of South Africa is the head of state and head of government of the Republic of South Africa. The president directs the executive branch of the government and is the commander-in-chief of the South African National Defence Force. Between 1961 and 1994, the office of head of state was the state presidency.
The president is elected by the National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament, and is usually the leader of the largest party, which has been the African National Congress since the first multiracial election was held on 27 April 1994. The Constitution limits the president's time in office to two five-year terms. The first president to be elected under the new constitution was Nelson Mandela. The incumbent is Cyril Ramaphosa, who was elected by the National Assembly on 15 February 2018 following the resignation of Jacob Zuma.
The National Assembly is the directly elected house of the Parliament of South Africa, located in Cape Town, Western Cape. It consists of four hundred members who are elected every five years using a party-list proportional representation system where half of the members are elected proportionally from nine provincial lists and the remaining half from national lists so as to restore proportionality.
The National Assembly is presided over by a Speaker, assisted by a Deputy Speaker. The current speaker as of 14 June 2024 is Thoko Didiza (ANC). The Deputy Speaker is Annelie Lotriet (DA) since 14 June 2024.