The Act of Union had excluded virtually all blacks in the country from having any parliamentary role whatsoever. It was only in the Cape Province that a small number of blacks were included in the voters' roll under certain conditions. The ANC regarded this very small minority who had the right to vote, as a starting point from which to work for the eventual acceptance of universal adult franchise.

ANC tactics and strategies accepted compromise and negotiation to be the central theme of politics. For the next generation black political aspirations would have been satisfied by a kind of political gradualism through which they could have gained an ever-increasing involvement in the country's parliamentary system. The early demands of the ANC were politically reasonable, to say the least. White South Africa had the opportunity of placing the political development of the country on a civilised footing which would have taken the country into the 20th century in harmony with developments in the rest of the civilised world. One has only to perceive the terrible devastation which black society had suffered during the colonial onslaught, to perceive just how moderate black opinion at the turn of the century was, and how easy it would have been for whites to have evolved a democratic state in South Africa.

Instead of setting about including blacks in the country's parliamentary process white politics since 1910 worked towards the permanent exclusion of blacks from any involvement in the government of the country. By 1983 the white electorate endorsed a new South African constitution which precluded the involvement of Blacks in the government of the country in principle. In a referendum in 1983, white South Africa endorsed the Government's intention to abandon the Westminster type model in which blacks had for so long sought inclusion, and introduced instead a form of tricameral Parliament in which blacks would be denationalized and have no legitimate right to seek the vote.