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The 1924 South African general election was a realigning election in the Union of South Africa's House of Assembly held on June 19, 1924 to elect 135 members. Rising discontent with the government of Jan Smuts led to the defeat of his coalition government by a coalition of the pro-Afrikaner National Party and the South African Labour Party, a socialist party representing the interests of the white proletariat. Smuts had angered South African nationalists by his moderate stance on South African independence from the British Empire. The worldwide depression after the end of the First World War had led to a strike in South Africa, which had been defused through a combination of military force and negotiation with the out-gunned unions, earning Smuts the enmity of the labour vote. As a consequence Smuts's SAP was defeated by a Nationalist–Labour Pact, James Hertzog formed the government and became prime minister – a position he was to hold until 1939.
