Leila Reitz

Leila Reitz
Member of the House of Assembly of South Africa for Parktown
In office
1933–1943
Personal details
Born(1887-12-13)13 December 1887
Cape Town, Cape Colony
Died27 December 1959(1959-12-27) (aged 72)
Wynberg, Cape Town, Province of the Cape of Good Hope, Union of South Africa
PartySouth African Party
United Party
SpouseDeneys Reitz (m. 1920, d. 1944)
Children2
EducationUniversity of Cambridge
University of Cape Town

Leila Agnes Buissinné Reitz (née Wright, 13 December 1887 – 27 December 1959) was a South African politician who served as the first woman elected to Parliament in South Africa. She represented Parktown in the House of Assembly of South Africa from 1933 until 1943.

Early life and education

Reitz was born to an English-speaking family in Cape Town in 1887. Her father was a doctor. She obtained an arts degree from the South African College and in 1910 was awarded a scholarship to study history at the University of Cambridge in England. In 1914 she returned to South Africa to lecture history at the University of Cape Town.

Career

Following the passage of the Women's Enfranchisement Act, 1930 which granted white women aged over 21 the right to vote, Reitz contested the 1933 South African general election and was elected to represent Parktown, in Johannesburg. In her maiden speech, Reitz stated that poor white families "constitute a danger to the moral life of the moral life of our country, a danger to themselves, a danger to our social order, our national character, and, in the end a danger to white civilisation itself," emphasising that poor white citizens must be "lifted" up.

During her parliamentary career Reitz served as a member of the Interdepartmental Committee on Destitute, Neglected, Maladjusted and Delinquent Children and Young Persons and as Honorary Vice-President of the National Conference on Social Work. She spoke in the House of Assembly on the "adverse effect" that legal disabilities of married women had on the South African community. When the Aliens Act, 1937, was passed, Reitz and Bertha Solomon succeeded in securing an exemption from the need to register as "aliens" for South-African born women married to foreign nationals.

She left politics in 1943 to accompany her husband, Deneys Reitz, to London after he was appointed South African High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.

Personal life

Reitz met the soldier and adventurer Deneys Reitz in Cape Town on his return from the Western Front in 1919. They married in 1920 and had two sons. Following her husband's death in 1944, she retired to Cape Town and died in 1959 aged 72. She is commemorated at Mariepskop alongside to her husband and younger son, Claude Michael.

References

  1. 1 2 Yuill, David. "Deneys Reitz: "South African First, Dutchman Second" – A Case Study of the Evolution of South African Identity in South Africa in the First Half of the Twentieth Century". Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard. Harvard University. p. 108. Retrieved 24 November 2025.
  2. ↑ Blackwell, Leslie (1965). Of Judges and Justice. H. Timmins. p. 40.
  3. ↑ "In 1930, white women secured the right to vote in South Africa for the first time". yworld.co.za. Retrieved 4 September 2017.
  4. ↑ "Leila Reitz was the country's first female MP, elected in 1933 on a South Africa Party ticket". hsf.org.za. Archived from the original on 15 January 2018. Retrieved 4 September 2017.
  5. ↑ Ayodhya, Ram (22 January 2022). Women and other Marginalized Section in the Politics of Developing Countries. K.K. Publications. p. 45.
  6. ↑ Jaff, Fay (1975). Women South Africa Remembers. H. Timmins. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-86978-125-8.
  7. ↑ Leisering, Lutz (14 December 2020). One Hundred Years of Social Protection: The Changing Social Question in Brazil, India, China, and South Africa. Springer Nature. p. 199. ISBN 978-3-030-54959-6.
  8. ↑ Klausen, Susanne M. (4 September 2017). "Fears of National Decline and the Politics of Birth Control". Race, Maternity, and the Politics of Birth Control in South Africa, 1910–39. Palgrave Macmillan, London. pp. 12–39. doi:10.1057/9780230511255_2. ISBN 978-1-349-51722-0.
  9. ↑ Laubscher, Joan (2000). Interfering Women: National Council of Women of South Africa, 1909-1999 : a History Written by Many Members of Council Through the Years. NCWSA. p. 20. ISBN 978-0-620-28374-8.
  10. ↑ Solomon, Bertha (1968). Time Remembered; the Story of a Fight. Timmins. p. 130.
  11. ↑ Yuill, David. "Deneys Reitz: "South African First, Dutchman Second" – A Case Study of the Evolution of South African Identity in South Africa in the First Half of the Twentieth Century". Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard. Harvard University. p. 108. Retrieved 24 November 2025.
  12. ↑ Rowe, Christine. "Heritage Management Of Archaeological, Historical and Industrial Resources on the Blyde River Canyon Nature Reserve". UPSpace Institutional Repository. University of Pretoria. p. 43. Retrieved 23 November 2025.