Colin Eglin

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Colin Wells Eglin is a South African politician. He was born at Sea Point, Cape Town, South Africa on 14 April 1925.

Eglin was a member of Pinelands Municipal Council from 1951-1954. He was elected as a United Party Cape Province Provincial Councillor in 1954 and served until 1958.

Eglin was elected unopposed as MP for the Peninsula constituency in 1958. He left the United Party to become a founder member of the Progressive Party in 1959, losing his seat in the 1961 General Election.

Eglin became the leader of the Progressive Party in February 1971. Eglin was at first outside Parliament but he was elected for the Cape Town seat of Sea Point in the April 1974 General Election.

He became leader of the Progressive Reform Party in 1975 and the Progressive Federal Party in 1977, following mergers with groups that had broken away from the United Party. Eglin was the leader of the official Opposition 1977-79. He was replaced as leader by Frederik van Zyl Slabbert in 1979.

From 1986-88 Eglin was again party leader, following the resignation of Slabbert. He was official Opposition leader 1986-87. Zac de Beer took over as leader of the Progressive Federal Party in 1988. The Party merged with other groups to become the Democratic Party (South Africa) in 1989 and then the Democratic Alliance in 2000.

Eglin continued to serve in the segregated House of Assembly until it was abolished in 1994 and then in the multi-racial National Assembly in the Parliament of South Africa until he retired in 2004 (see [[1]]).

Source: The International Who's Who 2006 (Routledge 2006)