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SOUTH AFRICAN TERRITORIAL SEGREGATION: NEW DATA ON AFRICAN FARM PURCHASES, 1913–1936

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2009

HARVEY M. FEINBERG  and
ANDRÉ HORN
HARVEY M. FEINBERG
Affiliation:
Southern Connecticut State University
ANDRÉ HORN
Affiliation:
University of Pretoria
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Abstract

By using new sources and a complementary historical and geo-analytical approach, this article illustrates that the Natives Land Act (no. 27 of 1913) failed to stop Africans from buying land. New evidence demonstrates that African land ownership outside the reserves in the Transvaal actually increased after 1913. This evidence leads to a deeper questioning of the extent to which the South African government was able to impose rural territorial segregation by 1936 and reveals the limits of white power in the early Union period.

Keywords

South Africalandlawracearchives
Type
Authority, Knowledge and Identity in South Africa
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 41 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

1 Union of South Africa, Census of the Union of South Africa, 1911 (UG 32-'12) (Pretoria, 1913).

2 Sol Plaatje graphically describes the immediate effect of the anti-squatting section of the Act in Native Life in South Africa (London, 1916).

3 For information about the trusteeship system, see Bergh, Johan and Feinberg, Harvey M., ‘Trusteeship and black landownership in the Transvaal during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’, Kleio (South Africa), 36 (2004), 170–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Union of South Africa, Report of the Natives Land Commission (2 vols.) (UG 19-'16) (Cape Town, 1916).

5 South African Native Affairs Commission, Report of the Commission (Cape Town, 1904–5), para. 193.

6 Laws promoting segregation or increasing government power over the African majority include the following, inter alia: Native Affairs Act, 1920; Natives (Urban) Areas Act, 1923; a new Mines and Works Act, 1926; Native Administration Act, 1927; Immorality Act, 1927; and the Native Service Contract Act, 1932.

7 See Feinberg, Harvey M., ‘The Natives Land Act of 1913 in South Africa: politics, race and segregation in the early 20th century’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 26 (1993), 65–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 The Native Trust and Land Act created the South African Native Trust, which was authorized to buy land and allot it to Africans for their use. Legally, the Native Trust could sell land to Africans, but this was a low priority for government officials. See T. R. H. Davenport and K. Hunt (eds.), The Right To The Land (Cape Town, 1974), 32–3.

9 In the context of the Natives Land Act, we define territorial segregation as referring to a separation of land ownership rights into areas exclusively for whites and areas exclusively for Africans.

10 Our survey of the secondary literature clearly demonstrates that historians who refer to the Natives Land Act neglect to write about the exception clause in the Act, with one exception: B. Spies, J. Brits and A. Grundlingh explicitly refer to the exception clause in H. Giliomee and B. Mbenga (eds.), New History of South Africa (Cape Town, 2007), 233. Among earlier historians, only one, C. W. de Kiewiet, cited the government's ‘discretionary power’ to allow land purchases by Africans, but he did not identify the appropriate clause in the Land Act. Saul Dubow discusses land policy in the early 1920s, describes the concern of Native Affairs Department officials about providing more land for Africans and refers to an important late 1921 memorandum allowing more land to be sold to Africans. However, he missed the exception clause and any buying data. Robert Morrell writes about Africans in the eastern Transvaal purchasing land, but does not explain why this was legally possible. Martin Chanock implies that purchases were possible when he states that prices for farms were rising, but provides no further information. Even Marian Lacey, who wrote extensively on land policy, did not refer to the exception clause or discuss the process by which Africans gained government permission to buy or lease a piece of land. Finally, A. J. Christopher's examination of land policies in southern Africa between 1860 and 1960 focuses overwhelmingly on European settlement patterns and colonial government policies and only alludes to the Natives Land Act. Christopher, A. J., ‘Official land disposal policies and European settlement in southern Africa 1860–1960’, Journal of Historical Geography, 9 (1983), 369–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 374. See C. W. de Kiewiet, A History of South Africa: Social and Economic (Oxford, 1957 [1941]), 205–6; Saul Dubow, Racial Segregation and the Origins of Apartheid in South Africa, 1919–1936 (Oxford, 1989), 88–9; Morrell, Robert, ‘African land purchase and the 1913 Natives Land Act in the eastern Transvaal’, South African Historical Journal, 21 (Nov. 1989), 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Martin Chanock, The Making of South African Legal Culture, 1902–1936 (Cambridge, 2001), 361–75; Marian Lacey, Working for Boroko (Johannesburg, 1981), 5.

11 See Feinberg, Harvey M., ‘Protest in South Africa: prominent black leaders’ commentary on the Natives Land Act, 1913–1936'. Historia, 51 (Nov. 2006), 119–44Google Scholar.

12 Transvaal, Report by the Commissioner for Native Affairs Relative to the Acquisition and Tenure of Land by Natives in the Transvaal (Pretoria, 1904); South African Native Affairs Commission, Report; National Archives of South Africa, Pretoria (hereafter NASA), TAB 492/06 and LDE 718, 12473/3.

13 ‘Jeppe's map of the Transvaal or SA Republic and surrounding territories’ (London, 1899), and ‘South Africa 1/50,000 Topocastral Map Series of South Africa’ (Pretoria, 1936).

14 This definition of ‘rural land units’ excludes urban areas and new townships, such as Evaton and Kliprivier Estate.

15 William Beinart and Peter Delius, ‘Introduction’, in William Beinart, Peter Delius and Stanley Trapido, Putting a Plough to the Ground (Johannesburg, 1986), 14; Paul Maylam, South Africa's Racial Past: The History and Historiography of Racism, Segregation, and Apartheid (Aldershot, 2001), 177; Hermann Giliomee, The Afrikaners (Charlottesville, 2003), 313; John Cell, The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: The Origins of Segregation in South Africa and the American South (New York, 1982), 58, 79, 213; Morrell, ‘African land purchase, 1; Colin Bundy, The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry (Berkeley, 1979), 213. In addition, Keegan called the Act the ‘most important legislative intervention’. T. J. Keegan, ‘The Sharecropping economy, African class formation and the 1913 Natives’ [sic] Land Act in the Highveld Maize Belt', in Shula Marks and Richard Rathbone (eds.), Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa (London, 1982), 203. Kruger referred to the Act as the ‘most important legal enactment of those early years’. D. W. Kruger, The Making of a Nation (Johannesburg, 1969), 60. See also: Michael Robertson, ‘Segregation land law: a socio-legal analysis’, in Hugh Corder (ed.), Essays on Law and Social Practice in South Africa (Cape Town, 1988), 285–317; and Daniels, Rudolph, ‘The agrarian land question in South Africa in its historical context’, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 48 (July 1989), 327–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 The major sources usually referred to include: Francis Wilson, ‘Farming’, in Monica Wilson and Leonard Thompson (eds.), The Oxford History of South Africa, vol. II (Oxford, 1971), 104–71; C. M. Tatz, Shadow and Substance in South Africa (Pietermaritzburg, 1962); Wickins, P. L., ‘The Natives Land Act of 1913: a cautionary essay on simple explanations of complex change’, South African Journal of Economics, 49 (June 1981), 105–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; T. J. Keegan, Rural Transformation in Industrializing South Africa (Johannesburg, 1986); Lacey, Working for Boroko; and John Cell, The Highest Stage of White Supremacy. Primary documents are often cited from T. R. H. Davenport and K. Hunt (eds.), The Right to Land (Cape Town, 1974). Scholars also refer to the South African Native Affairs Commission, Report, and the Report of the Natives Land Commission.

17 Packard, Randall, ‘“Malaria block development” revisited: the role of disease in the history of agricultural development in the eastern and northern Transvaal lowveld, 1890–1960’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 27 (Sept. 2001), 591–612CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carey Miller, D. L and Pope, Anne, ‘South African land reform’, Journal of African Law, 44 (2000), 167–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Switzer, Les, ‘The ambiguities of protest in South Africa: rural politics and the press during the 1920s’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 23 (1990), 87–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In addition, a search of JSTOR or other specialized data bases may yield a large number of references to the Land Act, but no substantive analysis. We also searched the tables of contents of the Journal of Southern African Studies between 1995 and 2003, with meager results.

18 For example de Beer, F. C., ‘Determining the merits of land claims: a challenge for the anthropologist’, Anthropology Southern Africa, 26 (2003), 131–42Google Scholar; Miller and Pope, ‘South African land reform’. See also the following: Suttie, Mary-Lynn and Napaai, Hleziphi, ‘A select bibliography of South African history: articles, review articles, theses and obituaries, 2003’, South African Historical Journal, 54 (2005), 197–239CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Napaai, Hleziphi and Suttie, Mary-Lynn, ‘A select bibliography of South African history: articles, review articles, theses and obituaries, 2004’, South African Historical Journal, 56 (2006), 259–331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Robertson, ‘Segregation land law’, 288.

20 For the labor argument, see ibid. 285–317; Lacey, Working for Boroko, 19; William Beinart, Twentieth Century South Africa (Oxford, 1994), 52–4; on capitalist motives, Lacey, Working for Boroko; Wolpe, H., ‘Capitalism and cheap labour power in South Africa: from segregation to apartheid’, Economy and Society, 1 (1972), 425–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on anti-squatting, see T. J. Keegan, Rural Transformations in Industrializing South Africa (Johannesburg, 1986), and articles by the same author; Bundy, Rise and Fall, 213; T. R. H. Davenport and Christopher Saunders, South Africa: A Modern History (New York, 2000), 271–2, and Beinart and Delius, ‘Introduction’, 14. A more detailed analysis of the motives of the promoters of the Land Act can be found in Feinberg, ‘The Natives Land Act of 1913 in South Africa’.

21 NASA, MEM, 1/5, Report of a meeting in Louis Trichart, 3 Nov. 1913.

22 NASA, MEM 1/24, Thomas Smartt file, Louis Botha to Smartt, 14 Mar. 1917.

23 NASA, NTS 8456, 1/360, E. R. Garthorne, memorandum [re NAA Bill], n.d. [1918?]. See also NTS 3431, 36/308, Secretary for Native Affairs to Director of Irrigation, 27 June 1917 (stamped: ‘June 29, 1917’), where the secretary stated ‘more especially just now when Parliament in [sic: is?] considering proposals for territorial segregation of the races’.

24 ‘Status of the native in South Africa’, Cape Times, 2 June 1923. Clipping found in NASA, GG 1556, 50/1058.

25 Equaling 37 per cent of the 121 members. This number does not include the Committee phase of the debate.

26 House of Assembly, Debates, 1913: Walton, col. 3112; Smartt, col. 2538.

27 University of Cape Town Archives, Stanford Papers, Diary, 13 June 1913.

28 ‘Editorial notes’, South African Agricultural Journal, July–Dec. 1913, 13.

29 Editorial, ‘Native and Asiatic Bills’, Friend, 2 May 1913. The Friend was a Free State newspaper, published in Bloemfontein. A contemporary and member of the Native Affairs Commission, C. T. Loram, writing twenty years later, talks about the link between land and segregation: ‘Inasmuch as South Africa has embarked upon the policy of the territorial segregation of the races the Native Question is to-day [1932/3] the land question’. Loram, C. T., ‘Native progress and improvement in race relations in South Africa’, Journal of the Royal African Society, 32 (Jan. 1933), 74Google Scholar. Among historians, Maylam writes that the Land Act ‘entrenched the principle of territorial segregation’. Furthermore, he states that ‘territorial separation had been at the top of the union government's segregationist agenda’, and adds that the 1936 Native Trust and Land Act ‘confirmed the policy of territorial segregation’. Maylam, South Africa's Racial Past, 149, 152, 232. Davenport and Saunders, too, emphasize the segregation goal (but also consider opposition to sharecropping as important). They refer as well to the ‘introduction of territorial separation with the passage of the Native [sic] Land Act’. Davenport and Saunders, South Africa: A Modern History, 271, 272; 598. Wickins states that one of the ‘principal objectives’ was ‘territorial segregation with respect to landholding’. Wickins, ‘The Natives Land Act of 1913’, 123–4. See also Cell, The Highest Stage of White Supremacy; Kallaway, P., ‘F. S. Malan, the Cape liberal tradition, and South African politics, 1908–1924’, Journal of African History, 16 (1974), 118Google Scholar.

30 Wickins, ‘The Natives Land Act of 1913’, 127; Keegan, T. J., ‘Crisis and catharsis in the development of capitalism in South African agriculture’, African Affairs, 84 (July 1985), 386CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Shula Marks and Richard Rathbone, ‘Introduction’, in Marks and Rathbone, Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa (London, 1982), 24, where they write that the Act ‘definitively limit[ed] the amount of land available for African land purchase’; and M. Robertson, ‘Dividing the land: an introduction to apartheid land law’, in Christina Murray and Catherine O'Regan (eds.), No Place to Rest: Forced Removals and the Law in South Africa (Cape Town, 1990), 125, who stated emphatically that the Land Act ‘forbids Africans from holding any rights to land outside those [areas] set aside for them’.

31 For more information on this aspect of the Natives Land Act, see Feinberg, ‘The Natives Land Act of 1913 in South Africa’, 65–109.

32 For example, see NASA, NTS 3535, 441/308, Detached Clerk, Rayton, to Sub-Native Commissioner, Pretoria, 28 July 1926, and Magistrate, Nylstroom to Secretary for Native Affairs, 27 Aug. 1926, about the farm Vlaklaagte 284.

33 Union of South Africa, Report of the Natives Land Committee, Western Transvaal (Cape Town, 1918); Union of South Africa, Report of the Natives Land Committee, Eastern Transvaal (Cape Town, 1918).

34 We should note that Native Commissioner reports and letters to NAD officials urging approval of purchase requests rarely suggest that the purchase should be approved because the white seller no longer wished to live near Africans. What was sometimes discussed were the dire financial straits the seller faced and the necessity to conclude the transaction quickly so that the buyers would not lose their down payment and other money given to the seller. Officials of the NAD, under Hertzog, often asked the white neighbors if they approved of a sale, and the responses were mixed. In addition, there is evidence that NAD officials told white opponents of a particular sale that the government would not act on their objections because to do so would contradict government land policy in the late 1920s. NASA, NTS 3456, 107/308, Secretary for Native Affairs to Secretary for Lands, 5 Sept. 1927.

35 NASA, NTS 3436, 45/308, Under Secretary for Native Affairs to Sub Native Commissioner, 10 Mar. 1914; NTS 3579, 780/308, Additional Native Commissioner to Secretary for Native Affairs, 23 Sept. 1932; NTS 3558, 592/308, Sub Native Commissioner to Secretary for Native Affairs, 2 July 1926, and Secretary for Native Affairs to Sub Native Commissioner, 27 Aug. 1926.

36 This number includes the legal transfers as well as tribal land and locations to 19 June 1913.

37 Major examples of farms divided into small lots: Daggakraal 161, Driefontein 332 and Vlakplaats 340, in Wakkerstroom district, were divided into at least 140 lots, 302 lots and 114 lots, respectively, and sold by the Native Farmers' Association of Africa Limited, an African company, from 1924; Doornkraal 629 (Pretoria district), divided into 68 lots and sold by Thomas Ellison Lowe from 1934; Onverwacht 576 (Pretoria district), divided into at least 52 lots and sold by Gert Martthinus Erasmus (1923 and 1926), Hendrik Coenraad Steynberg (1934) and Thomas Ellison Lowe (1935); Witlaagte 445 (Pretoria district), divided into at least 23 lots and sold by Ezekiel Davidson from 1924.

38 These large groups sometimes signed a ‘memorandum of agreement’, which set out rules about their relationship as co-owners and created an executive committee to represent the group. The first reference to memoranda of agreement can be found in the 1924 Parliamentary data, which mentions February 1923 as the time when a small number of these memoranda were signed.

39 The percentages have been rounded off. The sellers of farms to African buyers were mainly individual white landowners, some of whom sold more than one portion of a farm. There were approximately 288 white sellers, including 32 women. Contrary to the perceptions of some historians, very few businesses sold farms to Africans (15 or 16). In addition, we should emphasize that Africans rarely sold land which they had purchased. The Parliamentary data yielded the following information: between 1913 and 1936, 28 African-owned farms or portions of farms were sold to whites: 1 was sold by the sheriff, and 1 portion was sold to a Mission. These sales represent a very small percentage of loss to African owners.

40 Marian Lacey is one of the few historians who writes that Prime Minister Hertzog may not really have been the extremist that he is accused of being. Lacey says that Hertzog ‘was merely paying lip service to the principle of complete territorial segregation laid down in 1913’, claiming that he ‘had no intention of carrying out the reserve policy by segregating Africans and whites territorially’. Finally, Lacey asserts that segregation under the new Natives Land Act Amendment Bill 1926 ‘was not envisaged’ because the additional land for Africans was ‘totally inadequate’. Working for Boroko, 21, 22, 26. We wish to thank T. R. H. Davenport for urging us to re-examine this book.

41 Davenport and Saunders, South Africa: A Modern History, criticize the view that Botha and Smuts were more sympathetic to African land hunger (270).

42 University of Cape Town Archives, Herbst Collection, BC 79, D 22.1, memorandum of a meeting on 5 Dec. 1921. Please note that the following was typed in the margin: ‘Approved by Prime Minister 12/12/21’.

43 Davenport and Saunders believe that the Natives Land Act Amendment Bill and consolidation of ‘black and white settlement [fit] in with the notion that Hertzog's thinking was segregationist’. South Africa: A Modern History, 308.

44 South African Library, Merriman Papers, MSC15, Document 230, ‘Native Affairs Administration Act’, by W. Poll, 13 Apr. 1917.

45 University of Cape Town Archives, Herbst Collection, BC 79, D 22.1, memorandum of a meeting on 5 Dec. 1921. The full quote reads: SMUTS: ‘remarked that, as he had stated in Parliament, … he was not convinced of the desirability of pressing forward the policy of territorial segregation to a sudden or hasty consummation. The matter was of enormous importance. He felt that, whatever it might be proper to decide in regard to the proposals brought forward by the Native Affairs Department, it would be unwise to adopt any measure which was equivalent to segregation out-of-hand’.

46 The report is among the papers of the secretary for Native Affairs at the time. The contents suggest that the memorandum may have been written for Hertzog who also held the portfolio of minister of Native Affairs. University of Cape Town, Herbst Collection, ERG [E. R. Garthorne,], ‘Native segregation’, 7 Oct. 1924. The full quotations include the following: ‘Having regards to the ultimate goal of racial segregation … It is thought that in the course of time native areas would thus be evolved without bitterness or serious antagonism’, 9; ‘initial steps might be taken towards the ultimate objective of segregation … Much must necessarily be left to the future for adjustment in the light of experience yet to be gained’, 11.

47 Native Conference, Nov. 1926. Union of South Africa, Report of the Native Affairs Commission, Annexure IV (Cape Town, 1927), 76.

48 NASA, GG 1567, 50/1324, clipping: Edgar H. Brookes, ‘Native policy of the Union’, Rand Daily Mail, 22? May 1928 (unclear on the clipping, but probably 22 May, because part 2 was published on 23 May).

49 South African Library, Henry Burton Papers, MSC 38, Box 9, file 8, speech at Stellenbosch University, 8 Sept. 1930.

50 ‘Report of the Fifth National European–Bantu Conference’, Bloemfontein, 5–7 July 1933, 73.

51 NASA, NTS 3579, 780/308, Acting Secretary for Justice (C. H. Blaine) to Secretary for Native Affairs, 31 July 1936. Blaine sent a Law Advisors' report concerning s. 13 (2) of the Native Trust and Land Act 1936 (re expropriation): ‘One of the purposes of the Act is to bring about the territorial segregation of natives and non-natives, so that, speaking broadly, natives shall not occupy land situate outside scheduled native areas and released areas’.

52 NASA, NTS 3533, 431/308, n.d. [1926 or 1927?]; and NTS 3515, 331/308, map enclosed with a letter, Assistant NC to Additional NC, 22 Aug. 1929, showing portions of Elandsdoorn 225 and the neighboring farms.

53 Lacey, Working for Boroko, 27. Lacey stated that 305,000 morgen of ‘black spots’ were to be expropriated under the 1926 Bill. Apparently, this is an estimate by Edith Rheinallt Jones, and may be conservative, according to Lacey in fn. 58 (318).

54 NASA, NTS 3624, 1131/308, report by two members of the Native Affairs Commission to Minister of Native Affairs, 8 Nov. 1935. Referring to Elandsfontein 374, they wrote: ‘The sale of this land would tend to intensify the existing evil of isolated areas of Native owned land amidst European settlements’. See also NTS 3579, 780/308, Secretary for Native Affairs [Smit] to Secretary for Justice [C. H. Blaine], 14 May 1937. This letter concerned a section of the Native Trust and Land Act; Smit refers to ‘including the elimination of “black spots” in purely European areas’. In another part of the letter, Smit wrote: ‘In many cases such native owned properties are islands in the European areas and are far removed from either scheduled or released areas’. Note that the word ‘islands’ was already being used in documents dated 1917 and 1926. House of Assembly, Debates, Second Parliament, Second Session, 20 Apr. 1917, 172, statement by L. E. Roux van Niekerk; NASA, GG 976, 19/933, GG to Secretary of State, 4 June 1926.

55 Locations were areas for African occupation, which were also called ‘reserves’ after 1913.

56 Duncan, O. and Duncan, B., ‘A methodological analysis of segregation indices’, American Sociological Review, 20 (1955), 210–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57 See, amongst others, White, M. J., ‘The measurement of spatial segregation’, American Journal of Sociology, 88 (1983), 1008–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Massey, D. S. and Denton, N. A., ‘The dimensions of residential segregation’, Social Forces, 67 (1988), 281–315CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wong, D. W. S., ‘Spatial indices of segregation’, Urban Studies, 30 (1993), 559–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Massey, D. S., White, M. J. and Phua, V. C., ‘The dimensions of segregation revisited’, Sociological Methods & Research, 25 (1996), 172–206.Google Scholar

58 As identified in fn. 38.

59 In calculating D at the micro level of farms with racially mixed ownership, above, farm boundaries determined the definition of sub-areas and those calculations are therefore subject to the modifiable area problem and, as a consequence, the grid problem.