Last week my colleague Anthea Jeffery reminded us that the deputy president, David Mabuza, had said that the Expropriation Bill currently before Parliament was necessary to “address the injustices of the past and restore land rights”.
What rights then did the Natives Land Act of 1913 and the Native Trust and Land Act of 1936 actually take away? And will the current expropriation plans of the African National Congress (ANC) restore these rights?
The 1913 act did two key things. Firstly, it provided for comprehensive territorial segregation. Secondly, it subjected the land market to racial restrictions.
Prior to the act, black Africans (blacks) had been free to buy and hold land either individually or collectively anywhere in the Cape and Natal, in a small part of the Orange Free State, and, following a 1905 court case, even in the Transvaal. They were in fact doing so, to the dismay of many whites who complained that they were being “squeezed out”.
The act put a stop to this freedom, except in the Cape. It scheduled all black reserves, mission reserves, and tribal locations, as well as black-owned farms, for exclusive black ownership. Except with the permission of the governor-general (which was often given), and outside the Cape, blacks were now prohibited from buying land outside these “scheduled areas”, which amounted to some 10.73 million morgen. (One morgen equals 0.86 hectares.) Whites were simultaneously prohibited from buying land inside these scheduled areas (but for which provision blacks might have lost even more land).
When the act was passed, black Africans constituted 67% of the country’s population. It was widely recognised that the scheduled areas were too small for their populations. But it was not until the 1936 act – nearly a quarter of a century later – that another 6.79 million morgen were released for black ownership. The total of “scheduled” and “released” areas was now somewhere between 13% and 14% of the country, later collectively known as the ten “homelands”.