Natives' Land Act

Natives Land Act, 1913
Act to make further provision as to the purchase and leasing of Land by Natives and other Persons in the several parts of the Union and for other purposes in connection with the ownership and occupation of Land by Natives and other Persons.
Citation	Act No. 27 of 1913
Enacted by	Parliament of South Africahi
Date of Royal Assent	16 June 1913
Date commenced	19 June 1913
Date repealed	30 June 1991
Administered by	Minister of Native Affairs
Repealing legislation
Abolition of Racially Based Land Measures Act, 1991
Related legislation
Native Trust and Land Act, 1936
Status: Repealed

The Natives Land Act, 1913 (subsequently renamed Bantu Land Act, 1913 and Black Land Act, 1913; Act No. 27 of 1913) was an Act of the Parliament of South Africa that was aimed at regulating the acquisition of land. The Act was an important part of apartheid.

The Natives Land Act of 1913 was the first major piece of segregation legislation passed by the Union Parliament. It was replaced by the current policy of land restitution. The act decreed that whites were not allowed to buy land from natives and vice versa. That stopped white farmers from buying more native land. Exceptions had to be approved by the Governor-General. The native areas left initially totaled less than 10% of the entire land mass of the Union, which was later expanded to 13%.

The Act further prohibited the practice of serfdom or sharecropping. It also protected existing agreements or arrangement of land hired or leased by both parties.

This land was in "native reserve" areas, which meant it was under "communal" tenure vested in African chiefs: it could not be bought, sold or used as surety. Outside such areas, perhaps of even greater significance for black farming was that the Act forbade black tenant farming on white-owned land. Since so many black farmers were sharecroppers or labor tenants, that had a devastating effect, but its full implementation was not immediate. The Act strengthened the chiefs, who were part of the state administration, but it forced many blacks into the "white" areas into wage labour.

The Act created a system of land tenure that deprived most South Africans of the right to own land. That had major socio-economic repercussions. Had the Supreme Court of South Africa not rendered the Act's application void for a few years, it also would have disenfranchised all "natives" in the Cape Colony, where blacks and people of mixed race (Cape Coloureds) had greater political rights than in the other provinces as a legacy of British rule. It had a property (and education)-based franchise. The Act continued in force 40 years.

The opposition was modest but vocal. John Dube used his newspaper to create an issue. As president of what would become the African National Congress, he supported whites like William Cullen Wilcox, who had created the Zululand Industrial Improvement Company. That had led to them supplying land to thousands of black people in Natal. Dube was one of five people who were sent to Britain to try and overturn the law once it came into force in South Africa.

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