Precursors
Hut tax
Franchise and Ballot Act (1892)
Natal Legislative Assembly Bill (1894)
General Pass Regulations Bill (1905)
Asiatic Registration Act (1906)
South Africa Act (1909)
Natives Land Act (1913)
Natives in Urban Areas Bill (1918)
Natives (Urban Areas) Act (1923)
Colour Bar Act (1923)
Immorality Act (1927)
Native Administration Act (1927)
Representation of Natives Act (1936)
Native Trust and Land Act (1936)
Asiatic Land Tenure Bill (1946)
After 1948
Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949)
Immorality Amendment Act † (1950)
Population Registration Act (1950)
Group Areas Act (1950)
Suppression of Communism Act (1950)
Native Building Workers Act (1951)
Separate Representation of Voters Act (1951)
Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act (1951)
Bantu Authorities Act (1951)
Native Laws Amendment Act † (1952)
Pass Laws Act (1952)
Native Labour (Settlement of Disputes) Act (1953)
Bantu Education Act (1953)
Reservation of Separate Amenities Act (1953)
Natives Resettlement Act (1954)
Group Areas Development Act (1955)
Industrial Conciliation Act (1956)
Natives (Prohibition of Interdicts) Act (1956)
Bantu Investment Corporation Act (1959)
Extension of University Education Act (1959)
Promotion of Bantu Self-government Act (1959)
Coloured Persons Communal Reserves Act (1961)
Preservation of Coloured Areas Act (1961)
Republic of South Africa Constitution Act (1961)
Urban Bantu Councils Act (1961)
General Law Amendment Act (1963)
Post-Verwoerd
Terrorism Act (1966)
Coloured Persons Representative Council Amendment Act † (1968)
Prohibition of Improper Interference Act (1968)
Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act (1970)
Bantu Homelands Constitution Act (1971)
Black Local Authorities Act (1982)
Republic of South Africa Constitution Act (1983)
† No new legislation introduced, rather
the existing legislation named was amended.
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 aimed at regulating the acquisition of land by "natives", i.e. black people. The Act formed an important part of the system of Apartheid and is of importance for both legal and historic reasons.
Contents |
The Natives Land Act of 1913 [1] was the first major piece of segregation legislation passed by the Union Parliament, and remained a cornerstone of Apartheid until the 1990s when it was replaced by the current policy of land restitution. The act decreed that only certain areas of the country could be owned by natives. These areas totalled only 7% of the entire land mass of the Union.[2]
The Act created a system of land tenure that deprived the majority of South Africa's inhabitants of the right to own land which had major socio-economic repercussions. Had the Supreme Court not rendered the Acts application void for a few years it also would have disenfranchised all "natives" in the Cape Colony. For forty years the apartheid laws were to be followed.
A fair amount of political irony surrounds the Act:
A fair analysis therefore concludes that the Act in retrospect was a severe self-inflicted wound on South Africa and that it was the start of a long road of modern oppression, however that was not at the outset of the Act its intention, further that the full repercussions of the Act were not fully understood until it was too late, and the tide of White Supremacy had reached its full height.
L.M. Thompson, A History of South Africa