In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie unpacks the complex and painful history behind the 1913 Land Act. The article was first published on the Brand South Africa website on 17 October 2013. Click here to view more of Davie's work.
In 1913 law-abiding people were dispossessed of their only means of earning a living: land. The Native Land Act of 1913 forced millions of black South Africans from productive farms across the country, when their cattle, their homes, their crops and their possessions, were taken from them.
Around 7% of land was then relegated to black people, spread along the eastern coastal area, from East London in the Eastern Cape, upwards, to the border with Mozambique, and dots of land in Limpopo and North West provinces.
Map of the distribution of land according to the Act
Prior to the act, most of these black farmers were tenants on white farms, ploughing a portion of land given to them, and giving up to 50% of the harvest to the landlord, to pay for their tenancy. Now the act prohibited them from hiring or buying land. The landlord-tenant relationship was now a criminal offence, for which farmers could be fined £100, a considerable sum in those days. The black tenants would then be given a stark option: become the...
