Natives Land Act, 1913

A South African law that restricted African land ownership and occupation to scheduled reserves, initially about seven percent of the country. It helped establish territorial segregation under white rule.

Scheduled Native Areas: Territories designated by South African law for African occupation and land ownership. The Act’s schedules identified the limited areas where Africans could legally own land.
Union of South Africa: A self-governing dominion formed in 1910 by uniting four British colonies in southern Africa. The new Union government passed the Act three years after its formation.
South African Native National Congress: An organization founded in 1912 to represent African political interests; it became the African National Congress in 1923. Its leaders organized opposition to the Act soon after its passage.
Land dispossession in South Africa: The removal or loss of land by Black South Africans through colonial and apartheid policies and coercion. The Act restricted African land rights and intensified an existing process of dispossession.
1913 women's anti-pass campaign: A campaign in the Orange Free State in which African women protested pass requirements imposed on them. It was a contemporaneous protest against racial controls, distinct from the Act’s land restrictions.
Sharecropping: An agricultural arrangement in which cultivators pay landowners with a share of their harvest. Restrictions on African landholding pushed many farmers toward regulated sharecropping arrangements.
South African War: The 1899–1902 conflict between the British Empire and the Boer republics in southern Africa. Its aftermath created the political order that preceded Union and the Act.
John Dube: A South African educator, minister, and political leader who became the first president of the South African Native National Congress. Dube was among the leaders who protested the land restrictions.
Apartheid: A system of legally enforced racial segregation and white minority rule in South Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s. The Act’s territorial segregation anticipated policies later consolidated under apartheid.
Bloemfontein: A city in central South Africa and the judicial capital of the country. Plaatje’s reporting and political organizing connected the Act’s effects to events in the Orange Free State.

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