The Territorial Legacy

The location, size, and fragmentation of the homelands are products of the processes of the South African frontier during the nineteenth and their legislative confirmation in the twentieth century. As a result of a triangular conflict between settlers, Africans, and the British government, the policy of defining areas for exclusive ownership by Africans developed in various forms, first as a direct result of imperial intervention and later as a policy adopted by settler governments themselves. What had originally been a policy designed to protect militarily weaker groups became one to minimize the costs of government and to provide dormitories for families of migrant laborers. Consequently, settler governments developed an interest in preserving African landholding, and the internal frontiers of South Africa gradually attained some stability.

Although the policy of reservation secured at least some land to Africans, and, in the case of the former High Commission Territories, a territorial base for future states, fundamentally it was evasive and represented a response of expediency. Neither the imperial power, nor the settler governments, were evolving a policy that would give all people equal access to resources and opportunities. Nor were they ensuring through education that the technological gap between whites, on the one hand, and blacks, on the other, would be narrowed. The job market in modern sectors of the economy soon became racially structured, and education for Africans was left to

private institutions with limited power and resources. Frequently the declaration of reserves simply recognized the status quo or froze, temporarily, a distribution of land. For a period before 1913, some Africans were in a mildly favored position because they had land reserved to them and could also acquire land outside these reserves, especially in the Cape Province and Natal. The proclamation of a reserve, however, was no guarantee that the reserve would remain intact. Land continued to be taken from blacks and given to whites, sometimes as a punishment for rebellion, or as a means of rewarding cooperative whites.

The Tswana and the Zulu, no less than others, contended for land with colonial and republican frontiersmen. Pushed off the sweet grazing lands of the highveld by the Ndebele and other Nguni peoples, and then by the Voortrekkers searching for fresh pastures, the Tswana moved westward toward the edge of the Kalahari Desert. There they successfully regained some coherence. The voracious appetite for land of Afrikaners from the Orange Free State and the Transvaal led to a steady whittling away of the Tswana holdings. Fortunately, however, for the Tswana, there was a limit. In 1885, in order to forestall further expansion on the part of the Transvaal and the threat of the spread of German imperialism from Southwest Africa, Britain "protected" the largest portion of the new Tswana lands. (It thus provided a subsequent territorial base for an independent Botswana.) Other lands in Tswana hands remained outside the Protectorate but, with the grant of self-government to the Cape Colony in 1872 and the recognition of the autonomy of the Transvaal in 1881, much of these lands were lost. In 1897, for example, the Cape Colony opened Tswana lands to white settlement, partly as punishment for the Tswana rebellion of 1896. The Tswana were thus divided in three: those who remained under British imperial rule in the Protectorate were separated from those under the rule of whites in the Cape and the Transvaal. The Union of South Africa in 1910 brought the Tswana of the Cape and the Transvaal together under a single government without adding to their resources or power.

The Zulu resisted the thrust of whites, but encroachment on their territory was continuous. In the war of 1879, after initial success, they were defeated, their king was exiled, and their kingdom was broken up into separate chieftaincies. Encircled by republican and colonial frontiersmen, the Zulu steadily lost land, especially in the coastal areas most suited to the cultivation of cotton and sugar, later Natal's major crop. Even some foothills of the eastern plateaux—Zulu territory from Shaka's day—were alienated by whites. In 1904 extensive areas of Natal were thrown open to white settlement, the Zulu reserves being immediately diminished by 2.6 million acres; only 3.8 million acres remained.^[1] As a result the Zulu found themselves steadily pushed back

[1] Shula Marks, Reluctant Rebellion (Oxford, 1970), 127.

on to less desirable terrain where water was comparatively scarce, grazing poor, and agricultural conditions harsh.

Neither Bophuthatswana nor KwaZulu is a homeland in any meaningful historical sense, although the Tswana and the Zulu have both lived in these respective areas since the nineteenth century. Both territories contain places of traditional significance to their respective peoples, and both are consequently considered a part, if only a small part, of original, more extensive patrimonies. It would be difficult to find an African leader, traditional or modern, who regards the present borders of the homelands as legitimate, the size of the homelands as sufficient, or the fragmented quality of the homelands as satisfactory.

Bophuthatswana and KwaZulu have never been homelands in any demographic sense. If a homeland is supposed to be the Urheimat, the original gathering place of at least a substantial portion of a people, then neither Bophuthatswana nor KwaZulu qualifies or has ever qualified. Ever since they have been secured to black occupancy, the two homelands have encompassed only a proportion of the Tswana and the Zulu. The remainder have resided upon white-controlled land. At the beginning of this century as many Tswana and Zulu lived outside as lived within their homelands. Today 64 percent of the Tswana and 46 percent of the Zulu live outside their homelands.

Until the coming of the union, although there was considerable variation in law and practice regarding land, each of South Africa's component provinces had set aside areas of exclusive African occupation. Small in the Orange Free State, these areas were more extensive and more fragmented in the Transvaal and Natal; and in the Cape Colony there was the large, consolidated bloc of the Transkei. In 1913 the new government of South Africa began the process of reconciling the different land laws of the provinces, a process that was ultimately to eliminate the favored position long held by Africans in the Cape. In dealing with land, the government accepted the proposals of the South African Native Affairs Commission (1903–1905), which had espoused territorial partition as the only basis for the development of South African society and politics. As far as the commission was concerned, the growth of a mixed society was to be avoided.

The passage of the Natives Land Act of 1913 did not emerge out of a desire to produce the territorial basis of a just, if segregated, society. Instead, it constituted a response to the expressed interests of white farmers, then the dominant group in South African politics, for continued access to supplies of low-wage labor. At the same time a class of South Africans then called "poor whites" was being forced off the land. The act was intended to minimize competition by forbidding Africans to purchase land or to offer themselves as sharecroppers on white-owned land. Certainly the evolution of black-run states was never envisaged, although the reserves were regarded

as places wherein "the native way of life," including limited application of indigenous law and governance, could be continued. The primary object of the act was to segregate. The secondary object was to limit the number of African families permitted to reside on white-run farms, particularly in the Transvaal.^[2]

The act designated 10.7 million morgen (22.5 million acres), or 7.3 percent of the area of South Africa, as reserves to be occupied and used by and for Africans; these 10.7 million morgen were the "scheduled areas." The crucial contribution of the law involved the distribution of land between Africans and whites. No longer to be left to the forces of the market, land distribution was regulated by law: Africans were prohibited from acquiring land outside the reserves. The act also provided for a commission to recommend additions for a final land settlement, but this part of the act was not carried out. The Beaumont Commission of 1913–1916 recommended areas to be "released" which would have given Africans an additional 8 million morgen, but the Native Affairs Bill of 1917, which embodied the Beaumont proposals, never emerged from a parliamentary committee. Thus the Natives Land Act of 1913 did nothing to consolidate the scattered parcels of what have since become—especially in the cases of the Tswana and the Zulu—fragmented and inadequate homelands.

Since Africans were accustomed to using land extensively, the Natives Land Act dramatically curtailed the traditional African reliance upon the availability of exploitable resources of land. By making no provision for the growth of the reserves commensurate with increased population, the act compelled Africans to employ land intensively both for farming and herding. It also encouraged the able-bodied to offer their services as migratory laborers, or to move permanently to the towns. Moreover, much of the land of the reserves was of deficient quality to begin with, or deteriorated quickly under the pressure of overgrazing. "Though there were tribes and portions of tribes that were well off," a social historian wrote, "the majority lived upon too little land to maintain them as in days of old. Even the . . . traditional allies and favourites of the Government choked upon their land. Such a crowding of men and beasts placed a severe strain upon the land that was left. . . . The breakdown of soil into sand, the replacement of nutritious grass by weeds, the disappearance of trees and shrubs, the scarring of the land could not withstand the pressure upon it of too many men and too many beasts."^[3]

These inadequacies of size and terrain, and their human consequences, were widely recognized. The density of population was at least four times

[2] Colin M. Tatz, Shadow and Substance in South Africa (Pietermaritzburg, 1962), 22.

[3] C. W. De Kiewiet, A History of South Africa, Social and Economic (London, 1941), 80.

greater (82.21 persons per square mile) in the reserves than in the white-controlled rural areas of the Union.^[4] The Native Economic Commission of 1932, appalled by what it had seen, testified to the already advanced deterioration of the reserves. "A Native area," the Commission reported in words equally appropriate today, "can be distinguished at sight, by its bareness. . . . Two areas with fertile valleys containing great depth of soil . . . show some of the worst donga erosion in the Union. . . . In the rest of the Union the same causes are at work . . . and they will inevitably produce the same effects in the near future—denudation, donga erosion, deleterious plant succession, destruction of woods, drying of springs, robbing the soil of its productive properties, in short the creation of desert conditions."^[5] Many Africans accepted the only option open to them: they moved off the land, flocking to the white-owned lands and the white-dominated cities. "One of the outstanding causes of migration from the reserves," wrote an anthropologist, "quite apart from recruiting, is the appalling shortage of land for native occupation. The Native reserves, at their present low state of development, are both overpopulated and overstocked; and as a result more and more people are tending to drift away."^[6]

In partial recognition of these realities, the Native Trust and Land Act of 1936 envisaged the acquisition of 7.25 million morgen (15.2 million acres) for Africans, the "released areas" originally recommended by the Beaumont Commission, for a total of 17.7 million morgen (37.2 million acres) of the 142.5 million morgen (289.25 million acres) in the Union (excluding Southwest Africa). This transfer, had it been effected, would thus have placed only 12.4 percent of the total area of the Republic in the reserves. The act was also expected to eliminate competition between whites and blacks for land, and, in the areas scheduled to be transferred, whites were to be compelled to sell land to the Native Trust for inclusion in the reserves. "Black spots," i.e., areas of African occupation in the defined "white areas," would also have been eliminated. But returning lands from powerful whites to subordinate Africans was controversial, and the process of transfer was consequently delayed. The intervention of World War II further slowed the handover. By 1945 Parliament had appropriated only £6 million of the originally contemplated £10 million for the necessary purchases, and only about 3 million morgen had been added to the reserves. Sixty percent of the money had

[4] Edward Roux, "Land and Agriculture in the Native Reserves," in Ellen Hellman (ed.), Handbook on Race Relations in South Africa (Cape Town, 1949), 175.

[5] Union of South Africa, Report of the Native Economic Commission (Pretoria, 1932), paragraphs 71–74, quoted in H. T. Andrews et al. (eds.), South Africa in the Sixties: A Socio-Economic Survey (Johannesburg, 1965).

[6] Isaac Schapera, "Present-day Life in the Native Reserves," in Isaac Schapera (ed.), Western Civilization and the Natives of South Africca: Studies in Culture Contact (London, 1934), 45.

acquired only 40 percent of the land. "It appears," said the chairman of the Native Affairs Commission, "that the European community is not prepared to honour its promises."^[7] In late 1974, 20 percent of the quota land of 1936 remained to be acquired.^[8]

Recently the issue of land consolidation has once more been prominent, with the government announcing in 1975 yet another final land allocation. The government has repeatedly stated that it will not consider increasing the 1936 quotas.^[9] It is not intended that the homelands in total can comprise more than 13.7 percent of the area of the Republic, whenever the process of acquisition, swapping, and "black spot" and "white spot" removal has been completed. Homeland leaders have repeatedly said that they would not consider accepting independence without major territorial concessions. Whether the government will eventually be compelled to make concessions on land in the hope of making independence more acceptable is a question for the future.

Meanwhile, African populations have increased through natural causes and the Republic remains determined to restrict their flow to the towns and to "resettle" at least some Africans in the homelands. Consequently, densities have increased and, overall, the agricultural condition of the homelands has deteriorated. The insufficiencies of the original reserves are now even more pronounced than they were in 1936.