The enduring spatial legacy of the Natives Land Act

Abstract

The centenary of the Natives Land Act of 1913 offers an avenue through which we can rethink and debate post-apartheid land reform. This paper focuses on how this Act epitomised the culmination of ideas about state and society and also laid the foundation for the social geography of the country. The Act set the stage for the configuration of the country through land as a tool for spatial planning. The principal objective of the paper is to highlight aspects of the Act that have cemented the social geography of the country, and to reflect on how and why those aspects continue to impede the redrawing of social and territorial borders in post-apartheid South Africa. The paper calls for a deeper reflection on the philosophical and material meanings that the Natives Land Act embodied, and how these have been disrupted or reinforced in whole or parts by post-apartheid policies and programmes.

Keywords:

• social geography
• Natives Land Act
• borders

Notes

1. Land of good quality was not to be sold to natives. Furthermore, natives were not allowed to buy land reserved for European immigrants.

2. The limitation on the number of families was meant to distribute farm labour evenly among white farmers.

3. The official reference to detribalised natives as natives without a chief included farmworkers.