For many years after the British victory in the South African War (1899–1902), relations between the Afrikaner and English ‘races’ were considered a far more important matter than that of political rights for black South Africans. There was one thing upon which white people agreed: they should retain political power. Colonial conquest, the habits and institutions of a rigid class-based British society, and the relations forged on the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony by British settlers in the 1820s lay the foundation for the behaviour of many English-speakers, which tended to reflect that of most Afrikaners with their VOC heritage. This became clear from the segregation policy in Natal, which was later mirrored in the Union of South Africa.

The Lagden Commission, appointed by Lord Milner in 1903 to report on ‘native affairs’ in the four colonies, made wide-ranging recommendations regarding the division of land which were later incorporated into the Natives Land Act No 27 of 1913. According to Sher, ‘In many ways the Lagden Commission's report became the blueprint for the course taken by the segregation policy in South Africa.’ The aspirations of black people were ‘simply side-lined’. In the aftermath of the formation of the Union in 1910, a process began that would eventually lead to the disenfranchisement of black and coloured people in the Cape Province and Natal, ending their representation in parliament. Although black political leaders petitioned and struggled against blatant injustices, for the greater part of the twentieth century very few escaped doing manual labour for white people. In 1922 the Stallard (Transvaal Local Government) Commission was established: