Recognition of the vital importance of land to Africans crossed racial lines and broke the boundaries of time. To quote a few opinions on the subject: ‘If we have no land to live on, we can be no people (1912)’; ‘Land means everything to the Native people. It is the basis of their national life (1927)’; and the ‘fundamental basis of all wealth and power is the ownership and acquisition of freehold title to land. From land, we derive our existence (1941)’. John Dube, president of the newly inaugurated South African Native National Congress (SANNC), spoke about land to an African audience at Eshowe in 1912, two years after the formation of the Union of South Africa. Dube's statement emphasised, for all the different societies in South Africa, the historic importance of land to a people's identity. Fifteen years later, two members of the Native Affairs Commission (NAC) reported on their perceptions after their tour of African areas in 1926 and, almost 30 years after Dube spoke, at an African National Congress (ANC) Annual Conference, another ANC president, Dr A. B. Xuma, reminded his listeners that the importance of land had not diminished in an industrialising society. Other South Africans emphasised the importance of rural land to the political discussion about the place of black Africans in South African society, which whites referred to as the ‘native question’. Chief F. F. Zibi, R. V. Selope Thema and Rev. Abner Mtimkulu all wrote, at different times and in different venues, that the ‘land question is the native question’.

The history of African land ownership in 20th century South Africa prior to the onset of apartheid is a story about agency: African initiative in identifying land for sale, success in persuading the state to approve a purchase, persistence in persuading officials if the answer was no, ingenuity in raising the money to meet financial obligations, and non-violent defence of ownership rights. But, this story is also about debt, drought, threats to land ownership, and, on occasion, internal tensions among owners of a farm. A full understanding of this story requires pursuing an African focus with attention to the African voice wherever possible in the context of changing state land policy between 1913 and 1948.