The Governor-General approved requests for access to land from thousands of Africans at a time when the Natives Land Act (hereafter the Land Act) forbade black South Africans from buying or leasing land. This meant that he approved 3,295 purchases of farms and lots throughout South Africa between 19 June 1913 and 31 December 1935 (see Table 5.1). The actual number of purchases was greater because purchases in the Cape were not reported to Parliament after 16 February 1917. During this time, he granted permission for 1,502 transactions in the Transvaal; 1,644 in Natal; and 75 in the Orange Free State (OFS). These approvals included a small number of African sales to whites in the Transvaal, and a larger number of African sales to whites and Indians in Natal. The majority was for the purchase of lots in the Transvaal and Natal, more so for Natal than for the Transvaal. There were other differences between the Transvaal and Natal in buying patterns, including the use of the ‘in trust’ system, the number of women buyers and number and size of partnerships. In addition, the Governor-General approved 1,472 mortgages (which I shall discuss in Chapter 7) and 2,849 leases, although a portion of these leases, especially in the OFS, went to whites who were renting land from the African owners for grazing.

The desperate need for land

The shortage of land for the majority African population throughout the first half of the 20th century was no secret. F. S. Malan, Minister of Mines, told his colleagues, Prime Minister Smuts and the Minister of Lands, Deneys Reitz, about the ‘insistent claims of the natives in regard to land for tribal or community occupation’. Locations and reserves were overcrowded and ‘intolerably cramped’; too little and small were mild words used, while statements like the ‘great and unsatisfied demand for land’, more accurately reflected the circumstances. Already in 1904, African chiefs complained to the British colonial government about ‘inadequacy of land’.