There are two 19th century patterns which I wish to emphasise: first, dispossession occurred during the 19th century. Black South Africans lost substantial amounts of land in all sections of the country to the minority whites, mostly as a result of conquest. Leonard Thompson estimates that the Zulu lost about two-thirds of their land and the southern Tswana even more by the end of the 19th century. Other societies also lost land, mainly because they were conquered by Afrikaners or the British colonial government. Most black South Africans either lived on white-owned land or in the remaining areas left to them, often referred to as ‘reserves’. The second pattern involved the European introduction into the Transvaal, Orange Free State (OFS), and Natal of the idea of land as a commodity, something that could be bought and sold. Consequently, Africans who desired to buy land followed the European system with title deeds and registration of their land with the appropriate government officials, such as the Registrar of Deeds. However, before the formation of the Union of South Africa, different rules for access to land existed in the four regions: in the Cape and Natal, blacks could purchase land, whereas in the OFS, they could not. In the Transvaal, a trusteeship system limited the unfettered right to buy. The ‘in trust’ system that emerged in the later 19th century allowed Africans to purchase land, but they had to register the land in the name of a government official ‘in trust’ for the owners (or in the name of a cooperating white man, such as a missionary). No Transvaal law existed to prevent Africans from buying land, but, in 1880, officials established a formal trusteeship system. Land bought by Africans would be registered in the name of a public official or agency, ‘in trust’ for the relevant African communities. The ‘in trust’ system continued into the Union period until at least the 1930s.