The Botha—Smuts land policy, 1918—1924

The withdrawal of the Native Affairs Administration Bill, 1917 (hereafter the NAA Bill) created a significant void in the government's land policy: no legal authority to provide more land for exclusive African use. However, officials took advantage of a method built into the Natives Land Act, 1913 (hereafter the Land Act); Section 1 (1) gave the government the right to make exceptions to that law, thereby allowing officials to approve new land purchases and leases by Africans outside the scheduled areas. Why did the Minister of Native Affairs (MNA), J. W. Sauer, and his colleagues recommend the inclusion of the exception clause in the Land Act in 1913? The manuscript record is silent on this topic. There are two possible answers: first, the government wanted flexibility in dealing with hardships relating to overcrowding in the scheduled areas; second, the temporary nature of the Land Act which deferred implementation of parts of the law until the Natives Land Commission (NLC) reported and Parliament acted, anticipated in about two years or so. In fact, the exception clause was not included in the NAA Bill, which was intended to be the final word on the African land problem.

The clause, ‘except with the approval of the Governor-General’, enabled the government to help meet African land hunger after Parliament failed to pass a new land law. Edward Dower, the Secretary for Native Affairs (SNA), told Prime Minister Botha that the NLC's recommendations (1916) and the local committees’ recommendations should be the basis for identifying land that Africans could buy or lease. Furthermore, leasing by Africans should be ‘freely permitted’ in these areas, and the right to buy land in both areas should ‘be liberally granted’.