The aim of this chapter is to explore the political debate about the Natives Land Act, 1913 (hereafter the Land Act) and to analyse why certain groups within South African society forcefully promoted the law and why the overwhelming majority of the members of the House of Assembly allowed a small group of zealots to sway their votes. African opposition to the Natives Land Bill, 1913 (hereafter the bill) was neither important enough nor strong enough to prevent Parliamentarians from voting the bill into law. Significant white support propelled the demand for a law stopping Africans from freely buying land outside of the reserves and led Prime Minister Louis Botha and his Cabinet to introduce the bill late in the parliamentary session. The success of the campaign for the Act can be seen as political appeasement to a portion of the members of the House of Assembly.

There is no end to conjecturing about the reasons why the Land Act was passed; however, substantial evidence to support these theories is lacking in most cases. Moreover, few scholars consider the importance of the political context for the debate about legislation concerning African land rights, and most ignore the political pressures on the new government between 1910 and 1913. I shall explore the political debate about the Land Act in order to determine why certain elements within South African society forcefully promoted the law and to explain why the overwhelming majority of the members of the House of Assembly voted for the bill. I argue that the evidence strongly supports the conclusion that many of the Act's promoters, both in and out of Parliament, saw the Land Act as a means to create rural territorial segregation because the Act defined the land to be set aside for Africans, the so-called ‘scheduled areas’, and prohibited Africans from buying land outside of these areas. The evidence in the 1910s and 1920s also strongly supports the conclusion that the segregation aim was the underlying ‘principle’ of the Act.