The case study about the owners of Tweefontein demonstrates that certain African landowners in the Transvaal had to defend their ownership rights before apartheid. They found themselves under pressure to exchange, ‘voluntarily’, land that they owned for land located, in the view of government officials, in a more acceptable African area – defined as a ‘scheduled’ area, a ‘Natives Land Commission (NLC)’ area, a ‘local committee’ area or a ‘released’ area. The African owners in question spent years resisting state requests and learned that there were limits to the power of the South African state, including legal constraints, until 1939, on the government's expropriation powers. Officials promoted exchanges for two main reasons: first, the state wanted to take over land perceived to be in the way of irrigation projects which were planned for dense white settlement and off limits to Africans because officials believed that black farmers could not successfully take advantage of irrigation. Second, the state tried to solve problems (real or imagined) between African owners and their white neighbours, especially if African-owned land was surrounded by white-owned land (so-called black spots). The Hartebeestpoort and the Loskop irrigation schemes are the best examples and involved the African owners of Krokodilkraal 61 in the Hartebeestpoort area, and Vlaklaagte 284 and Toitskraal 421 in the Loskop area. Two important examples of tensions between black owners and their white neighbours leading to demands for Africans to exchange their land for alternate land are Tweefontein 529, which I have already discussed, and Klipfontein 482.

Negotiations were always an essential part of the exchange process. The most important negotiations were between the African owners and government officials, mainly NCs. Officials working for the Native Affairs Department (NAD) and Lands Department also negotiated among themselves, sometimes cooperating, but at other times, divided over what to do because NAD officials were usually sympathetic or more sympathetic to the African owners than were Lands Department officials.