ABSTRACT
Land, air, and water are the three essentials of life, and they are the property of everybody, at any rate of everybody in the tribe. The only individual rights recognized are occupation rights, and these are granted by the chief not as landowner but as representative of the tribe. The communal nature of land-holding in Africa is also indicated by the fact that the land is not only the source of food supply; it is the home of the race and the sepulchre of the dead. The Native in many parts of South Africa labours under all of the disabilities, and the poverty of the people has become almost a menace to the State. Around Elisabethville, for instance, there are many native cultivators who, instead of being dependent on their labour in the mines, make quite a respectable living from growing garden produce.
