ABSTRACT
The Zulu War marked the moment when the best and most accessible land in Natal and the Transvaal had been taken up by Europeans. The land policy in each of the different communities lies at the heart of their native policies. Everywhere the system of land-holding explains many of the worst anomalies of native policy. In all the territories the system of landholding was exceedingly unfavourable to the natives, although it was in the Transvaal that the natives were in worst case. Upon the Transvaal no less than elsewhere in South Africa there had descended the speculator. The normal hunger of the farmer combined with the rapacity of speculators to produce by 1877 an artificial state of overpopulation. Only a constant vigilance exercised by an unprejudiced administration could safeguard the landed interests of the native population.
