Union and segregation

In 1910, a new constitution combined the areas of the Transvaal, the Free State, Natal and the Cape into a union and effectively established the boundaries of a single country (see Figure 1.1). Although central government was instituted under the Union, regional variations continued to exist. The Cape, for example, retained the right to have a non-racial franchise based on property rights, whereas in the other regions black political rights were not upheld. Cape Town became, as it remains, the legislative capital, while Pretoria and Bloemfontein were the administrative and judicial locations, respectively. The Union consolidated the interests of the white population over the black community, a situation that was further demonstrated in the Natives Land Act of 1913. This Act was intended to prevent Africans buying land in areas designated as white, and to stop black tenants living on farms unless they provided an annual minimum of ninety days labour to the landowner. ¹ The Act also forbade the purchase or lease of land by Africans outside certain areas referred to as reserves and by doing so ‘established the principle of land segregation’. ² These areas, which were adapted in 1936, became the ‘basis of the “homelands” of the apartheid era’. ³ By 1910, South Africa was ‘a powerful settler state’, yet only around 20 per cent of the population of the newly formed territory could be classified as white or European. ⁴ The country had attracted European settlers, but the effect could not be compared with the colonisation of North and South America or Australasia. Figure 1.1 The Union of South Africa, 1910. Province names are underlined https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315833156/e7f7da64-fcb7-4a52-abc5-e259b29855ef/content/fig1_1_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> Source: Shillington 2002