Natives Land Act, 1913
The Natives Land Act, Act no. 27/1913 ( German as: Native Land Act ) came into force in 1913 in South Africa and is considered one of the core pieces of the system that has been known since 1948 under the name of apartheid, seen. This law followed the concerns of the Glen Grey Act of 1894 with its orientation to administrative expropriation of the indigenous population.
The Natives Land Act is the division of the available land in areas that were intended exclusively for whites or exclusively for blacks, based. Black could then acquire land in the "white" areas and also vice versa. It was also forbidden that black land leased from white individuals. With this law, there was a division of the land, as a result of the black population is only about 7 % of the area was ( 9,709,586 ha) of the territory of the Union of South Africa as a living area available.
In this way, the Natives Land Act not only consolidated the spatial separation of different ethnic groups, he also supported the system of migrant labor. From this system primarily benefited the mine owner, einstellten the migrant workers as cheap labor. The wages for migrant workers was lower than for white workers, who often lived with their families in the vicinity of the mines. The reason for this was that the black migrant workers with their wages did not have to support their families who remained in the country and there lived on the farm economy. The rural families thus ensured for the reproduction of labor power of the migrant worker, for example, as they provided him when he was sick or too old to work in the mine. In this way, the family of the migrant worker took over the function of a social security - a task that would normally have to take over in case of a completely urbanized worker by the employer.
The Natives Land Act made sure that the income from the farm economy of the black families in their view, was neither too high nor too low. If the income from the farm business from the perspective of the mine owners have been too high, no incentive would have existed for the migrant workers to offer their labor to the mine owners. If the income of the farm economy, however, was too low, the family of the migrant worker could no longer make a living. As a result, the family of the migrant worker should have drawn with the head of the family in the vicinity of the mines. Thus, the mine owners would have been forced the workers to pay a higher wage to ensure the reproduction of his labor.
The progressive urbanization and proletarianization of black workers was the Natives Land Act of 1913 in the long term, however, not prevent it. As the proportion of the land that was allocated to the blacks, was not sufficiently large enough, the soil could no longer support the family after some time and they were forced to move to the cities. One response to this later formed the Native Trust and Land Act of 1936.