Natives Land Act, 1913 (South Africa)

The Natives Land Act, 1913, is a South African statute passed by the Union of South Africa's parliament on 19 June 1913 that restricted Black South Africans' ownership and occupation of land to designated reserves, initially amounting to roughly seven percent of the country's total land area. It made it illegal for Black South Africans to buy, lease or occupy land outside these reserves except in the Cape Province, where existing Black landowners retained a limited exemption, and it likewise barred white South Africans from acquiring land within the reserves, formalizing territorial segregation between the races. The act displaced large numbers of Black tenant farmers and sharecroppers who had been farming white-owned land under various arrangements, forcing many into wage labor or into the overcrowded reserves. It is widely regarded by historians as the foundational piece of land segregation legislation in South Africa, a territorial framework later extended under apartheid, including through the Native Trust and Land Act of 1936, which expanded the reserved area to about thirteen percent.