On the Law and the Land: the consolidation of native resistance in the South Africa Union from the Natives Land Act of 1913

Abstract

The enactment of segregationist laws - in particular, the Natives Land Act, 1913 - after the constitution of the nation state functioned as a trigger for more incisive political articulation of the “literate elite” of South African natives. Here, the analysis is guided by the Native Life in South Africa, by Sol Plaatje - journalist, politician and writer, one of the leading names in this literate elite who, in the early decades of the twentieth century, claimed for a stronger political voice in the South African Union.