Source 8b

Transcript

Native Areas

In any case, it is sheer fantasy to suppose that the Bantu peoples can be persuaded, except by the uncompromising use of force, to accept any plan of Separate Development which would concentrate them in areas, not of their choosing, deliberately designed to emphasis the “ethnic grouping”, the tribal divisions, which virtually every intelligent Bantu considers outworn and inimical [harmful] to African development.

Native Reserves are no new thing. As long ago as 1913 the Bantu were given the sole right of occupation of certain areas which had remained in their possession after the White conquest of Southern Africa, and provision for the additional land for Native occupation was made by the Native Trust and Land Act of 1936 making up the Reserves to a total of about 57,000 square miles, or about 13 per cent. of the area of the Union.

Although much of the Reserves is fair farming land, they are under-developed and eroded, and production remains on a traditional primitive subsistence level. Poverty in the Reserves has benefited mining, manufacturing and large-scale agriculture, for it has driven Africans from their homes to seek work in the cities and on the European farms. Thus, at the last census, out of a total Bantu population of 8.5 million little more than 3.6 million were in the Reserves, as against 2.6 million on European farms and 2.3 million in urban areas.