Broken Lands and Trusts: The Omnipresence of the Natives’ Land Act Of 1913 and the Persistence of Its Inequity

Authors

• Emily Venkatesan

Abstract

The hallmark of all colonial and ex-colonial states is the preservation of racial hierarchy where a minority of white colonizers reserve complete control over the political, social, and economic landscape of a colonized nation. One of the most powerful exercises of this colonial oversight is the use of western property law to strip native landowners of their property interests and redistribute that land to white colonizer for economic and social power. Access and ownership of land is crucial for maintaining the colonial state. Land provides social and economic leverage in the hands of the indigenous nation, but strengthens the colonial hierarchy if ownership successfully passes to the minority of colonizers. For almost all colonial states of the British Empire, western property rights adopted the doctrine of discovery and institutionalized racial stratification. Though most ex-colonial states have begun the decolonization process through legal reforms and social equity policies, the scars of colonial property distribution still wreak havoc on racial equity. In South Africa, the introduction of the Natives’ Land Act of 1913 laid the foundation for the corrupt, white minority to wage a social war on black South Africans, codifying a racial hierarchy by dissolving bargaining power of the black majority. The extent of the social and economic damage racially based property rights remains uncertain, but on an objective scale, even after the introduction of a human rights-based constitution and the “rainbow nation” Nelson Mandela envisioned, black South Africans remain disadvantaged and underrepresented, despite a racial majority. The power of property as a tool of colonial power consolidation remains enshrined in the economic and property ownership of modern-day South Africa. With far reaching applications for legal analysis of post-colonized nations and the use of property to maintain a racial hierarchy well-after official law decries racial inequality, property law and its analysis remain relevant to promulgating justice and decolonizing legal systems.

Recommended Citation

Emily Venkatesan, Broken Lands and Trusts: The Omnipresence of the Natives’ Land Act Of 1913 and the Persistence of Its Inequity, 40 Emory Int'l L. Rev. 435 (2026).
Available at: https://scholarlycommons.law.emory.edu/eilr/vol40/iss2/6