from satisfying the property
qualification
for the franchise, which was
protected in the constitution.P
The act caused the greatest hardship in the
Orange Free State, where many farmers evicted Africans from their land
immediately after the act was passed. Sol Plaatje, the secretary of the re-
cently created African National Congress, described their experiences in
Native Life in South Africa:
Some readers may think perhaps that I have taken the Colonial Parliament
rather severely to task. But, ...
if you see your countrymen and country-
women driven from home, their homes broken up, with no hopes of redress,
on the mandate of a Government to which they had loyally paid taxation
without representation-driven
from their homes, because they do not want
to become servants ...
, you would, I think, likewise find it very difficult to
maintain a level head or wield a temperate pen.v'
White farmers paid their African workers lower wages than they could
earn in the mining or manufacturing
industries. Even so, many Africans
preferred to stay on the farms, where, unlike urban workers, they had
access to the land and lived as family units. If they tried to leave, however,
some farmers tied them to the farm by using their control of local au-