laws to the letter, they played a crucial role in expanding the capitalist
order under white control and reducing the black population to a pro-
letarian status. in that order.
Three years after the inauguration of the Union, without consulting any
Africans, Louis Botha's South African party administration, under strong
pressure from its rural supporters, enacted a crucial law.The Natives Land
Act (19 I 3) prohibited Africans from purchasing or leasing land outside the
reserves fro:mpeople who were not Africans. It also prohibited sharecrop-
ping in the Orange Free State. The act listed areas totaling about 22 million
acres, or about 7 percent of the area of the Union of South Africa, as
constituting the reserves and recommended that they should be substan-
tially increased.P Three years later, a commission appointed in terms of
the act recommended that about 18 million more acres should be added to
the area set aside under the Natives Land Act, but those recommendations
met with astorm of protest from Whites and were not enacted.s? In 1936,
fresh legislation created the South African Native Trust, managed by-
Whites, and empowered it to buy more land for Africans from funds
provided by Parliament. By 1939, the trust's purchases had brought the