THESEGREGATIONERA
lands of all the African inhabitants
of South Africa in the apartheid era
(chapter 6), were scattered throughout the eastern half of the country. The
Transkei was the only substantial bloc of African territory in South Africa.
Elsewhere, even in Zulu land, Whites had acquired legal title to much of the
best land during and after the conquest, whereas the republican govern-
ments of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal had set aside relatively
little land for the exclusive use of Africans.
The land thus proclaimed as African formed a small proportion
of the
territory that African mixed farmers had occupied before the Mfecane and
the white conquest. By the 1920S, some of it was already carrying such a
heavy concentration
of people and livestock that the original vegetation
was disappearing, streams and waterholes were drying up, and soil erosion
was spreading. In the years that followed, the African reserves continued to
deteriorate.
The state network
of railways and roads served the white
farmers but neglected the reserves, and the government provided massive
assistance to white farmers but scarcely any to Africans.
After 1910, the people in the reserves became unable to produce enough
food to feed themselves and to pay the taxes imposed by the municipal,