LETTER: Louis Botha gave us the 1913 Land Act
He made it a crime for Africans to buy or rent land in nine-tenths of SA
02 September 2019 - 05:03
Royston Lamond’s hagiography of Louis Botha “Hail Louis Botha, founder of a united SA (https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/letters/2019-08-30-letter-hail-louis-botha-founder-of-a-united-sa/)” (August 30) ignores his Natives Land Act, which made it a crime for Africans to buy or rent land in nine-tenths of SA. This provoked the birth of the ANC.
Less widely known is that Botha also tried to demand that eSwatini and Lesotho be handed over to SA so that their land could also be sold off to white farmers. His unification of the four colonies included the ban on blacks being elected as MPs...
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