(a) NATIVE AREAS, for the Bantu and such other coloured races as are
classed along with them numbering just about 4,000,000 SOULS:
18 1/4 MILLION MORGEN.
(b) EUROPEAN AREAS, or nearly the whole of Rural South Africa,
for the occupation of 660,000 RURAL WHITES (mainly Boers):
123,000,000 MORGEN.
The English Areas (I) are not affected by the troubles which form the subject of this book. None but the four million blacks will be allowed to buy land in the Native Area (II(a)); while all the blacks who hitherto lived on the Boer Areas (II(b)) must clear out. They would only be allowed to come back to Union territory as servants to the white farming population.
That, in a nutshell, is the Report of the Segregation Commission.
The Chairman Dissents
On the whole these drastic findings are against the weight of evidence. The Report, moreover, shows that the decisions were not carried through without some difference of opinion. It would seem that Sir William Beaumont, the Chairman of the Commission, a retired Judge of the Supreme Court (whose legal training and experience were assuredly entitled to more respect than they received) gave a saner interpretation of the Natives' Land Act. He evidently wished to treat the amount of land awarded to Natives as an instalment to which additions might be made in the future. This, he said, was quite within the power of the Commission to recommend. But his colleagues presumably preferred, not the legal, but their own interpretation, namely, that this sane interpretation was "contrary to the intention of the legislature". The Chairman's well-weighed judicial verdict appears on page 42 of volume one of the Report: —
== In my opinion, neither the Natives' Land Act, nor the terms of its reference, require the Commission to delimit the whole extent of the Union into European and Native Areas respectively . . . and I think it is quite competent for this Commission, where this cannot be conveniently done, to leave undefined areas which would be open alike to white and black for the acquisition of land. But this opinion is not shared by my fellow-commissioners, who regard it as contrary to the intentions of the legislature and the terms of the Act. ==
Sir William Beaumont's rejected opinion is supported by the evidence of Senator T. L. Schreiner, who said: —
== When the Bill was before the House, I brought to its notice the fact that there were areas in the country which it was impossible to declare native areas or non-native areas. The late Minister said it was not the intention to divide the whole country of the Union; therefore I thought that the difficulty was covered (p. 224 vol. ii). ==
But as in Parliament so also in the Commission it would appear that the steam-roller was set in motion; and it operated in each instance in favour of repressing the black races.