PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS SECTION E. 103 



6. A Native Code for the semi-civilised Native throughout 



South Africa. 



7. A simplification of the existing European law in 



respect of land administration (surveying, transfers, 

 etc.), inheritance and other legal proceedings in 

 which Natives are concerned. 



Economic Relationships. 



The root causes of Native unrest in South Africa are agrarian 

 and economic. Complaints regarding land, wages, prices, and 

 taxation are the matters most frequently brought to the notice of 

 the authorities, and this is not surprising since these matters affect 

 all classes of Natives alike. 



With regard to land the position is fairly well known. The 

 Land Act of 1913 was an attempt at territorial segregation, and 

 prevented the acquirement of land except with the consent of the 

 Governor-General by a Native from a non-native or a non-native 

 from a Native outside certain scheduled areas, and the acquire- 

 ment of land by a non-native within the scheduled Native areas. 

 Unfortunately the scheduled Native areas (which proposed to give 

 123,000,000 morgen to 660,000 rural Europeans, or 186 morgen 

 per individual, and 18,250,000 morgen to 4,000,000 rural Natives, 

 or 4.5 acres per individual) have never been finally determined, so 

 that it has not been easy to proceed with the practical application 

 of the measure, while the important legal decision in the case of 

 Thomson and Stilwell versus Kama has • made it doubtful if the 

 Land Act is intra vires as far as the Cape Province is concerned. 

 The Act is, of course, extraordinarily unpopular among Natives, 

 and when meetings are held with Natives it is difficult to get them 

 to discuss any subject but this. 



As regards wages the economic position of the Natives has 

 been affected by the rise and fall in the cost of living. No section 

 of the people has been more hard hit by the high cost of living, 

 both during and after the war, than the Natives, for almost all 

 Natives except the most remote have to purchase their food and 

 clothing at the kafir store where the Profiteering Act has been a 

 dead letter. Increases in wages have been in no measure com- 

 mensurate with the increased cost of living, so that the Native has 

 had an undoubtedly just cause for complaint which would no 

 doubt have expressed itself in a noisy, dramatic, but probably 

 futile fashion had not the welcome drop in the cost of commodities 

 taken place. For the most part we are ignorant of the wages 

 received by Natives or their cost of living, but some helpful figures 

 regarding town Natives have been published in the report of the 

 Commission of Enquiry into the Port Elizabeth disturbances on 

 October 23, 1920. In 1914 the minimum wage for unskilled 

 Native labour was 2/6 per diem, and it remained at this figure 

 until 1918. It then rose to 3/-, and in February, 1920, at the 

 instigation of a Native Trades Union, it was raised to 3/6, and in 

 September, 1920, as the result of further agitation, it was raised 

 to 4/-. The percentage increase of the 1920 wage on that of 1914 



