IS THERE COMPULSORY LABOUR IN SOUTH 
AFRICA AT THE PRESENT TIME ? 
In the Labour Office Report the following principle is 
suggested to cover a variety of forms of “legal indirect 
compulsion.” 
* Taxation, vagrancy or ‘ pass ’ laws, the deprivation of 
lands, the restriction of lands cultivation or cattle-owning, 
and other measures, when adopted with the intention of 
forcing workers into employment, are methods of insti- 
tuting forced labour for private employers, and should be 
condemned equally with the direct form of compulsion 
for this purpose.” 
The saving clause “ when adopted with the intention of 
forcing workers into employment >’ may be found to cover 
all existing agencies in South Africa even though they are 
of the nature specified in the above paragraph and are 
actually having the effect of compelling labour. What 
are these agencies ? 
INDIRECT COMPULSION BY DEPRIVATION 
AND RESTRICTION OF LAND. 
In the Union of South Africa roughly speaking a mil- 
lion and a half Europeans own 87 per cent of the land, 
while five million Natives own the balance. Efforts on 
the part of the Natives to rectify this disparity are in great 
measure defeated by the operation of the 1913 Natives 
Land Act which makes it illegal, with certain limited 
exceptions, for Whites or Blacks to purchase or even to 
hire land in each other’s areas. This limitation, as the 
population increases, compels men to leave the more 
congested areas of the reserves for work, and prohibits 
many of those who have already left from returning. 
These men form a proletariat, obliged to accept what 
wages and conditions they can get on the mines, on the 
farms or in the towns. 
It is too late now to go into the question of the justice 
or the reverse of the numerous Kafir wars which make 
up so large a part of South African history. It is suffi- 
cient to say, in the present connection. that the net result