13/04/2023
During the years immediately following the Anglo–Boer wars, Britain set about unifying the four colonies including the former Boer republics into a single self-governed country called the Union of South Africa. This was accomplished after several years of negotiations, when the South Africa Act 1909 consolidated the Cape Colony, Natal, Transvaal, and Orange Free State into one nation. Under the provisions of the act, the Union became an independent Dominion of the British Empire, governed under a form of constitutional monarchy, with the British monarch represented by a Governor-General. Prosecutions before the courts of the Union of South Africa were instituted in the name of the Crown and government officials served in the name of the Crown. The British High Commission territories of Basutoland (now Lesotho), Bechuanaland (now Botswana), and Swaziland (now Eswatini) continued under direct rule from Britain.[125]
Among other harsh segregationist laws, including denial of voting rights to black people, the Union parliament enacted the 1913 Natives' Land Act, which earmarked only eight percent of South Africa's available land for black occupancy. White people, who constituted 20 percent of the population, held 90 percent of the land. The Land Act would form a cornerstone of legalised racial discrimination for the next nine decades.[126]