This paper is about the dynamics of land buyers and land buying groups in Natal between the 1850s and 1920s. It is about how land buyers negotiated a set of laws, policies and attitudes from British colonial officials and particularly from white settlers, that did not favour their purchase of land. What emerges is a particular network of land buyers – described in records of the time and by historians as amakholwa – mission educated, Christian and relatively better-off than the majority of black people in Natal in the late 19th century. Many of these figures knew each other and bought land together across various parts of Natal, aided by one or two prominent legal firms who acted as intermediaries in navigating the law and in using their clout to convince officials to approve title deed transfers. The paper is an account of collective land purchase by syndicates in Natal led predominantly by amakholwa figures who sought incorporation into the ranks of the colonial economy and its citizenry as owners of the means of production – but who were denied entry.
