Afrikaans becomes an official language of the Union

Tens of thousands of African mineworkers struck over wages and working conditions. Police repression and the compound system helped employers break the action.

Police attacked the Israelites at Ntabelanga near Bulhoek after the religious community resisted eviction. At least 160 people were killed and many more wounded or arrested.

Socialist organizations united in Cape Town to form the CPSA. The party later adopted a Black-majority orientation and became an important ally of national liberation and labour movements.

The state used troops, artillery and aircraft against striking white mineworkers. The revolt also exposed the racial labour order because many strikers demanded protection of skilled jobs for whites.

The act treated African urban residents as temporary labourers, empowered municipalities to segregate housing and strengthened controls over African movement into towns.

The act expanded executive control over African communities and empowered the governor-general to move people and govern by proclamation, weakening legal protections and African land rights.

The law prohibited sexual relations outside marriage between Europeans and Africans. It inserted racial policing into private life and anticipated later apartheid classification laws.

The act enfranchised white women but not Black women. By enlarging the white electorate, it diluted the influence of the limited number of African men still qualified to vote in the Cape.

Hundreds of delegates from political, religious and professional bodies gathered to coordinate opposition to the Hertzog government's bills attacking African land and voting rights.

The act removed African voters in the Cape from the common voters' roll and substituted limited, segregated representation. It was a decisive attack on remaining African political rights.