The All-African Convention opens in Bloemfontein

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

Parliament recognized Afrikaans alongside English. The measure strengthened Afrikaner nationalism within a state that excluded the Black majority from national political power.

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.

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.

The law formalized African reserve areas and created the South African Native Trust. Although it promised additional land, it entrenched territorial segregation and enabled further removals.

Parliament chose war on Germany and replaced Prime Minister Hertzog with Jan Smuts. Black South Africans served and worked for the war effort while racial inequality continued at home.

The document applied the Atlantic Charter's language of freedom to South Africa and demanded full citizenship, equal rights, land, education and social welfare for Africans.

A younger generation formed the Youth League to press the ANC toward mass action and African nationalism. Its founders included Anton Lembede, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo.