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Natives on Private Estates Ordinance 1928
Natives on Private Estates Ordinance, 1928 was a colonial ordinance passed by the Legislative council of the Nyasaland protectorate, now Malawi, (a body mainly of senior colonial officials, with a minority of nominated members representing European residents) to regulate the conditions under which African tenants who farmed land on estates owned by European settlers within that protectorate. The legislation corrected some of the worst abuses of the system of thangata, under which tenants were required to work in lieu of paying rent. However, it failed in its intention of encouraging these tenants to increase production on the undeveloped land in those estates because of the world-wide economic downturn in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Tensions between estate owners and tenants continued in the 1940s and early 1950s over evictions and the tenants’ desire to market their produce freely. The legislation was modified in 1952 to meet some of these problems, but only the colonial government's purchase of estate lands to resettle former tenants after 1952 and final abolition of thangata by the Africans on Private Estates Ordinance, 1962, passed shortly before independence, created an African peasantry with free access to farming land.
==Tenants on private estates==
In the three decades after 1860, southern Malawi was transformed by a combination of warfare and raiding for slaves and ivory from a region where farming supported a reasonable population to one where the lack of security led to the widespread abandonment of agriculture land. Local chiefs attempted to gain protection from European settlers by granting them the right to cultivate land which, although fertile, was insecure and therefore vacant. Once the British Central Africa Protectorate had been proclaimed in 1891, these settlers gained legal ownership of this land from the protectorate administration. Although many of the grants contained “non-disturbance” clauses allowing resident Africans to continue to cultivate their existing fields rent-free, most owners claimed the right to demand labour in exchange for allowing them farm part of their land. The Nyasaland settlers adopted the term “thangata” for this from the Chewa language, where it meant freely-given help with agricultural work, but its colonial meaning was performing labour in lieu of rent.〔J. A. K. Kandawire, (1977). Thangata in Pre-Colonial and Colonial Systems of Land Tenure in Southern Malawi, with Special Reference to Chingale, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 47, No. 2, pp. 185-7.〕
In the early years of the Nyasaland protectorate, the estates needed workers to establish plantations. Many estates were established in areas where few Africans lived because of insecurity and, when the owners introduced labour rents, some of those who did moved to rent-free land that their community retained. New workers, often migrants escaping harsh conditions in Mozambique, were encouraged to move onto estates and grow their own crops, but were required to pay rent and Hut tax, at first usually satisfied by two months’ labour a year. These migrants did not belong to any local community, so had no claim to farm communal land. Before 1905, relatively little estate land was planted as the owners searched for economically viable crops. However, cotton was grown commercially from 1905. This needs much labour during its 5 or 6 month growing season for successful results. Between 1910 and 1925, tobacco was also grown in plantations and like cotton, it required a great deal of labour. On several estates, labour tenants’ obligations were now extended, sometimes to a total of four to six months of thangata for rent and Hut tax, leaving tenants with little time to grow food. A number of abuses grew up, including under-recording days worked, not making cash payments if tenants performed more than the required thangata and requiring 30 days work (five weeks of six days) for each month of thangata obligation. The wives of absent migrant workers, widows and single women were also forced to do thangata work, in breach of custom.〔L White, (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, Cambridge University Press pp. 79-81, 86-9, 111-17 ISBN 0-521-32182-4.〕 In 1903, the Nyasaland High Court declared the original inhabitants of estates granted subject to “non-disturbance” clauses were exempt from thangata and had security of tenure. Legislation regulating some aspects of thangata was enacted in 1908, but not implemented. The harshness of thangata was one reasons for the 1915 uprising led by John Chilembwe. Following this revolt, a new attempt to abolish thangata in favour if cash rent was made, but it failed because of the opposition of the estate owners.〔C Newbury, (1980). Ubureetwa and Thangata: Catalysts to Peasant Political Consciousness in Rwanda and Malawi, Canadian Journal of African Studies, Vol.14, No. 1 (1980), pp. 107-9.〕
Of the estate crops grown by direct labour, coffee had failed by 1905, cotton by 1918, and tobacco by 1925: only tea continued as a profitable estate crop. Most tobacco was now grown by smallholders on Crown land. As the demand for estate labour declined in the 1920s, the owners had insufficient work for their tenants to meet their thangata obligations and claimed that they had become rent-free squatters who should be evicted if they refused to grow economic crops.〔C. A. Baker (1962) Nyasaland, The History of its Export Trade, The Nyasaland Journal, Vol. 15, No.1, pp. 15-16, 19-20, 25.〕 Larger estates were saved from collapse by replacing direct labour with the scheme of tenants growing cotton and tobacco and selling these to the planters at low prices. This system was formalised in legislation, the 1928 Natives on Private Estates Ordinance, which modified thangata by allowing rents to be paid in cash, by a fixed quantity of acceptable crops or by direct labour. The estates now acted largely as brokers for their tenants’ produce, although the name thangata was now also applied to rent in kind. The older form of labour thangata persisted where owners wished to grow crops through direct labour.〔J. A. K. Kandaŵire, (1977). Thangata in Pre-Colonial and Colonial Systems of Land Tenure in Southern Malaŵi, pp. 188.〕〔L White, (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, pp. 173-4.〕 It was estimated that about 9% of Malawi’s Africans lived on estates in 1911. In 1945, it was about 10%, or 173,000 residents in 49,000 families. By 1962, this had been reduced to 9,000 families 〔J G Pike, (1969). Malawi: A Political and Economic History, London, Pall Mall Press, p. 188.〕
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