Native Authority

Last updated

Since 1933, various traditional chiefs in Nyasaland have been designated as Native Authorities, initially by the colonial administration, and they numbered 105 in 1949. . They represented a form of the Indirect rule which had become popular in British African dependencies in the second quarter of the 20th century, although Nyasaland's Native Authorities had fewer powers and smaller incomes than similar institutions in other African colonies. The Native Authority system worked reasonably effectively until after the Second World War, when they were obliged to enforce unpopular government agricultural policies and, in some cases, their support for the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland made Native Authorities unpopular with many of their people. After 1953, many of the powers of individual chiefs were transferred to councils which became the Native Authorities, although the chiefs sat on these councils. After independence, the authorities were renamed Traditional Authorities and continued to operate, and the status and influence of many of the chiefs revived through their cooperation with the Malawi government of Hastings Banda.

Contents

There is an ongoing debate as to whether the Native Authorities' link with the colonial governments in the British African dependencies caused their authority to become weakened and for educated “new men” to emerge as community leaders, or whether the new status and administrative and judicial powers given to them by those administrations allowed chiefs to shake-off the pre-colonial restrictions on their powers and become more authoritarian and even despotic. Setting up a hierarchy of tribal paramount chiefs, subordinate chiefs and village headmen may also have served to fix previously less rigid “tribal” identities.. [1]

Indirect rule before 1933

The first two colonial Commissioners to the British Central Africa Protectorate, Harry Johnstone and Alfred Sharpe, were unwilling to involve African chiefs in the governance of the protectorate or to accept their authority. [2] However, the poverty of the administration and the eagerness of many chiefs to secure official recognition led to the District Administration (Native) Ordinance, 1912, which allowed the governor to appoint Principal Headmen, who had only such authority and stipends as the residents (later district commissioners) for their district allowed them. Most Principal Headmen were prominent local chiefs, although in some cases preference was given to mission-educated candidates rather than those with a greater hereditary claim to chiefly status. [3] Each Principal Headman was made responsible for a number of Village Headmen, although it was made clear that the arrangement was not intended to foster or perpetuate rule by chiefs. [4] Amendments to the 1912 Ordinance in 1924 and 1929 extended the powers of the Principal Headmen to hear civil cases under customary law, collect hut taxes and issue certain licences. [5]

The governor of Nyasaland between 1924 and 1929 Sir Charles Bowring was an enthusiastic advocate of conscripting forced labour to work on European tobacco farms or on public works for minimal wages. He sought Colonial Office approval to extend its use to unpaid work on road building projects, which would involve taking workers far from their homes. [6] This was similar to the proposed use of forced labour in Kenya where the governor Sir Edward Northey had in 1919 instructed government officials to coerce African labour to work on European-owned farms and estates, despite earlier Colonial Office objections. After the scandal of Northey' proposal, the Colonial Office made clear it that any compulsory labour by local Africans must be paid; it could only be used on government projects if absolutely necessary and then only with Colonial Office approval. [7]

Bowring had held senior positions in Kenya between 1901 and 1924, and the Colonial Secretary, Leo Amery, who wanted to avoid a repeat of the Northey scandal, vetoed his proposal and, in 1928, instructed Bowring to consider the introduction of a form of Indirect rule in Nyasaland, appointing chiefs as Native Authorities. Bowring resisted on the basis that he thought Nyasaland’s tribal organisation was disintegrating, and his tour of duty was cut short in May 1929 as a result of his opposition. His successor, Shenton Thomas, who was governor from 1929 to 1932, enthusiastically promoted Indirect rule, instructing administrative officers that chiefly authority must be strengthened where it existed and restored where it no longer existed. [8]

Creation of Native Authorities

Although Thomas’s intention was to introduce Indirect rule on the basis proposed by Lord Lugard, [9] he was first prevented by the economic effects of the Great Depression and later promoted to the post of governor of the Gold Coast, so it was left to his successor Sir Hubert Young, governor from 1932 to 1934, to introduce a diluted version of Thomas’s proposals. This was stated to be a form of local government in response to settler opposition to full-scale Indirect rule. Under Young’s legislation, in contradiction to Lugard’s principles, the Native Authorities had no financial responsibilities and Native Courts had no jurisdiction over European-owned estates. Only in 1940 were Native Authorities given a nominal role in tax collection [10] [11]

The selection of Native Authorities created a number of difficulties, although the aim was to base them on local history and tradition. [12] Generally speaking, those individuals who had been designated Principal Headmen under legislation of 1912 became Native Authorities, although in some cases educated Principal Headmen appointed by colonial officials were supplanted by traditional chiefs, where local people emphasised their legitimacy. In addition, the aspirations of the Ngoni people of northern Nyasaland for the restoration of the son of their last paramount chief were largely satisfied when he was restored and allowed to revive the title of Mbelwa, although existing Principal Headmen were retained as his subordinate chiefs. [13] [14] A similar arrangement was made the Ngoni of southern Nyasaland, where the descendant of the last paramount was elevated from Principal Headman to paramount, with the revived title Gomani. [15]

A number of groups such as the Tonga people had no tradition of chiefs and elsewhere the military and political upheavals of the 19th century had resulted in there being no uncontested legitimate candidates, or situations where the existing Principal Headmen were ethically different from their people. In the lower Shire River valley, which until the mid-19th century had been populated entirely by Mang'anja people, in the northern part, some of these Principal Headmen were from the Kololo people that David Livingstone brought from Botswana in 1862 as porters for his Zambezi expedition who had driven out Mang'anja chiefs, whereas, in the southern part, Mang'anja chiefs survived as Principal Headmen, but the local population consisted of Sena people, recent migrants from Mozambique. Even among the Mang'anja headmen, there were competing claims to legitimacy. [16]

Locations

Native Authorities were located in the areas of Native Trust Land that had been created in 1916. In the early 20th century, the view among British government lawyers in the Foreign Office was that the act of declaring a protectorate over a territory gave Crown the right to dispose of land there. An Order-in-Council for government of the British Central Africa Protectorate of 1902 vested all rights to Crown lands, empowering him to dispose of any such land. [17] In 1904, Alfred Sharpe, who was Commissioner from 1896 to 1907, received powers to create reserve out of Crown Land under the Native Locations Ordinance. By 1913, the Native Reserves covered 6.6 million acres out the 22.3 million acres of land in the protectorate, and a further 2.6 million acres of Crown Land were designated to become future reserves. [18]

A Land Registration Ordinance in 1916 recognised the Native Reserves as Native Trust Land, to be held in trust for the benefit of their African communities. This legislation did not provide for the administration of Trust Land by those African communities or their leaders, as formal Indirect rule was only introduced in 1933-34, although, in practice, chiefs had day-to-day charge of land distribution. [19] However, once the Native Authorities were instituted, they took over formal control of most of this land.

Functions

Compared with Northern Nigeria, where Lugard has pioneered Indirect rule, or even Tanganyika Territory to the north, Nyasaland’s Native Authorities were significantly underfunded. They were entitled to two pence in every six shillings of Hut tax raised, although this was a much greater rate than Principal Headmen had previously received. In addition, Native Authorities could levy a range of fees and receive rents from leases of Native Trust Land, a valuable source of extra income where European farmers wished to grow tobacco. However, outside the tobacco-growing districts, overall Native Authority revenues were small: all of those in the Southern Province had a combined income of only £880 in 1935. This gave the Native Authorities very little scope for promoting social development, although some attempted to provide primary education, dispensaries, produce markets or rural roads. [20]

However, the first Post-War Five-Year development plan placed significant emphasis on primary education and lead to the foundation of a number of Native Authority schools as alternatives to the dominance of mission schools in rural areas. [21] This was continued up in the second development plan, starting in 1950, but the government only allowed such schools in selected Native Authority areas where the chiefs were government supporters. [22]

The parallel Native Courts Ordinance, 1933 established Native Courts administering customary law. This replaced the direct judicial powers of the chiefs, although they retained an involvement in the process as advisors and assessors. [23] The Native Courts were cautious in using their powers under the 1933 Ordinance in criminal cases at first, generally fining offenders or ordering them to pay compensation to their victims. From the late 1940s, they were more willing to use imprisonment or, in a few cases, floggings, when prompted by government officers in cases where government agricultural regulations were flouted. However, from the start, they were much used for civil cases, mainly matrimonial issues. [24] [25]

Post-war decline

Until the mid-1940s, the Native Authority scheme was generally accepted by the people living under its operation, and a number of chiefs were seen as modernisers within the limits of their role. However, in the post-Second World War period, a time of political and economic change, the Native Authorities were seen increasingly as imposing unpopular government-mandated soil conservation measures on their people. [26] Although a few chiefs openly opposed these schemes, most gave at least minimal cooperation to avoid being deposed by the government, but tried not to lose support and legitimacy by excessive enthusiasm for the measures. [27] By the early 1950s, Indirect rule was barely operating in many Native Authority areas and the political initiative had passed to the Nyasaland African Congress. [28] [29]

Although governors up Richards, in post 1942-47, supported the Native Authority scheme, Arthur Creech Jones, who became Colonial Secretary in 1946, called on all governors in African colonies to develop a more democratic systems of local government and involve educated men in decision making. The next governor, Colby set up a system of advisory councils in which government appointees would advise each Native Authority, and higher-level councils for each district and province. The treasuries of individual Native Authorities were also, from 1949, to be grouped in an attempt at greater efficiency, but these were reforms were insufficient to reverse the decline in the system. [30] The 1933 Native Authority Ordinance was replaced by the Native Authority Ordinance of 1946 and then by the Native Authority Ordinance of 1955. Under the 1955 Ordinance, a Native Authority was defined as any chief or other African or any council or group appointed to be a Native Authority for a particular area. [31]

In the early Post-War period, a number of Native Authorities employed salaried employees, who replaced the role of the traditional advisors to the chief concerned, and tended to take over his role. [32] As a result, under legislation introduced in 1953, most of the powers formerly held by individual chiefs were transferred to councils of which they were members and, usually, chairmen, and which included salaried employees. [33]

After independence

After independence as Malawi in 1963, the Malawian government halted the decline of chiefly status in the Chiefs Act, 1967. This provided for the recognition and appointment of Paramount Chiefs, Senior Chiefs, Chiefs, Sub-Chiefs, Councillors and Village Headmen as Traditional Authorities who would perform their functions of preserving peace and developing their communities according to customary law. Under the presidency of Hastings Banda, the chiefs statutory status and their ability to allocate land and development resources made them an essential part of the state apparatus. [34] [35] Following the restoration of multi-party politics in 1993 and the devolution of many previously-centralised powers to district councils in 1998, the chiefs who are Traditional Authorities became ex-officio members of the district councils still have a role in local government, although their control over land allocation and membership of Traditional Courts has ended. [36]

Related Research Articles

Nyasaland British Protectorate in central Africa (1907-64); present-day Malawi

Nyasaland was a British protectorate located in Africa that was established in 1907 when the former British Central Africa Protectorate changed its name. Between 1953 and 1963, Nyasaland was part of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. After the Federation was dissolved, Nyasaland became independent from Britain on 6 July 1964 and was renamed Malawi.

British Central Africa Protectorate British protectorate from 1893 to 1907 in present-day Malawi

The British Central Africa Protectorate (BCA) was a British protectorate proclaimed in 1889 and ratified in 1891 that occupied the same area as present-day Malawi: it was renamed Nyasaland in 1907. British interest in the area arose from visits made by David Livingstone from 1858 onward during his exploration of the Zambezi area. This encouraged missionary activity that started in the 1860s, undertaken by the Universities' Mission to Central Africa, the Church of Scotland and the Free Church of Scotland, and which was followed by a small number of settlers. The Portuguese government attempted to claim much of the area in which the missionaries and settlers operated, but this was disputed by the British government. To forestall a Portuguese expedition claiming effective occupation, a protectorate was proclaimed, first over the south of this area, then over the whole of it in 1889. After negotiations with the Portuguese and German governments on its boundaries, the protectorate was formally ratified by the British government in May 1891.

John Chilembwe Independence leader in Malawi

Reverend John Chilembwe was a Baptist pastor and educator, who trained as a minister in the United States, returning to Nyasaland in 1901. He was an early figure in the resistance to colonialism in Nyasaland (Malawi), opposing both the treatment of Africans working in agriculture on European-owned plantations and the colonial government's failure to promote the social and political advancement of Africans. Soon after the outbreak of the First World War, Chilembwe organised an unsuccessful uprising against colonial rule. Today, Chilembwe is celebrated as a hero of independence, and John Chilembwe Day is observed annually on 15 January in Malawi.

Chilembwe uprising Challenge to European power in Nyasaland Protectorate in early 1915, led by the Reverend John Chilembwe.

The Chilembwe uprising was a rebellion against British colonial rule in Nyasaland which took place in January 1915. It was led by John Chilembwe, an American-educated Baptist minister. Based around his Church in the village of Mbombwe in the south-east of the protectorate, the leaders of the revolt were mainly from an emerging black middle class. They were motivated by grievances against the colonial system including forced labour, racial discrimination, and new demands imposed on the indigenous population following the outbreak of World War I.

The Nyasaland African Congress (NAC) was an organisation that evolved into a political party in Nyasaland during the colonial period. The NAC was suppressed in 1959, but was succeeded in 1960 by the Malawi Congress Party, which went to on decisively win the first universal suffrage elections in 1961, and to lead the country to independence as Malawi in 1964.

Henry Masauko Blasius Chipembere was a Malawian nationalist politician who played a significant role in bringing independence from colonial rule to his native country, formerly known as Nyasaland. From an early age Chipembere was a strong believer in natural justice and, on his return in 1954 from university in South Africa, he joined his country’s independence struggle as a nationalist strategist and spokesman. In 1957, considering that the independence movement need such a strong leader similar to Kwame Nkrumah, and considering himself too young for this task, he joined with other young nationalists in inviting Hastings Kamuzu Banda to return to Nyasaland as the movement's leader.

In Malawi a system of Traditional Courts has been used for much of the twentieth century to mediate civil disputes and to prosecute crimes, although for much of the colonial period, their criminal jurisdiction was limited. From 1970, Regional Traditional Courts were created and given jurisdiction over virtually all criminal trials involving Africans of Malawian descent, and any appeals were directed to a National Traditional Court of Appeal rather than the Malawi High Court and from there to the Supreme Court of Appeal, as had been the case with the Local Courts before 1970.

James Frederick Sangala

James Frederick Sangala was a founding member of the Nyasaland African Congress during the period of British colonial rule. Sangala was given the nickname "Pyagusi", which means "one who perseveres".

Levi Zililo Mumba was a leading local politician and the first President of the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC) during the period of British colonial rule in Nyasaland, which became the independent state of Malawi in 1964. Mumba was probably the most important figure in the development of Malawi politics between World War I and World War II.

Sir Charles Calvert Bowring was a British colonial administrator, mainly in Kenya, who was later Governor and Commander in Chief of the Nyasaland Protectorate from 1923 to 1929.

The Natives on Private Estates Ordinance, 1928 was a colonial ordinance passed by the Legislative Council of the Nyasaland Protectorate. The body was composed mainly of senior colonial officials, with a minority of nominated members, to represent European residents. The ordinance regulated the conditions under which land could be farmed by African tenants 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 for the estate owner in lieu of paying rent.

The Abrahams Commission was a commission appointed by the Nyasaland government in 1946 to inquire into land issues in Nyasaland. This followed riots and disturbances by tenants on European-owned estates in Blantyre and Cholo districts in 1943 and 1945. The commission had only one member, Sir Sidney Abrahams, a Privy Counsellor and lawyer, the former Attorney General of the Gold Coast, Zanzibar and Uganda, and the former Chief Justice, first of Uganda and then Ceylon. There had been previous reviews to consider the uneven distribution of land between Africans and European, the shortage of land for subsistence farming and the position of tenants on private estates. These included the Jackson Land Commission in 1920, the Ormsby-Gore Commission on East Africa in 1924 and, most recently, the Bell Commission on the Financial Position and Development of Nyasaland in 1938, but none of these had provided a permanent solution. Abrahams proposed that the Nyasaland government should purchase all unused or under-utilised freehold land on European-owned estates, which would then become Crown land, available to African farmers. The Africans on estates were to be offered the choice of remaining on their current estate as paid workers or tenants, or of moving to Crown land. These proposals were not implemented in full until 1952. The report of the Abrahams Commission divided opinion. Africans were generally in favour of its proposals, as were both the governors in post from 1942 to 1947, Edmund Richards, and the incoming governor, Geoffrey Colby. Estate owners and managers were strongly against it, and many European settlers bitterly attacked it.

The Devlin Commission, officially the Nyasaland Commission of Inquiry, was a Commission of Inquiry set up in 1959 under the chairmanship of Mr.Justice Devlin, later Lord Devlin, after African opposition to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, particularly its farming and rural conservation policies, and demands for progress towards majority rule promoted by the Nyasaland African Congress under its leader Dr Hastings Banda led to widespread disturbances in Nyasaland and some deaths. A State of Emergency was declared in March 1959; about 1,300 people, many of whom were members of the Nyasaland African Congress party, were detained without trial, over were 2,000 imprisoned for offences related to the emergency and the Congress itself was banned. During the State of Emergency and the week preceding it, a total of 51 people were killed by troops or the police. Although the four members of the Commission were members of The British Establishment, its findings were highly unfavourable to the Nyasaland Government.

William Jervis Livingstone (1865–1915) was the manager of the Magomero Estate in Nyasaland owned by A L Bruce Estates Ltd and was killed in 1915 during the uprising against colonial rule led by John Chilembwe. Livingstone, from the Isle of Lismore in Argyllshire, Scotland, was born in 1865 and appointed as manager of Magomero in 1893.

Native Trust Land in colonial Nyasaland was a category of land held in trust by the Secretary of State for the Colonies and administered by the colonial governor for the benefit of African communities. In pre-colonial times, land belonged to the African communities that occupied it, and their members were free to use it in accordance with local customary law. In the late 19th century, large areas of fertile land were acquired by European settlers, and the remainder became Crown land, which the colonial government could alienate without the consent of the resident communities. To give a measure of protection to those communities, in 1916 land in Native Reserves, which then amounted to about a quarter of the land in the protectorate, was designated as Native Trust Land, to be held in trust for the benefit of African communities. Later, in 1936, all Crown Land except game or forest reserves or that used for public purposes became Native Trust Land, and Native Authorities were authorised to allocate Trust Land to their communities in accordance with customary law. After 1936, Native Trust Land constituted over 80% of the land in Nyasaland and most African farmers farmed Native Trust Land from then until Nyasaland gained independence as Malawi in 1964 and after.

Operation Sunrise was the name given to a police and military action conducted by the authorities in the Central African protectorate of Nyasaland which started on 3 March 1959, initially to detain and intern 350 individuals who were considered a potential threat to law and order in anticipation of the declaration of a State of Emergency. Although it is sometimes considered to involve only the incidents of 3 March, the Devlin Commission report is clear that it was one of two distinct operations by the security forces, reinforced from outside Nyasaland, involving the arrest and detention members of the Nyasaland African Congress. It involved not only those members of Congress initially arrested, but others arrested and detained without trial in the course of the emergency. The operation was described in some detail in the Devlin Commission report and that account has been amplified by Colonial Office documents not made available to the Devlin Commission.

George Simeon Mwase was a government clerk and later businessman and politician in colonial Nyasaland. He became politically active in the 1920s under the influence of the ideas of Marcus Garvey and his "Africa for the Africans" movement, and was instrumental in founding the Central Province Native Association in 1927. Mwase joined the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC) in 1944, soon after its formation, and later participated in its executive. By the late 1950s, the gradualism of Mwase and many of his contemporaries was rejected by a younger generation of more radical NAC members. He was marginalised and left the NAC and became a supporter of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.

The Nyasaland Emergency 1959 was a state of emergency in the protectorate of Nyasaland, which was declared by its governor, Sir Robert Armitage on 3 March 1959 and which ended on 16 June 1960. Under the emergency powers that operated during the Emergency, over 1,300 members or supporters of the Nyasaland African Congress (Congress) were detained without trial, and most of the party's leaders including its president, Dr. Hastings Banda, were imprisoned in Southern Rhodesia after being arrested on 3 March. Many other Africans were jailed for offences related to the Emergency, including rioting and criminal damage. In the week before the Emergency was declared and during its first month, over 50 Africans were killed and many more wounded by the colonial security forces, which included many European troops from Southern Rhodesia. Others were beaten by troops or armed police or had their huts destroyed and their property seized during punitive operations undertaken during the Emergency.

John Chilembwes motivation

The ideas, people and events that contributed to John Chilembwe's motivation and influenced him to undertake the uprising in 1915 were considered by the Commission of Inquiry shortly after the rising was defeated, and have exercised historians of Malawi during much of the period since his death. Whether the dominant ideas were political, social, economic or religious and how these combined is unclear, because Chilembwe did not leave a detailed record of the reasons for his armed revolt. As he was an ordained Baptist minister, much attention has focussed on his religious ideas, whether these were orthodox or related to millennialism, the extent to which such potentially conflicting religious ideas existed, particularly in the period shortly before the rising, and the part that such beliefs played in the decision to revolt and the course of the uprising.

The Makololo chiefs recognised by the governments of colonial Nyasaland and independent Malawi have their origin in a group of porters that David Livingstone brought from Barotseland in the 1850s to support his first Zambezi expedition that did not return to Barotseland but assisted Livingstone and British missionaries in the area of southern Malawi between 1859 and 1864. After the withdrawal of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa those Makololo remaining in the Shire valley used firearms provided by the Europeans to attract dependants seeking protection, to seize land and to establish a number of chieftainships. At the time that a British protectorate was established in 1891, there were seven Makololo chiefs of which six were recognised by the government. Five survived to be given local governmental powers in 1933, and these powers continued after Malawi became independent. Although called Makololo or Kololo, after the ruling group in Barotseland in the 1850s, the majority came from peoples subject to the Makololo who adopted the more prestigious name. As, regardless of their origin, they took wives from among the inhabitants of the Shire Valley, their modern descendants have little connection with the Kololo people apart from their name.

References

  1. ↑ McCracken (2012), pp. 215-217.
  2. ↑ Rotberg (1965), pp. 22-23.
  3. ↑ McCracken (2012), p. 72.
  4. ↑ Rotberg (1965), pp. 48–49.
  5. ↑ Malawi Law Commission (2012), p. 1.
  6. ↑ McCracken (2012), p. 221.
  7. ↑ Okia (2008), pp. 263-264, 288.
  8. ↑ McCracken (2012), pp. 221-222.
  9. ↑ Rotberg (1965), p. 50.
  10. ↑ McCracken (2012), pp. 222-223.
  11. ↑ Rotberg (1965), p. 50.
  12. ↑ Power (2010), p. 30.
  13. ↑ McCracken (2012), p. 223.
  14. ↑ Power (2010), p. 33.
  15. ↑ McCracken (2012), p. 223.
  16. ↑ McCracken (2012), p. 224.
  17. ↑ Ng'ong'ola (1990), pp. 30–31.
  18. ↑ Pachai (1973), p. 685.
  19. ↑ Power (1992), p. 330.
  20. ↑ McCracken (2012), p. 225.
  21. ↑ Lamba (2010), p. 26.
  22. ↑ Lamba (2010), p. 33.
  23. ↑ Malawi Law Commission (2012), p. 1.
  24. ↑ Hailey (1950), pp. 28-29.
  25. ↑ McCracken (2012), pp. 225-226.
  26. ↑ Kalinga (1996), pp. 448-449.
  27. ↑ Power (2010), p. 30.
  28. ↑ Kalinga (1996), p. 449.
  29. ↑ McCracken (2012), p. 230.
  30. ↑ Cammack, Kanyongolo and O’Neil (2009), p. 3.
  31. ↑ McCracken (2012), pp. 270-271.
  32. ↑ Mair (1951), p. 78.
  33. ↑ Malawi Law Commission (2012), pp. 1-2.
  34. ↑ Cammack, Kanyongolo and O’Neil (2009), pp. 5-6.
  35. ↑ Malawi Law Commission (2012), pp. 2-3.
  36. ↑ Cammack, Kanyongolo and O’Neil (2009), pp. 7-8.

Sources

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.