Thangata

Last updated

Thangata is a word deriving from the Chewa language of Malawi which has changed its meaning several times, although all meanings relate to agriculture. Its original, pre-colonial usage related to reciprocal help given in neighbours' fields or freely-given agricultural labour as thanks for a benefit. In colonial times, between 1891 and 1962, it generally meant agricultural labour given in lieu of a cash rent, and generally without any payment, by a tenant on an estate owned by a European. Thangata was often exploited, and tenants could be forced to work on the owners' crops for four to six months annually when they could have cultivated their own crops. From the 1920s, the name thangata was extended to situations where tenants were given seeds to grow set quotas of designated crops instead of providing cash or labour. Both forms of thangata were abolished in 1962, but both before and after independence and up to the present, the term has been used for short-term rural casual work, often on tobacco estates, which is considered by workers to be exploitative.

Contents

Thangata in Malawi

Origins and meaning

The term "thangata" has had several meanings in Malawi in the last 120 years, and its traditional or pre-colonial use was very different from its uses in colonial and modern times. The word exists in the Chewa and the related Mang'anja languages, and its first pre-colonial meaning was "help" or "to assist", in the sense of freely-given reciprocal help such as neighbours might give each other building huts or clearing fields. [1] It also had the meaning of the agricultural work that a member of the village community did for his chief. The ownership of land in much of Malawi was vested in the community, not individuals. Traditional leaders acted as trustees over communal land, and granted the right to use it to individuals in their communities. By custom, these leaders received in gifts in kind or labour from those in their community who had benefited. This was also called thangata: although the term was first recorded with this meaning in 1921, the practice is believed to have existed for many centuries before then. [2] When communal land was plentiful, community leaders could not demand thangata, but once it became scarcer in the colonial period, and particularly after the introduction of Indirect rule on 1933, the chiefs could impose a condition of thangata work on any grant. In the last two or three decades, chiefs have begun to require cash sums or rents to allow the use of communal land, but these cash payments are not called thangata. [3]

In early colonial Nyasaland

Modern-day view of a tea plantation near Mulanje Tea plantation near Mulanje.JPG
Modern-day view of a tea plantation near Mulanje

The 1870s and 1880s in Malawi were unsettled, and local chiefs sought to gain European protection from their enemies by granting the settlers what they probably considered was only a right to cultivate vacant land. Soon after the British Central Africa Protectorate was proclaimed in 1891, these Europeans secured legal ownership of this land from the protectorate administration. The new owners also claimed all rights that the traditional leaders had or were thought to possess, asserting that thangata work was an obligation that the landlord could impose on tenants. In the early colonial period, thangata took on a new meaning of performing labour in lieu of rent. [4] In the early years of the protectorate, the estates established in under-populated areas needed workers to establish plantations. Few Africans were resident on estate lands, and some of those who remained left when labour rents were introduced. New workers, who were often migrants from Mozambique, were encouraged to move onto estates and grow their own crops, but were required to pay rent and Hut tax, usually satisfied by two months' labour a year at this time. [5]

Before 1905, relatively little land on the estates was planted, as the owners were experimenting with a variety of crops. However, from 1905, cotton was successfully grown in commercial quantities. Cotton has a 5 or 6 month growing season, throughout which it needs much labour, particularly for weeding and gathering, to achieve a successful result. Between 1910 and 1925, tobacco was also grown in plantations and, like cotton, it required a great deal of labour to grow successfully. As tenancies were based on verbal contracts, tenants had little or no chance to dispute the owners' interpretations of their conditions. On several estates, the obligations of labour tenants were extended, sometimes to a total of four or five months a year, for thangata labour rent and Hut tax. Much of this labour was demanded in the growing season, leaving tenants with little time to grow their own food. As the Crown lands near the estates were already crowded, and as most of estate tenants were migrants from Mozambique with no claim to communal land, they had little option but to remain. In this situation thangata came to mean forced labour. [5]

Attempted reform and opposition

The Nyasaland High Court in 1903 exempted the original inhabitants of estates from thangata and gave them some security. Legislation allowing other tenants to pay rent rather than thangata, and to receive cash wages if they performed more than the required thangata was enacted in 1908, but not implemented. [6] Soon after the outbreak of the First World War, in December 1914, the Nyasaland government introduced a Nyasaland Defence Ordinance, requiring men to serve as porters in support of local armed forces. [7] This service was equated with thangata, as those conscripted were forced to work on something that did not benefit them. [8] The harshness of thangata, including the conscription of porters was at least one of the reasons underlying the 1915 uprising led by John Chilembwe. Following this revolt, a new attempt to abolish thangata in favour of cash rent was made, but it failed because of the political influence of the estate owners that opposed the measure. The thangata system was a bar to progress and impoverished people by limiting the amount of time they could work for themselves. There was no place for crafts or skills in thangata: it reduced all tenants to unskilled manual labour, and was likened to a form of serfdom. [9] [10]

Even after Chilembwe's revolt, the labour obligation on many estates was only slightly modified, sometimes amounting to six months for thangata and rent. When the Ormsby-Gore East African Commission visited Nyasaland in 1924, it was highly critical of the treatment of all Africans resident on private estates tenants supplying their labour, contrary to the exemption from thangata offered to those who were occupants when the original certificates of title certificates were granted. The commission suggested that, even though recent immigrants were not entitled to the same protection, they should be treated in the same way as the original residents and excused from thangata. [11] However, local administrators were subject ti settler pressure and, although some abuses were curtailed, others such as equating a month of thangata to 30 days (or five weeks of six days' work), and requiring the wives of absent migrant workers, widows and single women to work in breach of custom, persisted. However, by 1918 most cotton, and by 1925 most tobacco, was not grown on estates by direct labour, but by smallholders on Crown lands. As the demand for estate labour declined in the 1920s, the owners claimed that, as they had insufficient work for their tenants to meet their thangata obligations, they had become rent-free squatters. [12] [13]

In later colonial Nyasaland

Some smaller estates failed, but others were saved from collapse by a scheme that was first adopted by one large owner, The British Central Africa Company Ltd. Instead of using direct labour, it issued seeds to tenants, who could grow cotton and tobacco under supervision and sell their crops 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, in a fixed quantity of acceptable crops or by direct labour. The true value of the crop, usually tobacco, given in lieu of rent greatly exceeded the nominal cash rent, and some landlords refused to accept cash when it was offered.

Estate landlords also benefited from restrictions on smallholders growing tobacco on Crown lands, who might otherwise have competed with the estate tenants. Although the estates now largely acted as brokers for their tenants' produce and the name thangata, "tobacco thangata", named after its most common form, was sometimes applied to rent in kind. The older form of labour thangata persisted on tea estates and elsewhere if the owner wished to grow crops through direct labour. [14] [15]

It was estimated that about 9% of Malawi's Africans lived on estates in 1911: in 1945, it was about 10% with 173,000 residents on estates in 49,000 families. [16] In the 1940s and the early 1950s, there were tensions between estate owners and tenants over evictions and the tenants' wish to sell produce of their choice in local markets, not through the owner. The expansion of tea-planting led to a shortage of African labour, which became acute after 1945. The British Central Africa Company Ltd had relied on labour tenants for most of its workforce, but in 1946m its local Mmnager complained that the company was unable to enforce unpopular thangata agreements or Sunday working although it had threatened many tenants with eviction. [17]

There was a further crisis in 1952–1953, when the British Central Africa Company tried to increase tenants' rents substantially against the advice of the Nyasaland government. A number of tenants resisted the increase, and the company issued eviction notices to them. The tenants' resistance included clearing land for cultivation on the undeveloped parts of the company's estates and refusing to pay taxes or attend courts. Riots broke out in Cholo in August 1953, and attempts to quell rioting led to 11 dead and 72 injured. [18] The tensions were lessened by government purchases of the land of former estates for resettlement and so by 1962, the number of estate residents had been reduced to 9,000 families. In 1962, the 1928 Ordinance was replaced by a 1962 Africans on Private Estates Ordinance that granted tenants security of tenure and abolished all forms of thangata that required labour or the production of amounts of designated crops by replacing them with cash rents. [19]

Although tenants had produced tobacco on many estates in the Southern Region, by 1935, 70% of the national tobacco crop was grown in the Central Region, which had fewer freehold estates. At first, the tobacco was grown by Africans on Crown land, and later, leasehold land of former Crown land had been granted to Europeans. The leaseholders engaged African sharecroppers under contract to grow one annual tobacco crop at a time, the "visiting tenant" system. Ithad some similarities to estate tenancies in the Shire Highlands (called thangata, whether the rent was satisfied in labour or produce), but it was distinct, as the visiting tenants had permanent homes away from the places where they grew their crop. Like estate tenants, visiting tenants were underpaid for their crop because they were forced to sell it to the landowner. [20]

Although it was originally distinct from thangata, in 1963 shortly before independence, Hastings Banda, who was Minister of Agriculture, fiercely attacked the visiting tenant system and equated it to the hated thangata. Despite this rhetoric, when thangata was abolished in 1962, a temporary exemption was given for visiting tenants in the Central Region. However, using the term thangata to apply to the visiting tenant system for political purposes both extended its meaning to a situation to which it had not previously applied and made its meaning less clear. [21]

In post-colonial Malawi

By the late 1960s, politicians of the ruling Malawi Congress Party were involved in tobacco growing on the former European estates that the colonial government had bought, and which were sold or leased to the party elite after independence. Further elite-run estates were later created on what had previously been communal lands. By 1990, there were 675,000 registered estate tenants with little security, and another 580,000 "squatters" lived on surplus land with no security, who formed a pool of casual labour. Few tenants or squatters grew all their own food and most relied on casual paid labour or food-for-work arrangements on the estates to supplement what they could grow. [22] The preferred term for short-term rural casual work paid for in cash or in kind (usually food) is ganyu.

The term "Ganyu" is said to derive from the Portuguese "ganho" (sometimes spelled "ganyao"), meaning something gained or a bonus. [23] [24] It originally denoted food or beer given as appreciation for neighbours when they worked on another's fields, then the work a poor person did for food or cash for more prosperous neighbour. Tobacco estates are now the largest employers of ganyu workers, who may stay for the growing season or be visiting tenants, or they may travel daily. Larger estates may pay the minimum cash wage; smaller estates usually only give food. These arrangements are sometimes called thangata, as in the 2007 documentary "Thangata: social bondage and big tobacco in Malawi". [25] [26]

Similar systems

Of all countries in Southern and Central Africa, Nyasaland was the most notorious for the duration of thangata and its importance to the colonial economy. Labour tenancy and sharecropping continued to exist in other less developed parts of Southern and Central Africa in the 20th century but without the same social and political impact as in Nyasaland. In much of South Africa and Southern and North-Western Rhodesia, the growth of the money economy rapidly led to waged employment that replaced labour in lieu of rent, and in North-Eastern Rhodesia estate, agriculture was less dominant and land reasonably plentiful. [27] In early Natal, the shortage of capital caused landowners to extract rent from African tenants in the forms of produce or labour, which applied in Zululand until the early 20th century. However, in central Natal, employment for wages took over in the last third of the 19th century. [28] African tenant farmers on European-owned estates in Matabeleland in the early colonial period could either pay rent or provide labour in lieu of rent, but after 1910, it was more usual for these estates to employ Africans for wages. [29]

The system that is probably closest to thangata is the institution that was called ubureetwa in Rwanda. Although there were few European landowners, the traditional leaders who controlled access land were from the dominant Tutsi group. The Europeans, after their occupation, manipulated what had previously been freely-given labour into an unpaid agricultural labour obligation. As Rwanda had a mobile population, chiefs could allocate land to clients outside the community that had a traditional claim to use the land, in a clear parallel to the Mozambican migrants on Nyasaland estates. The Rwandan incomers were prepared to agree to accept a heavy burden of labour for access to land. The colonial administration in Rwanda gave a legal status to ubureetwa and until the 1950s resisted abolishing it or commuting it to cash. [30]

In the Congo Free State, forced labour amounting to virtual slavery was widely used by the government on public works and to compel Africans to gather ivory or wild rubber. [31] Although forced labour in the Belgian Congo was abolished in theory in 1908, the government from 1917 implemented a system of forced cultivation of cotton, coffee and rice, which began to be imposed on the peasant population, who were required to use their own land for one or more of these designated crops. On Belgian-owned estates, a Labour Code introduced in 1922 allowed employers to physically discipline their workers, so supposedly free labour was turned into a system of forced labour. However, the peasants and estate workers were not tenants and so the system was rather different from thangata. [32]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nyasaland</span> British protectorate from 1907 to 1964

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">British Central Africa Protectorate</span> British protectorate from 1893 to 1907

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Chilembwe</span> Independence leader in Malawi (1871–1915)

John Nkologo Chilembwe was a Baptist pastor, educator and revolutionary 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 armed uprising against colonial rule. Today, Chilembwe is celebrated as a hero of independence in some African countries, and John Chilembwe Day is observed annually on 15 January in Malawi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chilembwe uprising</span> 1915 rebellion against British rule

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 colony, the leaders of the revolt were mainly from an emerging black middle class. They were motivated by grievances against the British colonial system, which included forced labour, racial discrimination and new demands imposed on the African population following the outbreak of World War I.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agriculture in Malawi</span>

The main economic products of Malawi are tobacco, tea, cotton, groundnuts, sugar and coffee. These have been among the main cash crops for the last century, but tobacco has become increasingly predominant in the last quarter-century, with a production in 2011 of 175,000 tonnes. Over the last century, tea and groundnuts have increased in relative importance while cotton has decreased. The main food crops are maize, cassava, sweet potatoes, sorghum, bananas, rice, and Irish potatoes and cattle, sheep and goats are raised. The main industries deal with agricultural processing of tobacco, tea and sugar and timber products. The industrial production growth rate is estimated at 10% (2009).

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.

A. L. Bruce Estates was one of three largest owners of agricultural estates in colonial Nyasaland. Alexander Low Bruce, the son-in-law of David Livingstone, acquired a large estate at Magomero in the Shire Highlands of Nyasaland in 1893, together with two smaller ones. On his death, these estates were to operate as a trust to bring Christianity and Commerce to Central Africa. However his two sons later formed a commercial company which bought the estates from the trust. The company gained a reputation for the harsh exploitation and ill-treatment of its tenants under a labour system known by the African term "thangata", which operated in the plantation cultivation of cotton and tobacco. This exploitation was one of the causes of the 1915 uprising led by John Chilembwe, which resulted in the deaths of three of the company's European employees. After the failure of its own cotton and tobacco plantations, the company forced its tenants to grow tobacco rather than food on their own land and significantly underpaid them. Following almost three decades of losses, the Magomero estate was in poor condition, but the company was able to sell it at a profit between 1949 and 1952 because the government needed land for resettlement of African former tenants evicted from private estates. The company was liquidated in 1959.

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.

Certificates of Claim were a form of legal instrument by which the colonial administration of the British Central Africa Protectorate granted legal property titles to individuals, companies and others who claimed to have acquired land within the protectorate by grant or purchase. The proclamation of the British Central Africa Protectorate was endorsed by the British Foreign Office in May 1891, and Harry Johnston as Commissioner and Consul-General examined and adjudicated on all claims to the ownership of land said to have been acquired before or immediately after that date. Between late 1892 and March 1894, Johnston issued 59 Certificates of Claim for land, each of which was equivalent to a freehold title to the land claimed. Very few claims were disallowed or reduced in extent, and around 3.7 million acres, or 15% of the land area of the protectorate, was alienated, mainly to European settlers. No Certificates of Claim were issued after 1894, but this form of land title was never abolished, and some land in Malawi is still held under those certificates.

Blantyre and East Africa Ltd is a company that was incorporated in Scotland in 1898 and is still in existence. Its main activity was the ownership of estates in the south of what is now Malawi. The main estate crops it grew were tobacco until the 1950s and tea, which it continued to grow until the company’s tea estates were sold. Blantyre and East Africa Ltd was one of four large estate-owning companies in colonial Nyasaland which together owned over 3.4 million acres of land, including the majority of the fertile land in the Shire Highlands. The company acquired most of its landholdings between 1898 and 1901 from several early European settlers, whose title to this land had been recognised by Certificates of Claim issued by the administration of the British Central Africa Protectorate. After the boom for Europeans growing tobacco ended in about 1927, the company retained one large estate in Zomba District where its tenants were encouraged to grow tobacco and others where it grew tea. It was also left with a scattering of small estates that it neither operated nor effectively managed but obtained cash rents from African tenants on crowded and unsupervised estates. Many of its estates, excluding the tea estates which it continued to manage directly, were sold to the colonial administration of Nyasaland between 1950 and 1955.

The British Central Africa Company Ltd was one of the four largest European-owned companies that operated in colonial Nyasaland, now Malawi. The company was incorporated in 1902 to acquire the business interests that Eugene Sharrer, an early settler and entrepreneur, had developed in the British Central Africa Protectorate. Sharrer became the majority shareholder of the company on its foundation. The company initially had trading and transport interests, but these were sold by the 1930s. For most of the colonial period, its extensive estates produced cotton, tobacco or tea but the British Central Africa Company Ltd developed the reputation of being a harsh and exploitative landlord whose relations with its tenants were poor. In 1962, shortly before independence, the company sold most of its undeveloped land to the Nyasaland government, but it retained some plantations and two tea factories. It changed its name to The Central Africa Company Ltd and was acquired by the Lonrho group, both in 1964.

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.

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.

Alexander Livingstone Bruce was a capitalist of Scottish origin, a director and major shareholder of A L Bruce Estates Ltd, one of the largest property owning companies in colonial Nyasaland. His father, Alexander Low Bruce, was a son-in-law of David Livingstone and urged his two sons to use the landholding he had acquired for philanthropic purposes. However, during over 40 years residence in Africa, Bruce represented the interests of European landowners and opposed the political, educational and social advancement of Africans. After the death of his elder brother in 1915, Alexander Livingstone Bruce had sole control of the company estates: his management was harsh and exploitative, and one of the main causes of the uprising of John Chilembwe in 1915. During the uprising, three of Bruce's European employees were killed and one of them, William Jervis Livingstone was held partly to blame for the revolt. Although Livingstone was carrying out Bruce's orders, Bruce, as a leading landowner and member of the governor's Legislative Council, escaped censure. Despite Bruce's striving for profits, A L Bruce Estates lost money but was saved from insolvency by the colonial government's need for land for resettlement following a famine in 1949. Shortly before his death in 1954, Bruce was able to sell the company's Nyasaland estates, repay its debts and realise a surplus.

The Native Tobacco Board, or NTB, was formed in Nyasaland in 1926 as a Government-sponsored body with the primary aim of controlling the production of tobacco by African smallholders and generating revenues for the government, and the secondary aim of increasing the volume and quality of tobacco exports. At the time of its formation, much of Nyasaland's tobacco was produced on European-owned estates, whose owners demanded protection against African tobacco production that might compete with their own, and against the possibility that profitable smallholder farming would draw cheap African labour away from their estates. From around 1940, the aim of the NTB was less about restricting African tobacco production and more about generating governmental revenues, supposedly for development but still involving the diversion of resources away from smallholder farming. In 1956, the activities, powers and duties of what had by then been renamed the African Tobacco Board were transferred to the Agricultural Production and Marketing Board, which had powers to buy smallholder surpluses of tobacco, maize, cotton and other crops, but whose producer prices continued to be biased against peasant producers.

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.

Cotton in Malawi is an important part of the agricultural history of Malawi. Cotton is not indigenous to the country, but was introduced into warmer lowland areas no later than the 17th century. Production in the late pre-colonial and early colonial period was limited but, from the early 20th century, it has been grown mainly by African smallholders in the south of the country. For a brief period during the First World War, cotton was the most valuable export crop, and it has remained an important earner of foreign exchange.

The Livingstone Bruce Plantation Raid was an attack on the European owned and run cotton and tobacco plantation, which was situated at Magomero. The attack on the plantation was only major action of the ill fated Chilembwe uprising.

The Nyasaland famine of 1949 was a famine that occurred in the Shire Highlands in the Southern Province of Nyasaland and also in a part of the Central Province in 1949: its effects extended into the early part of 1950. The immediate cause was severe droughts in December 1948 to January 1949 and in March 1949 that destroyed much of the maize crop on which the people of the affected areas relied during its main growing season. This followed two years of erratic rainfall and poor harvests which had depleted the reserves in farmers’ granaries. The effect of crop failure was intensified by the failure of the colonial government to maintain a suitably large emergency grain reserve, delays in importing sufficient relief supplies and its requirement that most of the relief provided was paid for by its recipients. The official death toll from starvation was some 200 people, which may be an underestimate, and it excludes those dying of diseases exacerbated by malnutrition.

Magomero is an estate and a village in Malawi. It is situated south of Zomba.

References

  1. ↑ White, Landeg (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village. Cambridge University Press. pp. 87–88. ISBN   0-521-32182-4.
  2. ↑ Kandaŵire, J. A. K. (1977). "Thangata in Pre-Colonial and Colonial Systems of Land Tenure in Southern Malaŵi, with Special Reference to Chingale". Africa: Journal of the International African Institute . 47 (2): 185–186. doi:10.2307/1158737. JSTOR   1158737. S2CID   146188640.
  3. ↑ Newbury, M. Catharine (1980). "Ubureetwa and Thangata: Catalysts to Peasant Political Consciousness in Rwanda and Malawi". Canadian Journal of African Studies . 14 (1): 97, 107–108. doi:10.2307/484280. JSTOR   484280.
  4. ↑ Kandaŵire, J. A. K. (1977). "Thangata in Pre-Colonial and Colonial Systems of Land Tenure in Southern Malaŵi, with Special Reference to Chingale". Africa: Journal of the International African Institute . 47 (2): 185–191. doi:10.2307/1158737. JSTOR   1158737. S2CID   146188640.
  5. 1 2 White, Landeg (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village. Cambridge University Press. pp. 79–81, 86–89. ISBN   0-521-32182-4 – via Google Books.
  6. ↑ Ng'ong'ola, Clement (1990). "The State, Settlers, and Indigenes in the Evolution of Land Law and Policy in Colonial Malawi". International Journal of African Historical Studies . 23 (1): 37. doi:10.2307/219980. JSTOR   219980.
  7. ↑ Page, Melvin E. (January 1978). "The War of Thangata: Nyasaland and The East African Campaign, 1914-1918" . The Journal of African History . 19 (1). Cambridge University Press: 88. doi:10.1017/S0021853700015966. S2CID   163075126 . Retrieved 27 March 2020.
  8. ↑ Page, Melvin E. (January 1978). "The War of Thangata: Nyasaland and The East African Campaign, 1914-1918" . The Journal of African History . 19 (1). Cambridge University Press: 94. doi:10.1017/S0021853700015966. S2CID   163075126 . Retrieved 27 March 2020.
  9. ↑ Newbury, M. Catharine (1980). "Ubureetwa and Thangata: Catalysts to Peasant Political Consciousness in Rwanda and Malawi". Canadian Journal of African Studies . 14 (1): 107–109. doi:10.2307/484280. JSTOR   484280.
  10. ↑ White, Landeg (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village. Cambridge University Press. pp. 105, 117, 194. ISBN   0-521-32182-4 – via Google Books.
  11. ↑ Ng'ong'ola, Clement (1990). "The State, Settlers, and Indigenes in the Evolution of Land Law and Policy in Colonial Malawi". International Journal of African Historical Studies . 23 (1): 39. doi:10.2307/219980. JSTOR   219980.
  12. ↑ Baker, C. A. (January 1962). "Nyasaland, The History of its Export Trade". The Nyasaland Journal. 15 (1). Society of Malawi, Historical and Scientific: 15–16, 19–20, 25. JSTOR   29545910.
  13. ↑ White, Landeg (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village. Cambridge University Press. pp. 146–149. ISBN   0-521-32182-4.
  14. ↑ Kandaŵire, J. A. K. (1977). "Thangata in Pre-Colonial and Colonial Systems of Land Tenure in Southern Malaŵi, with Special Reference to Chingale". Africa: Journal of the International African Institute . 47 (2): 188. doi:10.2307/1158737. JSTOR   1158737. S2CID   146188640.
  15. ↑ White, Landeg (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village. Cambridge University Press. pp. 173–174. ISBN   0-521-32182-4.
  16. ↑ Nyasaland Superintendent of the Census, (1946). Report on the Census, 1945, Zomba, Government Printer, pp. 15-17.
  17. ↑ Palmer, Robin (March 1986). "Working Conditions and Worker Responses on Nyasaland Tea Estates, 1930–1953" . The Journal of African History . 27. Cambridge University Press: 119, 121–122, 126. doi:10.1017/S0021853700029224. S2CID   161274415 . Retrieved 27 March 2020.
  18. ↑ Palmer, Robin (March 1986). "Working Conditions and Worker Responses on Nyasaland Tea Estates, 1930–1953" . The Journal of African History . 27. Cambridge University Press: 122–123, 125. doi:10.1017/S0021853700029224. S2CID   161274415 . Retrieved 27 March 2020.
  19. ↑ J G Pike, (1969). Malawi: A Political and Economic History, London, Pall Mall Press, pp. 128-30, 188.
  20. ↑ J McCracken, (1984) Share-Cropping in Malawi: The Visiting Tenant System in the Central Province c. 1920-1968, in Malawi: An Alternative Pattern of Development, Edinburgh 1984, University of Edinburgh pp. 37-8, 41-2.
  21. ↑ McCracken, John (2012). A History of Malawi, 1859–1966. Boydell & Brewer. pp. 170, 253. ISBN   978-1-84701-050-6.
  22. ↑ L A H Msukwa, (1994) Food Policy and Production: Towards Increased Household Food Security, Zomba, the University of Malawi Centre for Social Research pp 25-6.
  23. ↑ White, Landeg (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village. Cambridge University Press. p. 88. ISBN   0-521-32182-4.
  24. ↑ N Webster and L Engberg-Pedersen, (2002). In the Name of the Poor: Contesting Political Space for Poverty Reduction, Zed Books. ISBN   978-1-85649-959-0
  25. ↑ M. Whiteside, (1999). Ganyu Labour in Malawi and its implications for Livelihood Security Interventions pp. 6-7.
  26. ↑ "Thangata: social bondage and big tobacco in Malawi"
  27. ↑ Marks, Shula (1975). "Southern and Central Africa, 1886–1910". In Oliver, Roland Anthony; Sanderson, G. N. (eds.). The Cambridge History of Africa. Vol. 6. Cambridge University Press. pp. 457–459. ISBN   9780521228039 . Retrieved 27 March 2020– via Google Books.
  28. ↑ Slater, Henry (1975). "Land, Labour and Capital in Natal: The Natal Land and Colonisation Company 1860–1948". The Journal of African History . 16 (2). Cambridge University Press: 257, 263–265. doi:10.1017/S0021853700001158. JSTOR   180815. S2CID   140199099.
  29. ↑ Kwashirai, Vimbai (2009). Green Colonialism in Zimbabwe, 1890–1980. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press. pp. 113–114. ISBN   9781621969150 . Retrieved 27 March 2020– via Google Books.
  30. ↑ Newbury, M. Catharine (1980). "Ubureetwa and Thangata: Catalysts to Peasant Political Consciousness in Rwanda and Malawi". Canadian Journal of African Studies . 14 (1): 98, 104, 108. doi:10.2307/484280. JSTOR   484280.
  31. ↑ Miers, Suzanne (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Pattern. Walnut Creek (CA): Altamira Press. pp. 40, 53. ISBN   0-7591-0339-9 . Retrieved 27 March 2020– via Google Books.
  32. ↑ Houben, Vincent (2011). "(Un)freedom, Colonial Labour Relations in Belgian Congo and the Dutch East Indies compared" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 August 2014. Retrieved 4 January 2013.
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.