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.
However, the ordinance failed in its intention of encouraging these tenants to increase the production of crops on the undeveloped land within those estates because of the worldwide 1930s Great Depression.
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.
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.
New workers, often migrants escaping from harsh conditions in Mozambique, who did not belong to any local community, so had no claim to farm communal land, 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.
[2] In 1903, the Nyasaland High Court declared the original inhabitants of estates that had received government grants that contained “non-disturbance” clauses were exempt from thangata and had security of tenure.
[4] Had this measure taken effect, thangata would have been abolished, but it failed to be implemented because the estate owners threatened to evict large numbers of tenants who were in excess of their requirements for workers.
[5] Even though the government acceded to the owners' threats, the latter still chose to expel significant numbers of tenants unable to work or considered to be troublesome in favour of tractable migrants from Mozambique.
[8] 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 Commission recommended that all permanent rent-free tenancies under non-disturbance clauses should end, but that exiting tenants-at-will, who could be evicted without cause or notice under the existing rules, should be given some security of tenure.
By the time legislation was prepared in 1928, there was little demand for new European-owned plantations, as the existing estates were ending direct crop production in favour of marketing tenants’ produce.
The legislation enacted in 1928 therefore emphasised that rents could be satisfied by delivering a fixed quantity of acceptable crops to the owner as well as by direct labour or in cash.
As the demand for labour increased, owners refused to accept cash, so the rent of six shillings, which remained virtually unchanged for over two decades before 1928, was purely nominal.
The Ordinance created a class of registered “Resident Natives”, who had entered into tenancy agreements: only these and their families had the right to live on the private estate of which they were tenants for the term of their lease.