New Land Law in Malawi
| Author | Rowton Simpson |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1967.tb00306.x |
| Date | 01 October 1967 |
| Published date | 01 October 1967 |
New
Land Law in Malawi
By
ROWTON
SIMPSON
Mr. Simpson is
Land
Tenure
Adviser, Ministry of Overseas Development, London.
-------------------------
ON 4th April, 1967, Dr. Banda, President of Malawi, in person seconded in
the Malawi Parliament
the
second reading of four Bills which, according to
the Malawi Hansard, he claimed
"when
passed as Acts of Parliament, en-
forced and carried out, will revolutionise our agriculture and transform
our
country from a poor one into a rich one". Dr. Banda explained how, when
he was Minister
of
Natural Resources, it had become quite clear to him
that
the customary way
of
holding land in Malawi and the methods
of
tilling
the
land were entirely
out
of
date and totally unsuitable for the economic develop-
ment
of
the
country, and he went on to say that he had come to
the
con-
clusion that,
if
Malawi was to develop economically on an agricultural basis,
the
first thing to do wasto change
the
system
of
land holding and
the
second
was to change the method
of
land cultivation.
It
was impossible to do these
things legally under the existing law and so the law must be changed.
It
was
to effectthis change
that
the
four Bills had been prepared.
The
four Bills are:
I.
The
Customary
Land
(Development) Bill
2.
The
Registered Land Bill
3.
The
Local
Land
Boards Bill
4.
The
Malawi
Land
(Amendment) Bill
and a description
of
them with some details
of
their origin and purpose may
therefore be
of
interest to readers
of
the
Journal.
The
Customary
Land
(Development)
Bill,
1967
In
his speech
Dr.
Banda said
"Under
our
present system of land holding
and land cultivation, no one, either as an institution or as an individual, will
lend us money for developing
our
land because our present methods
of
land
holding and land cultivation are uneconomic and wasteful. They
put
re-
sponsibility on no one. No one is responsible here and now for uneconomic
and wasted use of land because no one holds land as an individual.
Land
is
held in common.
They
say, 'everybody's baby is nobody's baby at all'.
We have to
put
a stop to this, even
if
only gradually, otherwise there will not
be and there will never be any development in this country in
the
real sense
of
the word."
The
Customary Land (Development) Bill was therefore designed to
convert customary tenure to a form
of
recorded individual title as an essential
prelude to improved agricultural development.
It
provides for
the
systematic
ascertainment
of
all land rights in any area
of
customary land which the
minister declares for development and which is to be planned from
the
point
of view
of
best land use, both agricultural and social. School sites, roads and
other lands needed for the community are set aside, a distinction being made
between public land reserved or used for public purposes and customary
land, where land is to continue in customary use by the community until the
221
I.l
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