Thangata in Pre-Colonial and Colonial Systems of Land Tenure in Southern Malaŵi with Special Reference to Chingale

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Abstract
Opening Paragraph: A contrastive account of pre-colonial and colonial systems of land tenure in Malaŵi cannot avoid adopting thangata as its central concept. The 1921 Land Commission of Nyasaland asserted that the practice of thangata:seems to have had a foundation in the conditions of purely [African] life under which the member of the village community worked for a certain period in the gardens of his chief, the latter assuming towards the former a responsibility which has its parallel in the relations of the best European landlords towards their native tenants today. The practice was known from the beginning by the [Cheŵa] word ‘thangata’ meaning ‘to assist’. In return for his right to occupy certain land the [African] ‘assisted’ his chief or his European landlord in the latter's work upon his own land.There is a whole world of difference between traditional thangata and colonial thangata. The former is nothing other than a social institution which embodies a pre-colonial notion of reciprocal labour. In the colonial situation the term came to mean forced labour. In this paper I analyse the term in its colonial form. My aim is to show that thangata is a colonial institution in that it originated from processes of British colonisation of Malaŵi. This aim requires that the pre-colonial system of land tenure be characterised first before tracing the formation of the colonial system.

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