Malawi says land laws key to agriculture investment

Authorities in Malawi have said land laws will increase the impact of agricultural investment and production in the African country. ANDREW NDHLOVU writes Malawi’s Lands Minister Atupele Muluzi said this in Lilongwe during a workshop on mainstreaming of land governance in the National Agricultural Investment Programme. Muluzi said there is a relationship between land and agriculture as you use land for farming. “The provision of the new land laws; therefore will have a direct bearing on the performance of the agricultural sector and promoting secure land rights.The on-going national land policy and the land law are to improve the agricultural productivity in order to attain food security in the country,” Muluzi said. He said that government has embarked on a process of developing a new sector wide National Agricultural Investment Programme and that land policy and governance issues are systematically mainstreamed in the new agricultural strategies. “Agriculture still remains the engine of Malawi’s economic growth and development. Government in collaboration with other national stakeholders has therefore come up with a roadmap for the development of the new agricultural programme,” he said. Secretary for Agriculture Erica Maganga said the coming in of land laws would help solve a lot of issues which are affecting the investment in agriculture. “We can’t talk of agriculture without land and this land laws will solve the issues of land ownership be it small, large scale farmers or outside investors who will be looking for land,” Maganga said. Criticisms There have several criticisms against Malawi land laws. One of the criticisms is that the new law enables commercial farmers who acquired huge farms during colonial era to continue owning their land under freehold category. Leader of the opposition Malawi Congress Party, Lazarus Chakwera, once told journalists that the land under freehold category should be under leasehold agreement. “The gist of the matter is that we have to approach the issue of land acquisition and utilisation in a manner that serves Malawians well. The problem has been that some of the pieces of legislation have anomalies,” said Chakwera. He added: “We have freehold land, much of which was acquired before independence. Then we have the issue of customary land which ordinary Malawians use. According to the bill, customary land has to be registered. What we are looking for here is fairness."   Commenting on the same issue, opposition People’s Party acting president Uladi Mussa said it was strange that the new law was strict on customary land while leaving out descendants of colonialists on freehold land. “There are so many restrictions on customary land. Our chiefs will no longer have control over land. Yet the bill is just leaving those people under freehold category,” Mussa said. In Freehold Land category, title holders enjoy outright ownership of the property and land on which it stands. A freehold estate in land is where the owner of the land has no time limit to his period of ownership, unlike leasehold, where lease lengths vary from 99 years, upwards. But Muluzi said he was surprised about the decision of the opposition, considering that freehold land was not much, but contributed a lot to the economy. “The land in question is only three percent of the total land. We need to be extremely careful. If possible, we have to consider introducing land taxes for land under freehold system. This issue of freehold is a lesser evil. This is a constitutional matter, nothing personal,” Muluzi said.

Land injustices

Most of the current tea estates owners in southern Malawi inherited their vast tracts of land from their parents and grandparents who acquired the land during colonialism in the 1890s. Malawi was established as a British protectorate in 1891 and, following that development, the ruling British monarch gave early settlers the option to purchase land that had been acquired from Africans, either as leasehold or freehold. History give accounts of three individuals who were instrumental in land loss during the early years of the protectorate and are largely responsible for a huge amount of land taken from Africans and used to benefit the British. One of them was Eugene Sharrer, who seized 363 034 acres, Alexander Low Bruce, who took 176 000 acres, and John Buchanan and his brothers, who grabbed a further 167 823 acres. There were many others. Up to this day, such land is used as commercial estates, mostly growing tea in southern Malawi districts of Thyolo and Mulanje, and tobacco and coffee in Zomba and Chiradzulu. Having observed that colonialism had created serious inequality in land ownership and use in Malawi, some organisations have started demanding land reparations. A local group, known as the People’s Land Organisation (PLO), says there is need to clear past mistakes by asking the current colonial estate owners to pay the descendants of the real owners of the land.

Solutions

Malawi’s 2016 Land Bills were aimed at solving the challenges of land ownership and acquisition but critics strongly believe that the new legislation has failed to correct past land injustices. Some traditional leaders have criticized the bill arguing that some of its sections contravene cultural values which says only chiefs have powers to decide on such issues. The current bill recognises the head of state as being in charge of land governance in Malawi. Malawi has been avoiding taking the path of farm invasions, as was taken by Zimbabwe. To avoid the Zimbabwe scenario, Malawi in the past few years implemented Community-Based Rural Land Development Project (CBRLDP) in which it relocated peasant farmers from highly populated districts to low-density ones. Despite the emergence of many critics, Malawi Civic Education Minister Patricia Kaliati believes the new legislation “will improve access to land by Malawians including youths and women,” and “improve tenure security through creation and registration of customary estates.”