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The Abrahams Commission (also known the Land Commission) was a commission appointed by the Nyasaland government in 1946 to enquire into land issues in Nyasaland following riots and disturbances by tenants on European-owned estates in Blantyre and Cholo districts in 1943 and 1945. It had only one member, Sir Sidney Abrahams, a Privy Counsellor and lawyer, the former Attorney General of the Gold Coast, Zanzibar and Uganda, and former Chief Justice of Uganda and then Ceylon. There had been previous reviews considering 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 East Africa Commission on 1924 and most recently the Bell Commission on the Financial Position and Development of Nyasaland in 1938, but none 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 become Crown land, available to African farmers. The Africans on estates were to be offered the choice of remaining on the estate as workers or tenants or of moving to Crown land. These proposals were not implemented in full until 1952.〔S Tenney and N K Humphreys, (2011). Historical Dictionary of the International Monetary Fund, pp. 10, 17-18.〕 The report of the Abrahams Commission divided opinion. Africans were generally in favour of its proposals, as was the governor from 1942 to 1947, Edmund Richards (who had proposed the establishment of a Land Commission), and the incoming governor, Geoffrey Colby. Estate owners and managers were strongly against it, and many European settlers bitterly attacked it.〔J McCraken, (2012). A History of Malawi 1859-1966, pp. 306-7.〕 == Origins of the Land Issue == In pre-colonial times, the rules of customary law in much of what is today Malawi attributed the ownership of land to the African communities that occupied it. Community leaders could allow community members to use specified areas of communal land, but did not usually grant its use to outsiders. Neither the leaders nor the current members of a community could alienate its land, which they held in trust for future generations.〔B Pachai, (1973). Land Policies in Malawi: An Examination of the Colonial Legacy, p. 685.〕 In the period before a British protectorate was proclaimed 1891, the African Lakes Company and several individuals, notably Eugene Sharrer, Alexander Low Bruce (the son-in-law of David Livingstone) and John Buchanan and his brothers claimed that they had made treaties of protection or purchase agreements with various chiefs, under which they had become owners of large areas of land. The chiefs had no understanding of English concepts of land tenure and may have intended only to grant a right to cultivate vacant land in exchange for protection. In addition, documentation was often lacking or ambiguous and, in the case of purchases, the buyers gave only trivial quantities of goods in exchange for large landholdings.〔B. Pachai, (1978). Land and Politics in Malawi 1875-1975, pp. 36, 151-7.〕〔J McCraken, (2012). A History of Malawi, 1859-1966, pp. 77-8.〕 Harry Johnston was appointed as the first Commissioner of the British Central Africa Protectorate in July 1891. Johnston did not consider that the Crown had a general claim to sovereignty over any land unless it had been expressly transferred by cession. Without sovereignty, the Crown had no right to alienate that land. However, some treaties made after July 1891 did cede sovereignty over land, but granted the communities involved the right to retain any land that they actually occupied as Crown tenants, leaving any vacant land free for the Crown to alienate. He also accepted that the treaties and agreements made before the start of the protectorate might be evidence of sales of land. Even though he accepted that the land belonged to its African communities, not the chiefs, Johnston proposed the legal fiction that the people had given their chiefs the right to sell it. This interpretation validated the chiefs’ sales and grants of unused land to Europeans. He also claimed that he was entitled to investigate whether these sales were valid and, if they were, to issue Certificates of Claim (in effect a registration of freehold title over the land to the new owners.〔B. Pachai, (1973). Land Policies in Malawi: An Examination of the Colonial Legacy, pp. 682-3, 685.〕 Johnston recorded that a review of land claims was necessary because the proclamation of the protectorate had been followed by a wholesale land grab, with huge areas of land bought for trivial sums and many claims overlapping or requiring adjustment. He sought confirmation that the chiefs who sold the land and had received a fair price, but his estimates of land value were very low, from a halfpenny an acre up to a maximum of threepence an acre. The existing African villages and farms were exempted from these sales, and the villagers could retain their homes and fields under “non-disturbance” clauses in most Certificates of Claim.〔Sir Harry Johnston, (1897). British Central Africa, pp. 107-8, 112-13. http://archive.org/stream/britishafrica00johnuoft/britishafrica00johnuoft_djvu.txt,〕 When the legality of the Certificates of Claim system was challenged in 1903 on the basis that the agreements made by the chiefs breached the rights of their community members, the Appeals Court upheld their validity. The court did, however, rule that many aspects of the agreements made by the chiefs were unfair and one-sided.〔J G Pike, (1969). Malawi: A Political and Economic History, p. 127.〕 In total, 59 Certificates of Claim to land rights were registered, mostly between 1892 and 1894, covering an area of 3.7 million acres, almost 1.5 million hectares or 15% of the total land area of the Protectorate. This included 2.7 million acres, over 1 million hectares, in the North Nyasa District that the British South Africa Company acquired for its mineral potential and which was never turned into plantation estates. Most of the remaining alienated land, some 867,000 acres, or over 350,000 hectares of estates included much of the best arable lands in the Shire Highlands, the most densely populated part of the country.〔B. Pachai, (1978). Land and Politics in Malawi 1875-1975, pp. 36-7.〕 == Development of the Land Issue == 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Abrahams Commission」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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