“Our daughters inherit our land, but our sons use their wives' fields”: matrilineal-matrilocal land tenure and the New Land Policy in Malawi

Abstract

Renewed efforts in recent years to reform land tenure policy in Sub-Saharan African countries have – in some cases – included provisions aimed at improving women's land rights. The premise of such provisions is that women's land rights under customary tenure are fragile, threatened, and/or in the process of being undermined. The matrilineal-matrilocal areas in Southern Malawi described here present a counter case. Only daughters are the heirs of their matrilineage's land, while sons use their wives' land or, in special circumstances, have temporary use of fields belonging to their female matrikin. This pattern has prevailed in the face of a long and continuing history of prejudice against matriliny. Now, a new land policy, not yet passed into law, includes an explicit aim to protect and improve land rights for women. Yet the means selected by the policy – land inheritance by both sons and daughters and extension of greater authority to traditional leaders in the administration of land – will be likely, if implemented, to have opposite effects in matrilineal-matrilocal areas.

Keywords:

• Malawi
• matrilineal-matrilocal land tenure
• settlement schemes
• gender equity
• land policy

Notes

1. Amanor, “Land, Labour”; Chanock, Law, Custom; Colson, “The Impact”; Moore, Social Facts; Peters, Dividing.

2. Davison, Agriculture; Haugerud, “Land Tenure”; Attwood, “Land Registration”; Shipton and Goheen, “Introduction.”

3. See Daley and Englert, “Securing Land Rights for Women.”

4. Englert and Palmer 2003, cited by Palmer, “Foreword,” ix; cf. Englert and Daley, “Introduction,” 1. But see Daley and Englert, “Securing Land Rights for Women.”

5. Study rounds of 12 months each were conducted in 1986–87, 1990, 1997, and 2006, with shorter periods in most of the intervening years. I was joined by Dr Peter Walker (University of Oregon) in 1990, 1997 and 2006, and by Dr Daimon Kambewa (University of Malawi) in 2006. My deep gratitude goes to these and our research assistants, and even more to the Zomba villagers among whom I have lived and worked for so long.

6. Matrilocal residence is often referred to as uxorilocal (i.e. at the home of the wife).

7. The terms are in Chinyanja, the language used in the Southern Region; it has minor differences from Chichewa, the lingua franca of Malawi and the favoured language under Dr Banda.

8. Kambewa, “Access and Control.”

9. This term was used, as in the Rhodesias and South Africa, to refer to people of mixed race. It is still so used in Malawi today where there are distinct social groups defined as “Coloured.”

10. Ng'ong'ola, “The Design,” 115.

11. Kishindo, “Women, Land Rights,” 14.

12. Government of Malawi, “Malawi National Land Policy,” December 2002, 2.2.4.

13. Cited in Mandala, Work and Control, 21, 25.

14. Inheritance refers to the transfer of personal assets and land from a deceased relative to an heir; succession refers to the transfer of authority such as a chiefship. Though the husband is considered a “stranger” and expected to provide service to his wife's family as mkamwini, the role of the father is not without importance. Children take the name of the mfunda (matri-clan) of their father and are often so addressed in the village.

15. Cf. Kishindo, “Dynamics,” 10.

16. This is emphasized by Peters, “Against all Odds,” and “Bewitching Land”; and Peters and Kambewa, “Whose Security?” It is also singularly important in assessing the effects of AIDS – see Peters, Walker, and Kambewa, “Striving for Normality,” and Drinkwater, McEwan, and Samuels, “The Effects of HIV/AIDS.” Unfortunately, this old lesson (Guyer, “Household,” Guyer and Peters, “Introduction”) has constantly to be relearned.

17. The territorial chief is capitalized as Traditional Authority though reference is also made in the literature and the land policy to lower case “traditional authorities” meaning all chiefs (amfumu in Chinyanja and Chichewa).

18. Mandala, Work and Control, 49.

19. Mandala, Work and Control, 23, quotes from the journal of a companion of Livingstone's regarding an encounter with the chief Mankhokwe. This describes how the visitors thought the women taking a role in the discussions between the chief and the visitors were his wives but “it turned out otherwise” – they were “sisters.”

20. See Peters, “Against the Odds,” for more detail.

21. Cf. Vaughan, Story of an African Famine.

22. All information and quotations in this paragraph come from file MNA NS 1/15/4 in the Malawi National Archives, Zomba.

23. McLoughlin, “Some Aspects,” 195.

24. Cf. the description of the Yao in the 1940s: “A boy usually hoes in his mother's or his mother's mother's garden until he marries, when he goes to live in his wife's village and hoes in her or her mother's garden,” Mitchell, “Preliminary Notes,” 8.

25. Most property is divided up among heirs in a special meeting of matrilineal relatives soon after a funeral, but fields are not discussed in this meeting and are allocated in stricter ways than other properties.

26. See Peters, “Against the Odds,” and “Bewitching Land” for cases in Zomba District; Kambewa et al., “Land and Gender Relations,” for cases in neighbouring Chiradzulu District; and Larsen and Mvula, “Security,” for Thyolo District. Kishindo's research among Yao in Balaka District found that a few men were able to obtain fields from “unallocated land” from the village headman in their own maternal villages, fields then considered to belong to the men alone (“Women, Land Rights,” 9).

27. Peters, “Bewitching Land.”

28. These results refer to my most recent survey in 2006, although sizes have changed very little over the years. Female headed households average 1.11 hectares and joint-headed 1.24 hectares. The sample averages are above those of the district since the sample was selected in 1986 to include tobacco farmers.

29. See Peters, “Rural Income and Poverty.”

30. See Peters and Kambewa, “Whose Security,” Kambewa et al., “Land and Gender Relations,” and Larsen and Mvula, “Security.”

31. In 1986 one of the few cases was K5 (then $1.25). In 2006 (K120 = $1) more examples were found ranging from K500 to K1700 for a dryland field. One field whose rent was K1200 in 2005 was increased to K2000 in 2006.

32. Figures cited by four buyers in 2006 ranged from K3000 to K19,000 per field. One buyer bought four fields, one bought three and two others bought one each.

33. See Kambewa et al., “Land and Gender Relations,” and Khaila et al. “Kinship Ties” for Chiradzulu and Phalombe; Kishindo, “Land Tenure,” and “Customary Land Tenure,” for Salima and Balaka for similar matrilineal-matrilocal groups.

34. Walker and Peters, “Maps, Metaphors.”

35. Presidential Commission of Inquiry on Land Policy Reform as cited in Holden, Kaarhus, and Lunduka, “Land Policy Reform,” 13–14.

36. Government of Malawi, “Malawi National Land Policy,” 4.7.2.

37. See Holden, Kaarhus, and Lunduka, “Land Policy Reform”; Khaila et al., “Kinship Ties Matter”; Kishindo, “Dynamics”; Peters and Kambewa, “Whose Security?”

38. Bruce and Mighot-Adholla, Searching, and see Daley and Englert, “Securing Land Rights for Women.”

39. Kishindo, “Women, Land Rights,” 20.

40. Kambewa et al, “Land and Gender Relations,” 20; cf. cases in Larsen and Mvula, “Security.”

41. Sections 2.4.2 and 4.18.2 of the Government of Malawi, “Malawi National Land Policy.”

42. Khaila et al, “Kinship Ties Matter,” 3.

43. Peters and Kambewa, “Whose Security?”

44. Kishindo, “Dynamics,” 12.

45. Holden, Kaarhus, and Lunduka, “Land Policy Reform,” 19.

46. Cf. Kishindo, “Customary Land Tenure,” 220.

47. Kishindo, “Women, Land Rights,” 12–13 cites debates in the Malawi Parliament in 1967 that not only repeated the ideas that since customary land “is not owned … there is no motivation to improve its quality” and that land “cannot be used as collateral for development loans” but also that “female ownership … reduces male motivation to make long-term investments,” a direct repetition of the prejudices of the colonial agricultural department under Kettlewell (see above).

48. Over the 20 years of research, I have seen that land attracts husbands so when one sister marries a man who is a good farmer and/or provider, she is often able to mobilize more land than otherwise from her matrilineal relatives because they will also benefit, through exchanges, from the husband's good works. Again, this obviously has more relevance for those with more land than for the undoubtedly increasing number of near-landless.

49. Claassens, “Conclusion,” 375–7; and cf. Cousins, “Introduction,” both in Claassens and Cousins, Land, Power. Also cf. Alden Wily, “Land Rights Reform.”

50. Whitehead and Tsikata, “Policy Discourses.”

51. Munthali et al., “Emergence of Female Village Headpersons” on a trend for daughters in patrilineal areas of Malawi's Northern Region to obtain land in their own right.