The White Horse Press Full citation: Mulwafu, Wapulumuka Oliver. Conservation Song: A History of Peasant-State Relations and the Environment in Malawi, 1860– 2000. Cambridge: The White Horse Press, 2010. http://www.environmentandsociety.org/node/3499. Rights: All rights reserved. © The White Horse Press 2010. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism or review, no part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, including photocopying or recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission from the publishers. For further information please see http://www.whpress.co.uk. i Conservation Song Wapulumuka Oliver Mulwafu Conservation Song A History of Peasant–State Relations and the Environment in Malawi, 1860–2000 The White Horse Press Copyright © Wapulumuka Oliver Mulwafu First published 2011 by The White Horse Press, 10 High Street, Knapwell, Cambridge, CB23 4NR, UK Set in 10 point Adobe Garamond Pro Printed by Lightning Source All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism or review, no part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, including photocopy- ing or recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-874267-63-8 To my mother and my late father Contents 1. Introduction. 1 2. Pre-Colonial Environment and Production Systems, 1860s–1900 . 18 3. Christian and Colonial Attitudes Towards the Environment. 40 4. Scientific Networking, Ideology and the Rise of Conservation Discourse in Colonial Malawi. 59 5. The Natural Resources Board and the Soil Conservation Campaign in Colonial Malawi, 1946–1964 . 81 6. Colonial Intervention into African Trust Lands, 1939–1964 . 106 7. State Intervention into Private Estate Production in the Shire Highlands . 118 8. Conservation and Politics, 1952–1964. 143 9. The Religious Dimension to the Campaign against Soil Erosion in Colonial Malawi. 166 10. Ecological Change, Gender Relations and Peasant Resistance in Zomba District. 187 11. Post-colonial Environmental Discourses, 1964–2000. 215 12. Conclusion. 235 Bibliography. 239 Index. 261 viii List of Illustrations and Tables Figure 1.1. Photo showing soil conservation works in Thyolo district. 5 Figure 1.2. Map of Malawi.. 11 Figure 4.1. Relationship between key natural resources linked by soil (erosion). 63 Table 4.1. Nyasaland Colonial Staff Trained at the IFI. 73 Table 4.2. Key Staff of the IFI . 75 Figure 5.1. Structure of the Natural Resources Board. 86 Figure 5.2. Chiefs attending a briefing meeting on a land improvement scheme as part of the soil conservation programme. In the back- ground, there is an example of properly managed land. 90 Figure 5.3. Training of agricultural field staff at Colby in 1956. 99 Figure 5.4. Controlling gully erosion with stone check dams, 1953 . 101 Figure 5.5. Strip rotation on a village land improvement scheme in Cen- tral Province, 1956. 101 Table 5.1. Impact of the Bunding Campaign, 1951–1955. 103 Table 6.1. Status of Village Forest Areas in 1931 . 111 Figure 6.1. Vingonyeka Traditional Method of Soil Conservation . 114 Figure 6.3. Garden showing how Vingonyeka technique is used. 115 Figure 6.5. Gully erosion in Misuku hills. 115 Figure 6.2. An improved Vingonyeka traditional method of soil conservation. 115 ix Figure 6.4. Another garden showing Vingonyeka technique in the making. 115 Figure 7.1. Mulanje tea experimental station during opening ceremony in 1954. 138 Figure 8.1. Level used for making ridges. 149 Figure 8.2. Example of a well managed garden. 150 Figure 10.1. Map of Zomba district. 188 Table 10.1. Relationship between Napolo and Geomorphological Changes . 194 Figure 10.2. Peasants filling in one of the eroded gullies at Domasi in the early 1950s. 199 Figure 10.3. Student accommodation and farm at the Jeanes training school, Domasi, 1936. Note the soil conservation layout of the fields with ridge and furrow cultivation along the contour.. 199 Table 11.1. Land Use and Vegetation. 225 Figure 11.1. Cultivation extending on the fringes of a forest reserve in the Misuku Hills. 228 Acknowledgements This book is a product of many years of research into environmental changes and their relationships with humans under different institutional regimes in Malawi’s history. I began my research in 1996, initially as part of doctoral studies supported by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. Since then I have received various kinds of support that have allowed me to conduct additional research on a number of themes. I wish to single out the USAID-funded BASIS collaborative research project into promoting equitable access to land and water resources in southern Africa. In addition, WaterNet, a regional network for capacity building in integrated water resources management in southern Africa, is hereby acknowledged for the opportunity to interact and share ideas at its annual symposia. All the studies and contacts enriched immensely my knowledge and understanding of environmental issues in the region and beyond. I am grateful to my doctoral supervisor, Allen Isaacman, and all the profes- sors I worked with at the University of Minnesota, especially Stuart Schwartz, Jean Allman and the late Susan Geiger. My cohorts in the MacArthur Interdisciplinary Programme for the Study of Peace and Justice (now known as the Programme for the Study of Global Change) deserve commendation for cultivating a friendship that has endured to this day. In particular, I wish to thank Marissa Moorman, Derek Peterson, Guy Thompson, Jacob Tropp and the late Ana Margarita Gomez, who shared a lot as we braved the chilly winters of the land of a thousand lakes. Phil and Sandie Johnson of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, have for years remained very good family friends. I owe a debt to numerous people and institutions – too many to men- tion each by name – that have worked with me over the years. Let it be known that your advice gave me the necessary intellectual stimulus to move on. I was, however, encouraged to pursue the book project because of fruitful discussions with and constant support from Bill Adams, Peter Alegi, William Beinart, Lewis Dzimbiri, Harri Englund, Laura Fair, James Fairhead, Anne Ferguson, Kingsley Jika, Linley Karltun-Chiwona, Peter Limb, Elias Mandala, Wellington Masamba, John McCracken, Alister Munthali, Pauline Peters, Derek Peterson, Prof. Kings Phiri, Megan Vaughan, Liz Watson and Ruth Watson. All my colleagues in the History Department at Chancellor College of the University of Malawi are grate- fully acknowledged for sharing the heavy teaching responsibilities when I had to take some time off to work on my own research. I also wish to thank John Wilson for kindly sharing some family pictures which I have used in this book. xii One of the greatest challenges of teaching in Malawi, and indeed in most African countries, is the disproportionate amount of pressure placed on the few well qualified scholars. Faculty members are often burdened with administrative responsibilities among which time for sustained professional development becomes a scarce commodity. The sabbatical leave I spent in Michigan and Cambridge proved to be the most fruitful part of my professional development. Getting away after ten years of continuous teaching and administrative service gave me an opportunity to concentrate on my research and writing. In the USA, I am greatly indebted to the History Department and the African Studies Centre at Michigan State University in East Lansing for the hospitality and institutional support. I would probably not have completed this book as quickly as I have done had it not been for the time and resources generously provided by the Centre of African Studies and Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge. The Visiting Research Fellowship under the Cambridge/Africa Collaborative Research Programme facilitated an exchange of ideas at workshops and seminars on the theme of Public Understanding of Science in Africa. It was great to interact with my colleagues in the programme – Verki Fanso, Muza Gondwe, Joseph Kariuki and Olufunke Adeboye and Dorian Addison, who deserve special thanks for the good company during the unusually cold and snowy winter. Research for this book was conducted in many places and various people assisted me in getting the required data. At the Malawi National Archives in Zomba, the staff have always been friendly and ready to assist. I acknowledge in particular the dedication of Joel Thaulo and James Mindozo. I also thank all staff at the Society of Malawi in Blantyre, at the Malawiana Collection, Chancellor College library and at the documentation centres of all government departments I visited in the country. I am equally grateful to staff at the National Archives of the UK at Kew as well as to the staff at Rhodes House at Oxford University for the additional sources I consulted. A significant part of my study benefited from data collected through interviews with informants in villages throughout Malawi. I am deeply grateful to those rural men and women who unconditionally spent hours away from their busy schedules recounting events either as they themselves experienced them or as they were passed down by their parents. Two chapters in this book have come from articles previously published in journals. I therefore wish to thank Taylor and Francis for permission to publish chapter seven, which is a modified version of the paper that came out in theJournal of Southern African Studies 28/1 (2002): 25–43 (http://www.informaworld.com); and Brill for chapter three, which initially came out in the Journal of Religion in Africa 34/3 (2004): 298–319 (www.brill.nl).