Nyasaland emergency of 1959

The Nyasaland emergency of 1959 was a state of emergency in the protectorate of Nyasaland (now Malawi), which was declared by its governor, Sir Robert Armitage, on 3 March 1959 and which ended on 16 June 1960. Under the emergency powers that operated during the Emergency, over 1,300 members or supporters of the Nyasaland African Congress (Congress) were detained without trial, and most of the party's leaders including its president, Dr. Hastings Banda, were imprisoned in Southern Rhodesia after being arrested on 3 March. Many other Africans were jailed for offences related to the Emergency, including rioting and criminal damage. In the week before the Emergency was declared and during its first month, over 50 Africans were killed and many more wounded by the colonial security forces, which included many European troops from Southern Rhodesia. Others were beaten by troops or armed police or had their huts destroyed and their property seized during punitive operations undertaken during the Emergency.^[1]

Nyasaland had a history of problems arising from the limited access that African peasant farmers had to agricultural land, and of opposition to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which Nyasaland had joined in 1953. Although opposition to Federation was at first limited to a relatively small group of educated Africans, the imposition of agricultural rules designed to reduce soil erosion, which took significant amounts of land out of cultivation and involved additional work by the smallholders affected, made it more widely unpopular. On his return to Nyasaland, Banda used dissatisfaction with these schemes to spread his message that Nyasaland should leave the Federation.^[2]

The stated aim of the State of Emergency was to allow the Nyasaland government to restore law and order after the increase in lawlessness following Dr Banda's return to the protectorate in July 1958. However, it is clear from government documents released in the 1990s that the British Colonial Office took the view that, if Nyasaland were to remain in the Federation, Banda and the Congress had to be neutralised and that the Federal Government under its Prime Minister Roy Welensky wished to ensure that African nationalists, in Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia as well as Nyasaland, would not interfere with his plans to achieve Dominion status for the Federation and reduce British influence in its two northern territories following a constitutional review due in 1960.^[3][4]

After a short initial period of rioting, damage to property and strikes after the Emergency was declared, most of the strikers returned to work and Nyasaland became calm but tense, apart from remote areas in the Northern Region, where resistance continued for several months. This unrest was countered by a campaign of harassment by troops and police, including hut burning, arbitrary fines and beatings. However, Armitage had no plans to resolve the political crisis in Nyasaland, other than expecting that the elimination of Banda and Congress would allow alternative politicians willing to cooperate with the colonial government to emerge. Instead, the Malawi Congress Party was formed as the successor to the banned Nyasaland African Congress in August 1959 and rapidly grew into a larger mass-movement than Congress had been.^[5] By the end of 1959, the new Colonial Secretary, Iain Macleod realised that he would have to negotiate with Banda and that such negotiations would involve ending the Emergency, releasing the remaining detainees, and Nyasaland's eventual withdrawal from the Federation.^[6]

Armitage strongly resisted Macleod's proposals, particularly the release of Banda and other former Congress leaders, and it was unlikely that he would be able to negotiate effectively with Banda on constitutional progress. Because of his strong opposition to the release of Banda and others and their return to Nyasaland if they were released, British ministers decided to nominate Armitage's successor on 1 April 1960, the same day that Banda was released. The State of Emergency ended on 16 June 1960: Armitage was seen as an obstacle to progress, and he left Nyasaland permanently in August 1960.^[7]

At the end of 1958, the Colonial Office had concluded that allowing Congress to continue as a legal political party under Banda's leadership was incompatible with the continued existence of the Federation, so it decided to eliminate Congress using emergency powers. Within a year, it reached a similar conclusion regarding the Malawi Congress Party and Federation, but in view of the strength of African opposition, it decided that Federation could only be imposed on Nyasaland through the use of significant force for an indefinite period, something that the British government was not prepared to do.^[8]