Abrahams Commission

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. 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.