Hypocrisy of the African Public Finance Management Framework

CHAPTER 1

Colonial State

Before Nyasaland was declared a protectorate, Europeans had already settled there. They had established plantations and industries. They had even alienated native lands. This alienation of native lands has been a source of considerable challenge to the administration of the then Nyasaland, the postindependence Malawi, and now the administration of Malawi as a democratic state. Recently, a group calling itself the United States of Thyolo and Mulanje (MUST) entered one such settler plantation to share land among themselves. They were arrested, and some were convicted of trespass.¹

Upon establishing the Nyasaland Protectorate, the colonial government took steps to regularize what it could of the transactions the settlers ...