Nyasaland was banned in 1958 was re-formed as the Malawi Congress Party in 1959. After the emergency, a commission headed by Lord Devlin exposed the failings of the Nyasaland administration. The Commission found that the declaration of a State of Emergency was necessary to restore order and prevent a descent into anarchy, but it criticised instances of the illegal use of force by the police and troops, including burning houses, destroying property and beatings. It rejected the existence of any "murder plot", but noted: The report concluded that the Nyasaland administration had lost the support of Nyasaland's African people, noting their
Nyasaland Emergency 1959 to eleven deaths and seventy-two people injured. The Abrahams Commission (also known the 1946 Land Commission) was appointed by the Nyasaland government in 1946 to inquire into land issues in Nyasaland following riots and disturbances by tenants on European-owned estates in Blantyre districts in 1943 and 1945. Abrahams proposed that the Nyasaland government should purchase all unused or under-used freehold land on the estates, which would become Crown land allocated to African smallholders as Native Trust Land. Africans on the estates were to be offered the choice of remaining there as workers or tenants, or of moving to Crown land.