Nyasaland Emergency 1959 Nyasaland Emergency 1959 The Nyasaland Emergency 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
Nyasaland of former Crown Lands were sold as freehold land or leased, and almost 400,000 acres more originally in Certificates of Claim were sold or leased in holdings whose average size was around 1,000 acres, many representing smaller farms of Europeans coming to Nyasaland after the First World War to grow tobacco. As late as 1920, a Land Commission set up by the Nyasaland authorities proposed further land alienation to promote the development of small to medium size European plantations from the 700,000 acres of Crown Land which it said were available after the present and future needs of the African