Uden landreformer mister Malawis småbønder ikke kun deres jord. De risikerer også at komme i konflikt med loven.
BANGULA, 26 April 2012 (IRIN) Dorothy Dyton, her husband and seven children used to make a living farming just over a hectare near the town of Bangula in southern Malawi’s Chikhwawa District.
Like most smallholder farmers in Malawi, they did not have a title deed for the land Dyton was born on, and in 2009 she and about 2,000 other subsistence farmers from the area were informed by their local chief that the land had been sold and they could no longer cultivate there.
Dyton and her neighbours did not immediately accept the devastating change in their circumstances.
Removed once
They had already been removed once from the land during former President Hastings Banda’s regime in the 1970s and had not been allowed to return until Banda’s regime ended in 1994 and the cattle ranch established there by his political ally, John Tembo, had ceased to function.
After receiving the go-ahead from the district commissioner, they continued to farm the land for another season.
Met by police
But in 2010, as they prepared to plant, they were met by a police van and the chief, Fennwick Mandala, who warned them not to come back.
The next day, the farmers again set out for their fields, but this time they were met by tear gas and rubber bullets and that night six of them were arrested and charged with trespassing.
Since that time, said Dyton, “life has been very hard on us.”
Læs hele artiklen http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95363/MALAWI-Without-land-reform-small-farmers-become-trespassers
