Part 18 (1/2)

In 1900, the governor, Sir Alfred Sharpe, increased the hut tax to 12 s.h.i.+llings in response to appeals from settler farmers who argued that the fall in coffee production that year was attributed to labor shortages and that an upward reevaluation of the tax would force Africans to seek wage labor on European plantations. Not keen to work under the harsh conditions in the s.h.i.+re Highlands estates, and afraid of imprisonment if they did not pay the tax, many Africans opted to go into labor migration south of the Zambezi (see MIGRANT LABOR; SOUTH AFRICA). In 1911, Governor William Manning announced the reduction of the African rate, subject to a taxpayer selling prescribed cash crops to European buyers. The generally preferred crops were cotton (56 pounds), rice (100 pounds), and tobacco (36 pounds). Other tax reviews, all containing rebate provisos, would follow. In 1921, a nonrebate flat rate of six s.h.i.+llings was adopted, and under the 1928 Income Tax Ordinance, non-African men were to pay a poll tax at the rate of 2 per adult annually. The income system was revised at regular intervals.

In postcolonial Malawi, the basic criterion for taxability is that the work be done, or services be rendered, within Malawi. The exceptions to this include salaries from foreign governments or international organizations. There are three types of tax: minimum, graduated, and income tax. The first is paid by all males 18 years or older, regardless of their employment status. Elderly disabled persons are exempt from taxation. Unless employed, women do not pay tax. The graduated tax is collected by employers from their employees who earn less than an annual amount of money specified by Parliament. Most full-time employees are on pay as you earn income tax, which may be collected weekly or monthly. Taxation on income may take into account marital status, insurance premiums, and educational deductions. The rate of taxation for the first MK1,200 is 3 percent, and depending on the income, the rate increases to 45 percent. Corporate tax also varies: Malawi-based companies pay taxes at a fixed rate (38 percent) of chargeable income, and those incorporated externally pay 5 percent additional tax. The government has an array of tax incentives that it uses to encourage local and foreign firms to operate in Malawi. Goods determined to be luxury are subjected to a surtax of 30 to 35 percent; such items include cosmetics and alcohol.

The Act of Parliament of 1998 replaced the Income Tax Department, which for a long time had been responsible for all matters concerning taxation, with the Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA), one of the International Monetary Fundinspired fiscal discipline enhancement measures meant to improve the collection of tax revenue. The MRA became fully operational in 2000, and one of the many measures that it took toward maximizing the efficiency of revenue collection was improving the surveillance in areas where the border trade is particularly active. This meant building more collection points along Malawi borders and training personnel to manage them. By 2010, it had offices in all three regional centers of Mzuzu, Lilongwe, and Blantyre, and 32 in various parts of the country, especially along the Malawi borders.

In the 200910 period, the tax revenue was 16.5 percent of the gross domestic product. The majority of employees pay tax through a pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) system. The corporate and upper level tax rates are 30 percent, and among other taxes are the inheritance income and the value added tax (VAT). In 2009, the Ministry of Finance announced that it lost the equivalent of US$125 million in tax allowances, a significant part of this expected to be generated from multinational companies, all of which are given generous tax incentives to establish their presence in Malawi.

TEA. Malawi is Africa's second largest tea producer, and tea is its second major export crop after tobacco. It is also the most popular drink in the country, consumed in the majority of households, and the first food item that a host offers a visitor within a few minutes of arrival. Produced mainly in Mulanje and Thyolo, the first seedlings were brought into the country in 1878 by Jonathan Duncan, a gardener at the Blantyre Mission but, unlike coffee seedlings, they died. The real beginning of the tea industry in Malawi dates from 1891 when Henry Brown, manager of the recently opened Lauderdale Estate at the southern foot of Mulanje Mountain, planted the first tea bushes imported from Ceylon (Sri Lanka), where he had worked prior to going to the s.h.i.+re Highlands. From Lauderdale Estate, tea spread to other European plantations in the area, and by the early 1900s, it had replaced coffee as the colony's leading cash earner. Tea planting attracted individual European farmers as well as some of the Malawi-based companies, such as British & East Africa Ltd. and the British Central Africa Company, and it also enticed the larger British-based companies with major tea interests in Asia, among them Brooke Bond and J. Lyons & Company. This highly labor-intensive industry employed thousands of people, including children, at minimum wages; thousands of Lomwe immigrants from Mozambique also made the tea plantations in s.h.i.+re Highlands viable, partly explaining why the area is identified with them today.

Tea's preeminence as a cash crop was greatly reduced in the interwar period, especially in the period 192732, primarily because of successive bad rainy seasons and poor prices on the international markets. The tea restrictions that followed the International Tea Agreement of 1933 as well as World War II further affected the stability of tea production so that, by 1952, all individual planters in Malawi had been replaced by companies. The restrictions were lifted at the end of the 1940s, and by the end of the 1950s, the Malawi tea industry was healthier than it had been for a long time. In 1957, tea production commenced in Nkhata Bay district at the Chombe Tea Estates, across from the Vizara rubber plantation, and would be in operation until the early 1990s when it was abandoned. After independence, the Malawi government and the Commonwealth Development Corporation promoted smallholder production of tea, particularly in the ThyoloMulanje region, and today this sector contributes 10 percent of the crop, most of which is exported to the London tea market. Smaller quant.i.ties are s.h.i.+pped to South Africa, Pakistan, the United States, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Mozambique. The industry has now been modernized, with new processing machines, bed dryers, and fermenting systems. In 2008, Malawi exported US$19.1 million worth of tea, an increase of 2 percent on earnings from the previous year. It remains the second to tobacco as Malawi's main export. See also AGRICULTURE; TRADE.

TEMBO, JOHN ZENAS UNGAPAKE (1932 ). Teacher, first Malawian minister of finance, first local governor of the Reserve Bank of Malawi and close advisor of President Hastings Banda, John Tembo, son of Zenas Tembo, a Dutch Reformed Church minister, was born in Dedza district in September 1932. He completed his primary school education at Mlanda Mission in 1949 and, four years later, he obtained his Cambridge School Certificate at Blantyre Secondary School. After working for the government Auditor's Department, Tembo received a Nyasaland government scholars.h.i.+p to study at Pius College, now the National University of Lesotho, graduating with a BA in 1958. Early in 1959, he proceeded to the University of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, now the University of Zimbabwe, where in November of that year, he was awarded a certificate in education.

On his return home, Tembo taught at Kongwe Secondary School and, at the same time, he played an active role in the Malawi Congress Party (MCP). In 1961, he was elected to the Legislative Council (LEGCO) as a member for Dedza, and in the following year was appointed parliamentary secretary in the Ministry of Finance, replacing Dunduzu Chisiza who had died in a car accident. Tembo was reelected to Parliament in 1964, and at independence was appointed minister of finance, the position previously held by Henry Phillips, and for a brief time also added the portfolios of ministries of Trade and Industry and Development and Planning. In 1969, he relinquished the Ministry of Finance position, moving to Trade and Industry, and in that capacity, was responsible for the Africanization of Asian business in rural areas (see ASIANS). In 1971, he became the first Malawian governor of the Reserve Bank of Malawi, but he retained his growing influence as a member of the Central Executive Committee of the MCP. In the early 1980s, President Hastings Banda moved Tembo from the Reserve Bank, and in 1986, he became treasurer general of the MCP, a post long held by Sydney Somanje, who had pa.s.sed away that year.

Although throughout the 1980s Tembo would not hold an official government position, he became a close advisor of President Banda, acting as an unofficial prime minister, and increasingly became one of the most powerful and feared men in Malawi. Among the offices he held were chairman of Press Holdings Ltd., Commercial Bank of Malawi, Air Malawi, University of Malawi Council, and Limbe Leaf Ltd. From 1987, he headed the Malawi delegation to the Joint Security Commission with Mozambique and sat on the National Economic Commission created in the late 1980s to, among other functions, deliberate on economic projects. These offices, and numerous others, placed him in a dominant position in Malawi's political and economic affairs. In the period leading to political reform, Tembo became minister of state in the president's office, a particularly influential appointment because its duties included national security matters. He campaigned vigorously against multiparty politics, and in 1994, was elected to the National a.s.sembly as MCP member for Dedza, this time sitting on the opposition benches.

Following the Mtegha Commission of 1994, the government charged Tembo, Hastings Banda, and Cecilia Kadzamira in 1995 with the death of the four politicians murdered in Mwanza district in 1983. They were acquitted later that year (see MWANZA ACCIDENT AND TRIALS). Following Banda's death in 1997, Tembo was elected vice president of the MCP, the presidency going to Gwanda Chakuamba. In June 1999, he returned to Parliament and has remained active in national politics. In the 2004 presidential elections, he stood as the MCP candidate, but he only recieved 27 percent of the vote mainly from his central region stronghold, losing to Bingu wa m.u.t.h.arika. However, he won his Dedza const.i.tuency seat and returned to the National a.s.sembly as leader of the opposition.

In 2009, he retained his parliamentary seat but, with 30.7 percent of the total votes, he came second in the presidential elections in which he stood as the MCP's candidate. He contested the results but later accepted them after leaders of the various political parties, including his own, persuaded him to do so. However, he refused to retire from politics as advised and staved off potential challenges for the leaders.h.i.+p of the MCP. When the National a.s.sembly met, it voted for a new leader of the opposition, a rather unusual step considering that Tembo's party had the largest number of members in the house after Bingu wa m.u.t.h.arika's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). He challenged the decision in court, which ruled in his favor. In September 2010, the government announced that it would contest the ruling of the appeals court, and although it was reported in January 2011 that Tembo would not stand as his party's presidential candidate in 2014, he was still very active in national politics in September 2011, and indications were that he was not about relinquish the leaders.h.i.+p of the MCP soon.

TEMBO, MAWELERA (?1937). Mawelera and his elder brother, Makara, sons of Kalengo Tembo, a highly regarded Senga-Ngoni traditional doctor, were among the first Christian converts at Njuyu mission station. They were baptized in 1890, having been pupils at the school that had opened there in December 1886; Mawelera would later become one of its teachers. When Rev. Dr. George Steele died in 1895 Mawelera took charge of Njuyu and, in 1900, was bestowed the honor of being one of the four Africans to be appointed to the first Kirk Ngoni session. For many years, he served as clerk of Ekwendeni Kirk sessions and, from 1923 to 1924, he was president of the Mombera Native a.s.sociation. An excellent singer, Tembo is also regarded as the most productive composer of hymns, the majority of which were in ciNgoni. Among his most famous hymns, ”Dumisani u'Yehova lin'zinceku zake” (Oh praise the king of heaven all ye who are his people) has become a cla.s.sic. His career as a teacher and evangelist continued until he retired in 1934.

TENGANI. Area and t.i.tle of a chief whose ancestors were part of the southward expansion of the Maravi in the 16th century. Of the Phiri matriclan, and a junior to Lundu, Tengani would settle in the vicinity of modern Nsanje boma and have overall supervision of the Khulubvi shrine, home of M'bona. This position, in addition to the key location on the s.h.i.+re River, ensured that the Tenganis would play a significant role in the political, cultural, and social history of the Lower s.h.i.+re Valley. European travelers, traders, and missionaries entering the Lake Malawi area via the s.h.i.+re River had to deal with the Tengani chiefs who, like other rulers of the s.h.i.+re Valley, became entangled in economic and political rivalry between the British and the Portuguese at the end of the 19th century.

TENGANI, CHIEF MOLIN (?1967). One of the most controversial chiefs in late colonial Malawi, Molin Tengani belonged to the long line of the Tengani dynasty of the Mang'anja of the Lower s.h.i.+re Valley. Tengani was converted to Christianity in 1902 and, although he worked for the railways for a time, he became a teacher and taught at several mission schools, including the main one at Chididi, where he remained until 1936 when he was installed as Chief Tengani after the death of his uncle, Thenzwa, two years earlier. Against tradition, Molin Tengani refused to observe the obligations of his office to the Khulubvi shrine, including repairs to it. Molin also acquiesced with Christians who refused to undertake their usual Mang'anja duties to the shrine; furthermore, shrine priests who had hitherto avoided paying government tax were now forced to do so. There was even talk that M'Bona had left the area in response to the new chief's att.i.tude toward the shrine, and many people in the area reacted by refusing to observe new agricultural rules, which Molin Tengani tried to enforce on behalf of the government. Rebuilt by its most ardent supporters, the shrine and M'Bona also became the center of opposition to the establishment of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which was a.s.sociated with the new agricultural regulations. This was not helped by the fact that Molin Tengani supported the move toward the Federation. Tengani retired in 1963 and died four years later. This marked the end of a feud that has been interpreted by some as compet.i.tion between traditional religion and Christianity.

TENGATENGA, JAMES (1958 ). Anglican bishop of southern Malawi and one of the influential clergymen in Malawi, Tengatenga was born in Kwekwe, Zimbabwe, on 7 April 1958, completed secondary school education there, and in 1979 enrolled at the Zomba Theological College. After graduating in 1982, he went to the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Austin, Texas, and in 1985 he received a master of divinity degree. Upon his return to Malawi, he was ordained as deacon and, among other duties, served as parish priest, as leader in the youth ministry, and as a diocesan training chaplain based at St. Thomas's Church in the diocese of Lake Malawi. In 1989, he went to the Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham, England, where he trained as a youth and community worker, and in the early 1990s he joined the Zomba Theological College as a tutor. While there he also studied for a PhD, and the University of Malawi awarded him the degree in the mid-1990s. He became a lecturer at Chancellor College and, in 1998, he was consecrated as bishop of southern Malawi.

He is also involved in many other organizations in Malawi and internationally. He was chairman of the Malawi Council of Churches and is a member of the National AIDS Commission. He is on the executive committee of the Malawi Partners.h.i.+p Forum, a consultative body that coordinates AIDS-related matters between the Malawi government and all parties involved in the struggle against HIV/AIDS. Bishop Tengatenga is also a member of the Pan African Civic Educators Work. In 2009, he was elected as chair of the Anglican Consultative Council, one of the important major London-based organs of the Anglican church. He also sits on the International Standing Commission on Ec.u.menical Relations and on the International Board of the Sharing of Ministries Abroad.

TENNENT, A. J. One of the influential European planters in colonial Malawi, Tennent was managing director of the J. Tennent & Company Ltd., a company with many interests, including the Magunda and Luchenza Estates in Thyolo district. Located in an area in which Africans faced the problem of land shortage, there was always an underlying tension between the planters, on the one hand, and their African neighbors and workers, on the other. In August 1953, the Magunda Estate was the center of a clash between African workers and Tennent's sons, Basil and Desmond. On 18 August, the brothers accused some of their workers of theft, and in the fracas that followed, one of the laborers was injured. Rumors spread to the effect that an African had been killed by a planter, and this led to a riot, which the police had difficulty controlling. Headman Ngamwane, the traditional ruler of the area, was arrested and spent a brief time in the Blantyre prison. Other riots, not directly connected with that at Luchenza, followed in Thyolo, Mulanje, and elsewhere in the southern province. See also GUDU, WILFRID; THANGATA.

THANGATA. In chiChewa/ciMang'anja, the term thangata means help, and in traditional society, it also referred to a system of services exchanged between chiefs and their dependents. In colonial Malawi, it referred to labor tenancy practiced mostly on European plantations in the s.h.i.+re Highlands. In this area, African squatters living on a European estate were not required to pay rent as in most tenant arrangements, but rather were compelled to work a prescribed amount of time for the European landlord. The period of time required by the Europeans frequently increased, and typically tenants worked at least one month as a ”rent” and another month for hut taxes; they were not permitted the privilege of working elsewhere. Thangata soon was described by African laborers as work that was done without real benefit. Instead, the benefits went to the landlord and to an administration, which rarely provided the African with any services in exchange for his taxes. Thangata was a major factor in the Chilembwe uprising.

When two-thirds of Malawi's male population became involved in World War I, either voluntarily or compulsory, the thangata system was again applied. The men were used as soldiers (askaris) and carriers (tenga tenga). They were frequently mistreated and their experiences generally produced a resentment against colonialism expressed in the postwar era in the rise in popularity of dance and Nyau societies, in native a.s.sociations, and in Islam.

Although Governor Geoffrey Colby began to dismantle thangata in the early 1950s, notable aspects of it continued to be practiced until the first Malawi Congress Party (MCP) government pa.s.sed legislation abolis.h.i.+ng all its vestiges.

THEUNISSEN, JEAN-BAPTIST HUBERT, BISHOP (19051979). This bishop of the archdiocese of Blantyre from 1952 to 1968, was born in the Netherlands where he was ordained in 1929 as a priest in the order of Missionaries of the Company of Mary (the Montforts), and became Dutch Provincial for the Montforts. In 1949, he was appointed vicar apostolic of Blantyre, Nyasaland, and a year later, he was consecrated as bishop of Blantyre and the s.h.i.+re vicariate. Theunissen had experience in working in Africa, having served 12 years as a missionary in Mozambique prior to his Dutch posting. When Pope John XXIII instructed all vicariates in the colony to become dioceses, Blantyre was raised to an archdiocese and Theunissen became archbishop in 1959 and, consequently, leader of the Catholic hierarchy in Nyasaland.

In October 1960, the archbishop became the subject of a long lead page article in the Malawi News attacking him on the suspicion that he was behind the newly formed political organization, the Christian Democratic Party, led by Chester Katsonga, a Catholic. Signed by Aleke Banda, the newspaper's editor, the article gave the impression that the new party was aimed at forestalling the nationalist ambitions of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP). Although the archbishop and the Catholic Church strongly denied the accusation, the relations between Theunissen and the new MCP-led government remained lukewarm. He retired in 1967 and was succeeded by Bishop James Chiona.

THOLE, PETER ZIMEMA (?1950). From the core Zansi, of the M'mbelwa Ngoni hierarchy, and a former student of Rev. Walter Angus Elmslie, Peter Thole entered the theological course at the Overtoun Inst.i.tution in 1920, was ordained five years later, and in 1927 was called to Emchisweni Congregation in central Mzimba district. In 1926, Thole was a member of the Livingstonia delegation to the Blantyre synod. Although considered a moderate in the numerous disagreements between the African and the European clergy, Thole hosted at his Elangeni home the historic meeting on 7 January 1920, which led to the formation of the Mombera Native a.s.sociation. Well over six feet tall, Thole was, besides Mawelera Tembo, the most prolific and exciting composer of hymns in the Livingstonia synod, and almost all of his hymns were included in the church hymnal. Thole's father and grandfather had been in the Zw.a.n.gendaba's original migration group, and many of his compositions were in Zulu and were incorporated into the Ngoni hymnbook Izingoma zo Bukristu, which also benefited from the Zulu hymnbook Amagama Okuhlabela, published in Natal.

THONDEZA. See GUDU, WILFRID.

THONDWE. Located eight miles from Zomba on the ZombaBlantyre road, Thondwe is in the center of a tobacco-growing area and throughout the colonial period was a.s.sociated with large European plantations, such as that belonging to Roy W. Wallace. This was also an area into which the Lomwe migrated, finding jobs on tobacco estates, where for a long time forms of thangata were practiced. Before the Africanization of Asian business, Thondwe had a thriving small population of Indian retail traders. Thondwe is also famous for its Sat.u.r.day market, which attracts sellers and buyers from beyond the confines of the area. Declared a rural growth area, Thondwe has a modern health clinic, a post office, a police station, a school, and an Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (ADMARC) market. It also is a main center for the Catholic Church and the Church of Christ.

THORNE, FRANK OSWALD. Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) bishop of Nyasaland from 1936 to 1960, and member of the Legislative Council (LEGCO) in the 1940s, Frank Thorne was educated at Christ College, Oxford, and at St. Boniface College, Warminster. Ordained in 1922, he joined mission work three years later and was posted to St. Cyprian's Theological College, Tunduru, in the Masasi diocese, southern Tanganyika. In 1936, he replaced Gerald Douglas as bishop of Nyasaland. Thorne was nominated to LEGCO where often he spoke on African causes.

THORNEYCROFT, GEOFREY (?1967). Founder of the Chimpeni Estate just south of Zomba airport, Thorneycroft was born in England and arrived in Nyasaland in 1912 after working in Guyana and the Senna Sugar Estate in Mozambique. In World War I, he saw service in Karonga and Tanganyika, and after losing a leg, was sent to England for recovery. Thorneycroft returned to Nyasaland in 1919 to grow tobacco at the Chimpeni Estate, one of the most successful agricultural concerns in Malawi. He died in September 1967, and his son, and later his grandson, continued to manage Chimpeni.

THYOLO. Name of the district and boma located between Blantyre and Mulanje district, and particularly famous as a major tea-producing area in Malawi. Thyolo is also identified with tung production from the 1930s to the 1960s. An important center of European agricultural activity, Thyolo was also a major region of Lomwe settlement at the beginning of the 20th century, and because of this, land has always been a sensitive matter in the district. Thangata was widely practiced here in its purest form, and tension between Africans and Europeans often led to open conflict (see GUDU, WILFRID; TENNENT, A. J.). In 1966, the Malawi government started a smallholder tea program in Thyolo, based on the Kenya model, and aimed at involving Africans in tea production. Over 1,000 acres are now cultivated by smallholders. To ensure ease of communication between this rich agricultural region and BlantyreLimbe, the road between the two areas has been widened and greatly improved. A major banana growing district, Thyolo is also the home of the Malamulo Mission, the main center of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Malawi. See also AGRICULTURE.

TIMKE, W. H. Friend of early nationalists in Malawi, Timke was born in South Africa, went to Malawi after World War I, and until 1929 was manager of the European planters agricultural cooperative society in Thyolo. After the cooperative collapsed, he farmed tobacco and built stores in Thyolo, which he rented to Indian retail traders. He also became active in the European settler organization, the Convention of a.s.sociations, and for two years sat on the Legislative Council (LEGCO). As World War II progressed, Timke became close to politically minded Africans, such as James Sangala, and encouraged them to better organize themselves so as to realize their nationalist ambitions. Timke advised on some of the best means of making African opinion known to government officials and to European settlers. He encouraged Sangala to contact Arthur Creech-Jones, then the British Labour Party's shadow colonial secretary, in the hopes that questions on the colonial situation in Malawi would be raised in Parliament. Timke himself also contacted Creech Jones. Throughout 1944, he urged Sangala and his a.s.sociates, such as Charles Matinga, to demand African representation on all important government bodies, including the LEGCO, and to form one organization to represent African opinion. Timke perished in the MV Viphya, which sank off the Chiweta coast in 1946.

TOBACCO. The leading export crop of Malawi for part of the colonial era, and throughout the postcolonial period, commercial tobacco was first grown in the country in 1889 at the Buchanan Brothers estate in Zomba. It was slowly taken up by other planters in the s.h.i.+re Highlands, notably by planters such as R. S. Hynde, the African Lakes Company (ALC), Eugene Sharrer, Ignaco Conforzi, Roy W. Wallace, and A. Francis Barron. Although they grew their own tobacco, they also bought it from African producers. The real expansion of tobacco production took place in the interwar period when mainly Conforzi, Wallace, and Barron established major estates in central Malawi, mostly in Lilongwe, Mchinji, Dowa, and Kasungu. Here substantial quant.i.ties of tobacco were produced by tenant growers who were trained, loaned seeds, and given other a.s.sistance by European estate owners, on the condition that their tobacco would be sold to them. By the 1950s, tobacco was overtaking tea as an export product.

Burley and flue-cured Virginia tobacco varieties are grown on estates, whereas oriental (Turkish) fire-cured and sun/air-cured varieties are grown by smallholders; Malawi is second only to the United States in the production of dark-fired tobacco. Burley is now Malawi's most important tobacco crop, as there is 50 percent more of it produced than flue-cured tobacco. In the 1970s, production expanded as small-scale farmers increased their holdings and as market conditions favored Malawi. A major development that decade was the expansion of tobacco growing to the northern region of Malawi, especially Rumphi, Mzimba, and to a minor extent, Chitipa.

Marketing of tobacco is done through the auction system introduced in 1946, and there are auction floors in Lilongwe, Limbe, and Mzuzu. Farmers, individual marketing agents who buy leaf from farmers, or larger agencies such as the Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (ADMARC) and Press Farming present their tobacco at auction floors where traders from within Malawi and from abroad bid for the tobacco. The auction floors at Lilongwe and Mzuzu process all burley, flue, and sun-cured tobacco from the northern and central region, and Limbe handles the southern region. Until 1987, tobacco smallholders were not permitted to sell on the world market because ADMARC had the monopoly of the rural Malawi produce.

Between 1961 and 1963, the average level of tobacco production annually was 15,000 tons but, by the early 1970s, it was 29,000 tons, an increase about 90 percent. Production continued to increase to more than 110 tons in the 1990s, and, in 2000, it was 160,000 tons, and of this 142,000 tons was burley tobacco. By the mid-2000s, most of it was produced by more than 30,000 smallholder growers, making Malawi second to Brazil as the largest producer of burley-leaf tobacco in the world. Although in the late 2000s tobacco remained as the leading foreign exchange earner, and despite the fact that production continued to increase, the tobacco industry contended with many problems: the devaluation of the kwacha, which rendered the cost of fertilizers and agricultural equipment particularly high; the fluctuation in the prices offered to tobacco growers; increased compet.i.tion from countries such as Uganda, Zambia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and Brazil; and the campaign against smoking, mostly in the Western nations. In 2010, US$410 million worth of tobacco was exported, down from US$434 million in 2009. See also TOBACCO a.s.sOCIATION OF MALAWI; TOBACCO CONTROL COMMISSION; TRADE.

TOBACCO a.s.sOCIATION OF MALAWI (TAMA). Formed in 1929, this organization oversees the tobacco industry in Malawi and is affiliated to international tobacco bodies. It seeks to protect and speak for the tobacco industry. In recent years, TAMA has strongly criticized the tenant farmer system, which is commonly practiced by many growers, especially on the estates that grow burley tobacco. TAMA blamed the newer African owners for bad management and at one time threatened to punish those malpractices registered with its office: overcharging for food, late payments, and physical threats. The facilities and conditions on the burley estates tend to be poor, with school enrollment levels well below average.

TOBACCO CONTROL COMMISSION. Created in 1938, this is the regulatory body of the tobacco industry in Malawi.

TONGA. Inhabitants of central and southern Nkhata Bay district and northern Nkhotakota, the Tonga speak ciTonga, which is an independent language, having affinities with chiChewa to the south and ciTumbuka to the north. Mostly patrilocal, descent is generally matrilineal, especially among those linked with traditional rulers such as Kanyenda, Kabuduli, and Kapunda Banda who have strong ChewaMaravi connections. Other rulers, including the Mankhambira, are balowoka, meaning that they originally came from across Lake Malawi and are generally patrilineal. Sections of the Tonga were conquered by the M'mbelwa Ngoni but, in the 1870s, they successfully rebelled and repelled attempts to resubjugate them. Famous as fishermen, the Tonga hosted Dr. David Livingstone when he visited their home in 1859, and when the Livingstonia Mission set up a base at Bandawe in 1882, they would be the main beneficiaries of Western education, producing famous Malawians, such as Elliot Kamwana, Clements Kadalie, Ernest Alexander Muwamba, Orton Chirwa, Wellington M. Chirwa, and Aleke Banda. The Tonga are also much a.s.sociated with labor migration to various parts of southern Africa.

TOURISM. Although developing tourism has been one of the government projects in postcolonial Malawi, despite the fact that a separate department created to deal with this matter has been in existence since the 1960s, Malawi has not been very successful in attracting tourists to the country. The Ministry of Tourism, Wildlife, and Culture has in the past actively promoted and marketed Malawi in European tourism fairs in an effort to penetrate the European and North American sales market. Compared to Kenya and South Africa, the Malawian tourist industry has not developed, and many prospective visitors would prefer countries where the infrastructure is good and where, because of heavier air traffic, the fares are compet.i.tive. Before political changes in South Africa, European (white) settlers not welcome in other African countries tended to spend some of their vacations in Malawi. Although they still continue to visit Malawi, they now have a wider choice of destinations, including Kenya and Tanzania. Furthermore, hotels, hire of local transport, and the cost of fuel in Malawi tend to be very expensive, thereby discouraging prospective tourists. For ”backpackers” or ”world travelers,” as they are sometimes called, Malawi is a popular destination, as they prefer the numerous affordable and more basic facilities along the lake.

Among the attractions drawing visitors to Malawi are Lake Malawi and the national parks: Nyika, Kasungu, Lengwe, and Liwonde. Animals roaming the parks include kudu, elephant, eland, zebra, lion, buffalo, leopard, and antelope. Two hundred species of fish live in Lake Malawi, some of which are not found elsewhere. A variety of wetland birds (tropical and temperate species) and reptiles are also found along the lakesh.o.r.e. Other popular tourist sites are the mountain areas of Mulanje, Zomba, Dedza, and Viphya. The Malawi Development Corporation (MDC) invested heavily in hotels, modernizing and expanding facilities for tourists, and hired Protea Hotels of South Africa to manage the hotels on its behalf. When the Malawi government privatized MDC in 2006, a new company, the Sunbird Hotels and Resorts, took control of all the hotels of the corporation. In the 2000s, private hotels of varying standards have mushroomed in the main cities and along the sh.o.r.es of Lake Malawi, and among them are Hippo Lodge on the banks of s.h.i.+re River at Liwonde, Sun 'n' Sands Holiday Resort in Mangochi, Kambiri Lodge in Salima, and Ilala Crest Lodge in Mzuzu. Government Rest Houses and Inns, located throughout the country, also provided good accommodations, but since the late 1990s, they have been privatized. Meanwhile, the Hotel Staff Training School in Blantyre, in operation since the late 1970s, has continued to train personnel in the hospitality industry.

Although the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife remains a relatively small budget department, it continues to work closely with the private sector to improve tourism in Malawi. Budget Doc.u.ment 5 for the 201011 fiscal year shows that tourism improved its earnings significantly in the 2000s, especially in the period 200810. According to the doc.u.ment, 742,000 international tourists spent some time in Malawi in 2008 and, in 2009, the number increased to 752,000, representing a 1.5 percent rise. This translated to earnings of about US$4 million in 2008, about US$4.6 million in 2009, and about US$6 million in 2010.

The Ministry of Tourism and the private sector advertise Malawi in Europe and in the United States and, in this regard, they send representatives to some trade fairs in the European Union. See also ECONOMY.