Since 1933, various traditional chiefs in Nyasaland have been designated as Native Authorities, initially by the colonial administration, and they numbered 105 in 1949. . They represented a form of the Indirect rule which had become popular in British African dependencies in the second quarter of the 20th century, although Nyasaland's Native Authorities had fewer powers and smaller incomes than similar institutions in other African colonies. The Native Authority system worked reasonably effectively until after the Second World War, when they were obliged to enforce unpopular government agricultural policies and, in some cases, their support for the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland made Native Authorities unpopular with many of their people. After 1953, many of the powers of individual chiefs were transferred to councils which became the Native Authorities, although the chiefs sat on these councils. After independence, the authorities were renamed Traditional Authorities and continued to operate, and the status and influence of many of the chiefs revived through their cooperation with the Malawi government of Hastings Banda.
There is an ongoing debate as to whether the Native Authorities' link with the colonial governments in the British African dependencies caused their authority to become weakened and for educated “new men” to emerge as community leaders, or whether the new status and administrative and judicial powers given to them by those administrations allowed chiefs to shake-off the pre-colonial restrictions on their powers and become more authoritarian and even despotic. Setting up a hierarchy of tribal paramount chiefs, subordinate chiefs and village headmen may also have served to fix previously less rigid “tribal” identities..
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