Lake belongs to Malawi, UK letters reveal

Tukiegemea kwenye hiyo Heligoland Treaty au International law tumeliwa hapa ni kubase kwenye Equity na kuwa wababe tu hata sijui kwanini Membe Alikubali kwenda kwenye mjadala kule Malawi
 
We cannot make conclusions on the ownership of Lake Nyasa based on the memos from Downing Street. Those memos were written based on the interests of the British. We still maintain that the border of Lake Nyasa is at the median of the lake. Forget about British memos. They can not be used to settle this dispute. Where two countries share the lake, the border has always been at the median of the lake. It is non sense to maintain the claim that the whole belongs to Malawi.
R.B said:
Lake belongs to Malawi, UK letters reveal

As Malawi and Tanzania grapple with finding solutions to the Lake Malawi boundary wrangle, Downing Street memos on the issue during the Hastings Kamuzu Banda era we have seen build a strong case for Malawi.

The memos were written in the 1960s when the dispute first surfaced after then Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere wrote London, complaining about Banda’s “expansionist” policy that was claiming the whole of Lake Malawi when, according to Tanzania, it was supposed to be shared equally.
Archived communication we have seen from Number 10 Downing Street—Britain’s Prime Minister’s office in London—asserts that Tanzania cannot apply international law to claim the lake.
“The present border between Malawi and Tanzania was first defined and described in Anglo-German Agreement of July 1 1890, which established the limits of the British and German spheres of influence in the area.
“By that agreement [and the Anglo-Portuguese Agreements of 1890-3], the whole of Lake Nyasa was deemed as belonging to the British sphere of influence and the border where it touched the lake, ran down the eastern shoreline,” reads a 1969 internal Downing Street background note clarifying the border issue.
But Tanzania’s position, as outlined recently by president Jakaya Kikwete, is that the Anglo-German Treaty of 1890 that gave Malawi the sole ownership of Lake Malawi was flawed and Tanzania has every reason to demand this to be corrected.
Kikwete, in his August end-of-the-month address to his country, said the Heligoland Treaty—the agreement between then colonial powers Germany and Britain—denies Tanzanians living on the shores of Lake Malawi “their given right to utilise proximate water and marine resources to earn their daily living”.
Kikwete, according to a report in The Citizen newspaper of Tanzania published on September 2 2012, argued that the colonial treaty set an unfortunate precedent for Tanzanians yet, on the border between Malawi and Mozambique, boundaries were duly readjusted to give citizens of those countries equal rights of access.
He said the treaty is erroneous because it contravenes international law that requires States to share adjoining water resources.
The 1969 background note followed Nyerere’s letter to British Prime Minister at the time, Harold Wilson, dated October 21 1968, in which he expressed concern that Malawi’s president Banda had announced on September 16 1968 that he was putting patrol vessels on Lake Malawi.
Nyerere had claimed in his letter that the press reported that Britain was supplying three gun boats for that purpose.
He said Banda had also put a vessel on the lake fitted out with arms for him by the Portuguese.
An internal letter to a superior by a Downing Street official, a Mr. Waitland, attached to the background note, said:
“With reference to your letter to David Erighty of October 15, I enclose a redraft of the reply to President Nyerere’s letter to the Prime Minister of September 24 about the border dispute between Malawi and Tanzania.”
The letter made two landmark conclusions, the first one being:
“It is doubtful whether Tanzania’s assertion—as expressed in paragraph 4 [four] of Nyerere’s letter to the Prime Minister…that the boundary between the two countries is in the centre of Lake Malawi—could be sustained in law, since the principles of international law, to which Nyerere appeals, could hardly be applied, whereas in the Anglo-German Agreement of 1890 about this particular boundary, one of the riparian States concerned has agreed with the other that the lake lay outside its boundaries,” reads the letter.
This position notwithstanding, the memo points out that it might be argued that the definitions of the agreement of 1890 are in terms of “spheres of influence and that these may not necessarily entail definitive territorial boundaries.”
The second conclusion was “that the Tanzanians would have a stronger case for a redefinition of the boundary if they had based this on grounds not of international law, but of equity.”
The communication we have seen further shows that the 1890 Anglo-German Agreement was maintained when the Protectorate of Nyasaland districts was formed in 1891 and also in 1893 when the protectorate was renamed British Central Africa and in 1907 when it was renamed again as the Nyasaland Protectorate.
According to the communication, when the British role was established in German East Africa and renamed Tanganyika after the treaty of Versailles in 1918, under mandate from the League of Nations, Tanganyika’s border on Lake Nyasa on the eastern shoreline continued to be of the former German colony.
“This continued to be the case when the British mandate over Tanganyika was continued in the form of a United Nations Trusteeship,” reads the communication.
In the documents, Britain also highlighted sources of confusion over lake’s boundary.
“All the above territorial definitions rest on the terms of the Anglo-German Agreement of 1890, since subsequent Orders in Council, etc. have tended to describe the territories as “bounded by German East Africa” [for Malawi] and the “Nyasaland Protectorate” [for Tanzania],” says the communication.
It adds that further confusion arises out of German and British maps of the area which are inconsistent.
“The German maps of 1904 and 1913 show the boundary running along the eastern shore of the lake, but one of 1918 shows it as being the median of the lake. The Colonial Office Map Supplement of 1948 gives the border on the shoreline for its map of Nyasaland, and the middle of the lake for its Tanganyikan counterpart,” reads the communication.
The most blatant error, according to the communication, is contained in the map included in the White Paper issued in 1953 on the conference on the Federation of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which shows the border running down the median of Lake Nyasa between Nyasaland and Tanganyika.
The Malawi-Tanzania border resurfaced this year following Capital Hill’s licensing of a firm to explore oil on Lake Malawi.
Tanzania now wants a chunk of the water body, which led to negotiations—first in Tanzania then in Malawi last month. The talks were inconclusive.
Malawi now wants to take the matter to the UN International Court of Justice after the talks in Mzuzu last month failed to resolve the matter, according to Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Minister Ephraim Chiume.
But Chancellor College international law expert, Dr. Mwiza Nkhata, said in an interview soon after the talks that the world court would not automatically decide on the matter because Tanzania did not give compulsory jurisdiction to the court on interpretation of treaties and questions on international law.
On the Tanzania side, the Mzuzu talks were led by Chiume’s counterpart, Bernard Membe. That meeting resolved that they should try diplomacy to end the wrangle and that the Attorney Generals of the two countries should interpret Article 1 (2) (IV) of the Anglo-Germany Treaty.
The two countries were expected to meet in Tanzania this month for more talks.
But on Thursday this week, Information Minister Moses Kunkuyu said the meeting the two countries were scheduled to have this September have not yet taken place.
Kunkuyu said there is no latest development on the mater.
He supported the memo’s content, saying it has been Capital Hill’s conviction that the whole lake belongs to Malawi.
Click to expand...
 
Lekanjobe Kubinika said:
Kwa hiyo ili kuvua mbasa kule Itungi lazima kupata kibali capitol hil Lilongwe sio? Wakisi wote ni wamalawi sasa? Vile vyungu vya Matema ni export goods from Malawi? Wajerumani na waingereza wako kwao wametulia, wala adha hii haiwahusu. Kwa hiyo kama wangesema maji yote ya Sumbi ni ya Tanzania, Malawi wangelichukuliaje hilo? Greedy does not empower anybody to survive, rather it innovates un-ending calamity.
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Watamu hao!
 
am tired of these gutter politics...hawa malawi tuwavutieni subra mpaka 2015 naamini atapatikana rais wa kutatua hili tatizo once n for all...for the tyme being we dont have a "real presdaa"...naona kama tuna-image ya amiri geshi mkuu asiyetoa amri linapokuja suala la kulinda mipaka na sovereignty ya inji yetu.
 
tanzania tna "OMBWE" la KIONGOZI kwa ngazi za kuamua maslahi sahihi ya nchi yetu na ndio maana wamalawi wameona kamba yetu imefika pahali pe-mbamba na wanaweza kuikata kirahisi....ahahahahahahaaaaaa...kweli tumeshikwa pabaya.
 
R.B said:
Lake belongs to Malawi, UK letters reveal

As Malawi and Tanzania grapple with finding solutions to the Lake Malawi boundary wrangle, Downing Street memos on the issue during the Hastings Kamuzu Banda era we have seen build a strong case for Malawi.

The memos were written in the 1960s when the dispute first surfaced after then Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere wrote London, complaining about Banda’s “expansionist” policy that was claiming the whole of Lake Malawi when, according to Tanzania, it was supposed to be shared equally.
Archived communication we have seen from Number 10 Downing Street—Britain’s Prime Minister’s office in London—asserts that Tanzania cannot apply international law to claim the lake.
“The present border between Malawi and Tanzania was first defined and described in Anglo-German Agreement of July 1 1890, which established the limits of the British and German spheres of influence in the area.
“By that agreement [and the Anglo-Portuguese Agreements of 1890-3], the whole of Lake Nyasa was deemed as belonging to the British sphere of influence and the border where it touched the lake, ran down the eastern shoreline,” reads a 1969 internal Downing Street background note clarifying the border issue.
But Tanzania’s position, as outlined recently by president Jakaya Kikwete, is that the Anglo-German Treaty of 1890 that gave Malawi the sole ownership of Lake Malawi was flawed and Tanzania has every reason to demand this to be corrected.
Kikwete, in his August end-of-the-month address to his country, said the Heligoland Treaty—the agreement between then colonial powers Germany and Britain—denies Tanzanians living on the shores of Lake Malawi “their given right to utilise proximate water and marine resources to earn their daily living”.
Kikwete, according to a report in The Citizen newspaper of Tanzania published on September 2 2012, argued that the colonial treaty set an unfortunate precedent for Tanzanians yet, on the border between Malawi and Mozambique, boundaries were duly readjusted to give citizens of those countries equal rights of access.
He said the treaty is erroneous because it contravenes international law that requires States to share adjoining water resources.
The 1969 background note followed Nyerere’s letter to British Prime Minister at the time, Harold Wilson, dated October 21 1968, in which he expressed concern that Malawi’s president Banda had announced on September 16 1968 that he was putting patrol vessels on Lake Malawi.
Nyerere had claimed in his letter that the press reported that Britain was supplying three gun boats for that purpose.
He said Banda had also put a vessel on the lake fitted out with arms for him by the Portuguese.
An internal letter to a superior by a Downing Street official, a Mr. Waitland, attached to the background note, said:
“With reference to your letter to David Erighty of October 15, I enclose a redraft of the reply to President Nyerere’s letter to the Prime Minister of September 24 about the border dispute between Malawi and Tanzania.”
The letter made two landmark conclusions, the first one being:
“It is doubtful whether Tanzania’s assertion—as expressed in paragraph 4 [four] of Nyerere’s letter to the Prime Minister…that the boundary between the two countries is in the centre of Lake Malawi—could be sustained in law, since the principles of international law, to which Nyerere appeals, could hardly be applied, whereas in the Anglo-German Agreement of 1890 about this particular boundary, one of the riparian States concerned has agreed with the other that the lake lay outside its boundaries,” reads the letter.
This position notwithstanding, the memo points out that it might be argued that the definitions of the agreement of 1890 are in terms of “spheres of influence and that these may not necessarily entail definitive territorial boundaries.”
The second conclusion was “that the Tanzanians would have a stronger case for a redefinition of the boundary if they had based this on grounds not of international law, but of equity.”
The communication we have seen further shows that the 1890 Anglo-German Agreement was maintained when the Protectorate of Nyasaland districts was formed in 1891 and also in 1893 when the protectorate was renamed British Central Africa and in 1907 when it was renamed again as the Nyasaland Protectorate.
According to the communication, when the British role was established in German East Africa and renamed Tanganyika after the treaty of Versailles in 1918, under mandate from the League of Nations, Tanganyika’s border on Lake Nyasa on the eastern shoreline continued to be of the former German colony.
“This continued to be the case when the British mandate over Tanganyika was continued in the form of a United Nations Trusteeship,” reads the communication.
In the documents, Britain also highlighted sources of confusion over lake’s boundary.
“All the above territorial definitions rest on the terms of the Anglo-German Agreement of 1890, since subsequent Orders in Council, etc. have tended to describe the territories as “bounded by German East Africa” [for Malawi] and the “Nyasaland Protectorate” [for Tanzania],” says the communication.
It adds that further confusion arises out of German and British maps of the area which are inconsistent.
“The German maps of 1904 and 1913 show the boundary running along the eastern shore of the lake, but one of 1918 shows it as being the median of the lake. The Colonial Office Map Supplement of 1948 gives the border on the shoreline for its map of Nyasaland, and the middle of the lake for its Tanganyikan counterpart,” reads the communication.
The most blatant error, according to the communication, is contained in the map included in the White Paper issued in 1953 on the conference on the Federation of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which shows the border running down the median of Lake Nyasa between Nyasaland and Tanganyika.
The Malawi-Tanzania border resurfaced this year following Capital Hill’s licensing of a firm to explore oil on Lake Malawi.
Tanzania now wants a chunk of the water body, which led to negotiations—first in Tanzania then in Malawi last month. The talks were inconclusive.
Malawi now wants to take the matter to the UN International Court of Justice after the talks in Mzuzu last month failed to resolve the matter, according to Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Minister Ephraim Chiume.
But Chancellor College international law expert, Dr. Mwiza Nkhata, said in an interview soon after the talks that the world court would not automatically decide on the matter because Tanzania did not give compulsory jurisdiction to the court on interpretation of treaties and questions on international law.
On the Tanzania side, the Mzuzu talks were led by Chiume’s counterpart, Bernard Membe. That meeting resolved that they should try diplomacy to end the wrangle and that the Attorney Generals of the two countries should interpret Article 1 (2) (IV) of the Anglo-Germany Treaty.
The two countries were expected to meet in Tanzania this month for more talks.
But on Thursday this week, Information Minister Moses Kunkuyu said the meeting the two countries were scheduled to have this September have not yet taken place.
Kunkuyu said there is no latest development on the mater.
He supported the memo’s content, saying it has been Capital Hill’s conviction that the whole lake belongs to Malawi.
Click to expand...

Well indicated; the sphere of influence for colonialists meant people and land as factors of production (land and labour) to produce raw materials. The water body was discounted as by then had nothing to do with raw materials production. So for Malawi and Tanzania to negotiate sharing the lake is plausible and timely!
 
Bitabo said:
Kwa style hii ya Membe na JK hili ziwa lishachukuliwa.
Mtu pekee anayeweza kulirejesha baada ya 2015 kama sio CDM kuchukua nchi ni Lowasa kama CCM watampitisha
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tumeshindwa kukamata wachoma mabanda tutaweza kweli kupigana na malawi?
 
Janjaweed said:
sometimes ni bora kuwa na mtu kama lowassa tu, vitu kama hivi vingeshaisha zamani sana

kwa sasa tuna mtu ambaye hata sijui anaoperate kwa MS-DOS au nini
Click to expand...

Mkuu, kumbe na wewe ulitumia hiyo 'operating system' ??
Enzi zake ilikuwa bomba sana !!
 
Toka lini waingereza wakatuamulia masuala yetu ya ndani? yao yamewashinda huko Ireland Kask. sasa waamue ya TZ na Malawi!!,huo mwaka wa 1968 ni mwaka mmoja tu toka kutangazwa Azimio la AR lililowanyang'anya mashamba majumba hata viwanda mabenki yote au vichota uchumi vyote vilitaifishwa tena tulivunja uhusiano kabisa unategemea wangetufanyia fair?,dhambi zaidi ni pale wanapokaa na kujadili mipaka ya Tanganyika,hivi kama ni hivyo kulikuwa na maana gani ya sisi kuutafuta huo uhuru,nani asiyejua kuwa Banda alipewa zawadi nchi ya Malawi na Waingereza?tena wakamfanyia kitu mbaya kwa kuharibu uzazi wake mpaka amekufa yule mzee hana aliyemuacha na sura yake wala hana ndugu huko malawi wote ni wa kuaasili.natamani kuvaa magwanda kwa mara nyingine kutetea nchi yangu wasituchezee hatutakubali hayo maneno ya JKW sijui anampendezesha nani katika ardhi yetu utafikiri siyo mjeshi.
Sheria za kimataifa zifuatwe pasu kwa pasu mbona Msumbiji ni pasu kwa pasu au Mwingereza alimuhonga Mreno ili aendelee kuitawala Msumbiji?.Hiyo kusini yote waTZ tumefanya kazi kubwa ya kuwatimua Waingereza na Wareno hawapo kama walishindwa wakati ule sasa ndiyo hawawezi kabisaaaa,tutaenda kujitoa muhanga huko Downing street.
 
Since all memorial time Tanganyikans have been using Lake Malawi for economic activities and communication links between places along the shores. If Malawi knew that the Lake was Malawi's why kept silent. Is the Clue of getting gas and oil is the problem?It is absurd now Malawi claiming that it owns the whole lake. From examining this issue, the Britons are behind this border wrangle. This is nonsense, they want to sell weapons such they snatch our resources and create an unnecessary hatred between the two countries. It is very expensive to be poor. Malawi and Tanzania wake up.
 
Ni nchi nyingi sana Duniani zina dispute kuhusu mipaka na hakuna njia moja ya solution kufikiwa. Iwe Japan, Marekani, Urusi, Uingereza zote hizi zinadaiwa ama zimeweka madai ya ardhi kuwa chini ya utawala wao, aidha kwa kufuata ama kinyume cha mikataba iliyowekwa zamani na wakolni. Kwa hiyo tusidanganyike kwamba Uingereza ndio wenye mamlaka ya kutoa hukumu kuhusu mipaka ya tanzania na Malawi isipokuwa nchi husika zinatakiwa kufikia makubaliano. Yakishindikana tumeona vita vikitokea na ikifika wakati huo Uingereza wenyewe watakaa pembeni kushangilia kutuuzia silaha tumalizane vizuri..
 
This issue is nonsense. They contradict themselves they claim that the whole Lake belonged to Malawi but today Mozambique has a share. Where does this come from. Secondly, If this was so (whole lake Malawi's) Why allow Tanganyikans and now Tanzanians use the Lake for economic activities and communication links between villages and small towns along the shore? Even today there are vessels plying between these places along the shore and these vessels have been there for decades. Are clues of gas and oil are bringing this border wrangle. I can guess who is behind this wrangle and is nobody but the Britons are behind this. They want to sell weapon be ware poor Africans.
 
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