Native Administration and Native Jurisdiction Ordinances

Chiefs, By-Laws, and Indirect Rule

Native Jurisdiction and Native Administration laws gave chiefs and Native Authorities formal roles within colonial governance. In forestry, these ordinances allowed chiefs and Native Authorities to make by-laws for the creation and management of local forest reserves. This was part of indirect rule: the colonial state governed through African authorities while still shaping the limits of their power.

Before the Forest Ordinance of 1927, many forest reserves were created or managed through Native Authority by-laws. These by-laws allowed chiefs to regulate cutting, burning, farming, and other forest uses within their jurisdictions. However, this system produced tension. Colonial officials wanted a systematic network of reserves, while some chiefs delayed, resisted, or implemented forest rules unevenly. African leaders also feared that a new government forestry law would override existing by-laws and weaken local authority.

This concern appeared clearly in debates over the Forestry Bill. African councils accepted that forest reservation could be important for agricultural progress, but insisted that existing and future forest by-laws made under the Native Jurisdiction or Native Administration Ordinance should remain valid. They demanded that the government’s forestry law should not supersede or interfere with Native Authority by-laws.

The colonial government tried to reassure chiefs that the Forestry Bill was not meant to override Native Jurisdiction by-laws. Yet the same official position also made clear that the Bill was designed to ensure that “essential Forest Reserves” were both established and maintained, and that government could enforce cooperation where local action was delayed or incomplete.

This is the key point: Native Administration gave chiefs a role in forest governance, but the Forest Ordinance gave government the power to intervene when chiefly authority did not produce the kind of reserve system colonial officials wanted.