By Remy Majangkim (Majangkim Office)
SANDAKAN: To the untrained eye of a commercial land speculator, the 5.5-acre plot of agricultural land on the fertile fringes of Sandakan looked like the ultimate jackpot. Its owner, an elderly indigenous man named Aki Gompis, had died intestate. He left behind no will, no children, no siblings, and no traceable next of kin. Under standard Malaysian civil law, this was a clear case of bona vacantia—ownerless property. Corporate developers quickly moved in, pulling bureaucratic strings at the Land Office to have the title cancelled, returned to the state pool, and re-alienated for a lucrative commercial project.
But as the heavy machinery prepared to roll, they hit an invisible, unyielding wall.
What the developers failed to account for is an elusive, parallel legal universe unique to Sabah. It is a statutory fortress built to protect indigenous land from being swallowed by modern capital. Under Section 20 of the Administration of Native and Small Estates Ordinance (Sabah Cap. 1) [L1], the civil bureaucracy was legally forced to grind to a halt. The fate of Aki Gompis’s land was stripped away from corporate-friendly land administrators and handed over to a traditional tribunal of Native Judges.
Inside the wood-paneled walls of the local Native Court, the gavel did not fall in favor of the highest bidder. Presided over by a District Chief—wielding the same customary judicial authority once held by veteran legislators like Datuk Eric Majimbun—the tribunal held a public customary inquiry (perbicaraan adat). They interrogated village headmen, mapped oral history, and traced communal footprints back three generations.
The corporate applications were flatly rejected. Invoking the ancient spirit of native customary rights, the Native Judges decreed the “faith” of the land to be Communal Customary Custodianship, locking the title into a perpetual village trust for local farmers.
This is the story of the Borneo Fortress. It is a masterclass in how Sabah’s parallel judicial system acts as a defensive shield, ensuring that even when an indigenous bloodline ends, the land itself remains forever rooted in native custody.
The Legislative Blueprint: The Legacy of Majimbun’s Bench
To understand how this fortress operates, one must look to the architects who manned its walls. The mechanics of this legal shield are not found in standard federal textbooks, but in the institutional memory of seasoned customary jurists like Datuk Eric Majimbun. Long before he debated federal policy in the halls of Parliament as the MP for Sepanggar, Majimbun spent nearly two decades presiding over the Kota Kinabalu District Native Court as Ketua Daerah (District Chief).
It was on this bench that the true weight of the Administration of Native and Small Estates Ordinance was weaponized.
“The law creates a specialized jurisdiction,” Majimbun frequently reminded legal scholars. When an indigenous landowner dies without an heir, civil courts view it as a mathematical vacancy. The Native Court, however, views it as a tear in the communal fabric. Section 20 of Cap. 1 acts as an emergency brake [L1]. The moment a Native Title is flagged as heirless, the Land Office loses its unilateral power to alienate.
By forcing the case into a tribunal of Native Judges, the law shifts the objective entirely. The question is no longer “Who can buy this land?” but “To which community does this soil historically belong?”
Crucially, the law includes a jurisdictional trapdoor that completely blindsides corporate legal teams. While standard “small estates” belonging to non-natives are strictly bound by a monetary value cap, Cap. 1 explicitly dictates that a “Native Estate” falls under this ordinance irrespective of its value [L1]. Whether the land is a modest backyard patch or a multimillion-ringgit agricultural goldmine, its commercial worth cannot yank it out of customary jurisdiction.
This judicial autonomy is a distinct right guaranteed under the Malaysian Federal Constitution, which places native law and customs strictly within State jurisdiction. It is a legacy so potent that it continues into the modern era; in 2020, Majimbun’s daughter, Edna Jessica Majimbun, made history as the first woman appointed as a District Chief in Sabah, taking up the mantle to defend the very same customary borders.
The Modern Threat: The Trojan Horse of the “Nominee”
Yet, no fortress is entirely immune to siege. As commercial land scarcity spikes across Sabah, the modern threat to ancestral soil rarely arrives through blunt legal confiscation. Instead, it comes as a Trojan Horse, exploiting the very legal loopholes the Native Court fights to regulate.
When land speculators realize they cannot bypass Section 20 [L1], they pivot to an insidious strategy known as the Native Nominee System. Out-of-state corporate capital, legally barred from purchasing Native Title land under the Sabah Land Ordinance (Cap. 68) [L2], seeks out a proxy inside the indigenous community. In an heirless estate scenario, speculators scout the edges of a village, identifying a vulnerable or easily influenced native individual. They finance this individual to step before the Native Court tribunal, claiming a verbal, undocumented deathbed adoption (adat anak angkat) by the deceased.
If the Native Judges accept this manufactured oral testimony without rigorous vetting, the tribunal issues a Distribution Order awarding the title to the proxy. The moment the ink dries on the registration, the native nominee signs a 99-year irrevocable lease agreement back to the commercial developer.
The land remains a “Native Title” on paper, satisfying the letter of the law, but its resources, trees, and access roads are permanently stripped and fenced off by corporate interests. This tactic turns an indigenous citizen into a legal shield for outside capital, breaching the Borneo Fortress from the inside out.
The Final Verdict: Autonomy is Chiseled in Soil
The case of Aki Gompis’s land in Sandakan serves as a critical warning for the future of Sabah’s state autonomy. It proves that the preservation of indigenous identity cannot rely solely on political rhetoric; it requires the aggressive, unyielding enforcement of specialized statutory clauses.
If the Native Court system is starved of funding, if its judges are not rigorously trained in statutory boundaries, or if local Land Offices fail to respect the mandatory inquiry triggers of Cap. 1 [L1], the fortress walls will quietly crumble.
The “elusive clause” highlighted by Eric Majimbun is a reminder that Sabah’s true sovereignty is chiseled directly into its soil. The Native Court must remain fiercely independent, vigilant against proxy manipulation, and unburdened by political interference. Only then can Sabah ensure that when an indigenous bloodline ends, the ancestral land does not become a corporate commodity—but remains, as it always was, a permanent sanctuary for the people who first cleared it.
