MOZAMBIQUE-DEVELOPMENT: Battling For Rights To The Land

By Mercedes Sayagues Reprint | | Print |

Mercedes Sayagues

MAPUTO, Nov 9 1995 (IPS) - Jacob Tembe worries because he does not have the title deeds to the four hectares of land his family has farmed for generations at Massoane, 45 kms south of here.

In June this year, “a white man came, said a piece of land by the nearby Maputo river was his, and cut down all the eucalyptus trees planted by us. He left before we could get organized to complain to the authorities,” Tembe says.

By “us”, Tembe means the Massoane Agricultural Association of Peasants which he heads. They have now asked for help from the General Union of Agricultural and Livestock Cooperatives of Maputo (UGCAM) to claim the deeds to the traditionally held land.

“It’s a long and complicated process that requires money, easy for the rich but difficult for the poor,” Tembe shrugs.

With less than 10 percent of its arable land under cultivation, Mozambique has plenty of land to accommodate its 17 million population. Where the land has lain idle, depopulated and uncultivated during 15 years of civil war, forests are thick and soils rich in nutrients.

But because little of the available land is near markets or roads, intense pressure is put on certain areas. Matutuine district — extending south and east of Maputo to the border with South Africa and Swaziland — is such an area, where a variety of powerful interest are vying to acquire land for commercial development.

Pressure is reaching boiling point as Mozambique debates a land ownership and use policy. All land continues to be state property, as it was during the years of Marxist policies, but now, within a free-market economy, the state can grant concessions to individuals and businesses for up to 50 years, and these can be inherited.

In September this year, the Council of Ministers approved a land policy that recognizes traditional rights of peasants over their land and the need to allocate resources to small farmers. But, as Tembe says, acquiring title is neither cheap nor easy.

In the southern part of Matutuine, the MOSA-FLORESTAL project, a joint venture between the South African Pulp and Paper Industry (SAPPI), a Mozambican company and the government, wants to plant 32,000 hectares with eucalyptus between the South African border and the Maputo Elephant Reserve to the north.

It would be next to impossible in South Africa to find such a large chunk of available land. Two small trial plots covering several hectares already have trees a few meters tall.

The boundaries of the proposed concession were demarcated by the Provincial Office in early 1995, but they overlap with requests made by other firms for eco-tourism projects.

It appears that, although the plantation has been authorised, the concession to the land has not been officially granted, pointing to conflicts within relevant ministries. “The whole process of granting land concessions is not very transparent,” says Simon Anstet, of the International Union for the Conservation of Resources (IUCN).

A recent study by IUCN says the proposed forest blocks will result in the irreversible loss of 25,100 hectares of five coastal habitats, mainly wooded and coastal grasslands, relatively undisturbed until now.

This includes the palmveld, key for the local economy, where people earn up to 140 dollars a month from making and selling palm wine across the border in South Africa.

Among the most vocal opponents of the eucalyptus plantation is Blanchard Mocambique Enterprises (BME).

It has proposed an 800 million dollar tourist development plan covering 200,000 hectares. It would extend south of Maputo, along the palm-fringed beaches and coral reefs of the Santa Maria- Machangulo peninsula down to the Kwa-Zulu Natal border, and inland up to the Futi river, including the Maputo Elephant Reserve — and the eucalyptus plantation area.

“That plantation is a dagger in the heart of our project,” says John Perrot, BME project manager. “It’s rain in our potty.” Showing the trial eucalyptus plots to a visitor, Perrot kicked and pulled out a few saplings.

BME proposes to expand the Elephant Reserve, restock it with wildlife, build 13 luxury lodges with 400 beds, linked by a railway with an antique steam train to ferry tourists around, and create nearly 12,000 jobs.

“It will be a world class development, joining wildlife with the Indian Ocean experience,” says the BME study done by a South African firm, Gouws Uys and White Landscape. BME has also retained several leading environmentalists in the region who declined to be interviewed because of their ties to the project.

During Mozambique’s civil war, BME’s owner, US billionaire James U. Blanchard III, supported the anti-government rebel movement, the National Mozambican Resistance (RENAMO).

Now the wheelchair-bound businessman claims to be on good terms with President Joaquim Chissano. “Being a free-market libertarian, Blanchard supported Renamo because it was a democratic movement,” explains Perrot. “Now he is talking to the gentleman he opposed (Chissano).”

BME’s plan includes what Perrot calls “a partnership with the natives,” and the study refers to as an association with the traditional local dwellers, or TLD, who would be given shares and an annual cash dividend in exchange for the use of their land.

“The vast majority will … soon rethink any nostalgia for cattle or the more predominant, futile slash-and-burn agriculture,” assures the study.

The President of the National Union of Peasants, Celina Cossa, is more cautious. “Peasants may not understand what is being proposed, or it can turn out to be empty promises, or a firm can declare bankruptcy,” she says. “We must be very careful, or peasants will remain with the dreams and without the land.”

Cossa says that the first line of defense is acquiring the titles to traditionally held land. The UGCAM, of which she is also president, has managed to secure titles for nearly all of its 183 cooperatives, comprising 5,450 farmers. “We’ve lost very little land,” says a proud Cossa.

In the village of Umbala, near Boane, 30 kms west of Maputo, the local Association of Peasants has lost land twice, to Mozambican, not foreign, agribusiness interests.

In 1989, the “machambas” or plots close to the Umbuzi river cultivated by the Association were taken over by AGROFARMOL, which now grows papaya and pumpkins where the 104 farmers, of which 102 are women, grew food for their families and a bit of surplus for the market.

“The land was grabbed by the company, ignoring our role as peasants,” says a bitter Julieta Matias, the Association’s accountant. Because the land was taken over in June, the farmers lost the nearly ready harvest of cassava, pumpkins and sweet potatoes. “We only had maize that year because we harvested it earlier,” recalls Matias.

The women now walk five kms to stony fields, farther from the river, with lower yields. Whereas before they would chip in to hire a tractor and plough the adjoining plots, now the “machambas” are scattered.

Meanwhile, a lively debate is taking place in the Mozambican press about the granting of huge land concessions to South African farmers, or “boers”, mostly white and right-wing.

The Government argues in favour of much-needed foreign investment. Others have moral and political concerns. Writing in the weekly newsmagazine SAVANA, Francisco Antonio Mazanga argues that “the agricultural technology that would be imported would arrive with its accompanying racism.”

While SAPPI, BME and others argue over the use of the pristine beaches and good soils of Matutuine, Jose Negrao with the Group for Land Studies at the Edoardo Mondlane University, warns that, in the absence of a coherent development policy, “private interests get the better land for speculation while peasants are squeezed onto marginal lands.

“The next step is the emergence of a class of landless peasants with severe social consequences.”