MOZAMBIQUE-LAND: Big Business Versus Community Concerns

By Mercedes Sayagues Reprint | | Print |

Mercedes Sayagues

MAPUTO, Jun 11 1996 (IPS) - Bitterness flows in Samuel Pedro’s voice as he tells how he lost his land twice in the last six years, first to a powerful Mozambican businessman, then to a South African investor.

Today he farms a low-yielding rocky plot. Peanuts, the main source of protein in the family diet, don’t grow on it. Worse, the ancestral cemetery is now fenced off, and security guards chase the villagers away.

Pedro is aware that last week, at the posh Polana Hotel in Maputo, 30 kms from his village of Umpala, representatives of all sectors of society were discussing a draft land law that may well protect three million peasant families like his own — or dispossess them.

At stake are 20 million hectares of arable land — the largest amount of readily available land in southern Africa. According to the Mozambican Constitution, all land belongs to the state, but individuals can have concessions for its use.

Now that peace seems to be here to stay after a 17-year civil war, many want concessions: for tourism, hunting, agribusiness, forestry and mining. Faced with this land rush, the Frelimo government has been granting land to investors, and to its own party officials.

Insiders say Frelimo officials want to acquire as many concessions as possible now, while preparing a constitutional revision that would allow private ownership of land in two years time.

Land experts say that at least 10 million hectares have been given out in concessions. Sometimes the same land has been assigned to different investors by different ministries. In Matutuine district, south of Maputo, a South African firm and an American developer claim the same chunk of land for a eucalyptus plantation and a luxury safari-cum-casino development.

And a lot of this land has peasants living and farming on it, just like Pedro.

To protect peasants, many at the conference argued that the State should recognise effective occupancy and grant rural communities rights to their land, including the right to negotiate with outsiders.

This entails a recognition of customary land tenure and customary law. It also means the government would not be able to grant concessions without community approval.

Frelimo stalwarts argued hotly that only the State can grant land tenure rights, and that, given Mozambique’s real need for investment and development, big business should have precedence over smallholders.

Critics point out that it was peasant farmers, working with hoes, who brought in last month’s impressive harvest of 934,000 tons of maize, enough to cover Mozambique’s maize needs. Peasant also grow 60 percent of the country’s main agricultural exports of cashew, cotton and copra.

However, in an impassioned speech, former Minister of Agriculture and Frelimo MP, Joao Ferreira, said he was “alarmed by the vanishing of the State in this land law, in the name of three million of so-called rural communities, who are given too large a space and too much autonomy.”

He suggested peasant farmers should be taxed on the land they use. Otherwise, he said, “we are giving out 20 million hectares of land to poor peasants without asking anything from them, not even to pay for the piece of paper where their title deed appears, and they would have the right to negotiate with the private sector!”

The draft law, to be submitted to the National Assembly for approval later this year, grapples with the legacy of 15-years of Marxist policies, an agricultural sector ravaged by civil war, and the new free market environment.

The law needs to balance the interests of peasant farmers, foreign investors, indigenous businesses and international donors — a tall order, by any count.

NGOs, political parties, church leaders, researchers, lawyers, aid workers and donors attended the conference. So did the President of Agricultural Cooperatives in Boane district, where Pedro lives. One conspicuous absence was the main opposition party, Renamo.

Donors, who finance 80 percent of Mozambique’s budget, circulated a statement saying that “local communities should have rights to their land, should be party to negotiations and sign concessions, should have the right to determine and demand payment of rent or some other form of compensation, and should have equal protection under the law in conflict resolution.”

Food security for the majority of Mozambique’s 17 million people — 80 percent of whom are peasants — and transparency in land allocation are the main concerns of donors. The U.S. pushes for private ownership of land to attract investment, while the World Bank and the European Union see agricultural production by smallholders as key to Mozambique’s future.

Even if the draft land law incorporates all the suggestions made, it could get stuck or watered down at the National Assembly, where Frelimo has a majority.

On the other hand, there were signs at the conference that the ruling party may be split on the issue of rural communities’ rights and customary law.

Back in Umpala, Samuel Pedro speaks longingly of the fertile land by the river where he and his wife used to grow peanuts, cassava, beans, sweet potatoes and pumpkins. When asked about his feelings about the land law, he says simply that “the state should protect the poor instead of helping the rich.”