The White Gold: The Role of Government and State in Rehabilitating the Sugar Industry in Mozambique

Abstract

This article examines the rehabilitation of the sugar industry in Mozambique after the General Peace Accord in 1992, engaging primarily and critically with certain aspects of the business-state literature. It explains why the sugar sector was rehabilitated from the perspectives of Mozambican state, government and industry actors. The article argues that support for the industry cannot be identified in singular and one-dimensional terms, but must include a variety of attributes of support that emerged from a post-independence fusion of industry, state and government officials' historical experiences of success and failure in the industry, and pragmatic as well as longer-term ideological stances. This, it is argued, created a ‘mediating bureaucracy’ that could broker between the diverse interests and aspirations of state/government and industry.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the two editors of the special issue, participants in the Elite, Production and Poverty research programme (EPP) and participants at the African Studies Association, UK meeting held at St Antony's College, University of Oxford, who shared their generous comments. We are particularly grateful to Alison Stent for language support, as well as the two anonymous reviewers who commented so helpfully on the article in draft form. The usual disclaimers apply.

Notes

1. Officially set at 360,000 tons in the INA 2000 study. In 1992, at its lowest, the production was only 13,224 tons.

2. A preferential trade arrangement with the United States – amounting to 1.3 per cent of total US imports – allowed Mozambique to export between 14,000 and 26,000 tons during the 1990s, stimulating a small increase in production (INA, 2001: 4).

3. The relatively high formal employment figures were partly due to strict labour laws.

4. This is based primarily on interviews as part of the EPP programme, with state, government and industry actors including former finance ministers and the former prime minister.

5. All of these products (sugar, cashew, cotton and so forth) were priority products for the Frelimo state after independence and are still so today (Ministério da Agricultura, 2006: 5, 10).

6. Techserve is a private South African corporation specialising in all facets of sugarcane agriculture production and processing. It was also the ‘Contractor of the 1994/5 rehabilitation of the Maputo Bulk Sugar Terminal’.

7. It should be noted that Tongaat Hulett took up a management contract for Mafambisse and later bought a majority shareholding in the Mafambisse estate and industrial plant. Tongaat was already involved with the Xinavane company, which was then owned by Anglo American and never nationalised.

8. Illovo/Maragra-related information is based on interviews conducted in April 2008 and October 2010 with the general director and agricultural and human resources managers.

9. For all the international sugar investment groups Mozambique provided at first limited access to preferential markets – initially the EU and United States (LMC, 2004). Furthermore the Mozambican government promised implementation of legislation that safeguarded investments.