“It’s all about money”: urban–rural spaces and relations in Maputo, Mozambique

Abstract

Within the anthropological urban scholarship on sub-Saharan Africa, there is a shared notion of the continued, and in some cases re-emerging, importance of rural spaces, values and relations in cities and towns. In Mozambique’s capital city, Maputo, associations with the rural are shaped by the urban dwellers’ different positions on a scale of social (dis)advantage. This has led to very diverse types of engagement with the rural among the population, primarily differentiated along positions of class but also gender and age. For the best-off, who are able to live up to urban expectations, the rural is seen to have little to offer and is largely disregarded. For the poorest and most destitute, rural areas are effectively out of reach and unheeded. For the rest, the rural continues to be an important part of their cosmologies and struggles to survive albeit without losing their urban base and identity.

RÉSUMÉ

Les travaux d’anthropologie sur les villes d’Afrique subsaharienne ont en commun la notion d’une continuité, et dans certains cas d’une réémergence, de l’importance des espaces, des valeurs et des rapports ruraux dans les grandes et les petites villes. À Maputo, capitale du Mozambique, les associations avec le monde rural sont déterminées par les différentes positions des résidents urbains sur une échelle d’inégalité sociale. Cela a conduit à des types très divers de perceptions du monde rural par la population, principalement différenciables selon les rangs sociaux, mais aussi selon les genres et les tranches d’âge. Pour les mieux lotis qui ont les moyens d’obtenir ce qu’ils attendent de la ville, le monde rural est considéré comme ayant très peu à offrir et largement ignoré. Pour les plus pauvres et les plus démunis, les zones rurales sont véritablement hors d’atteinte et invisibles. Pour les autres, le monde rural continue de représenter une part importante de leurs cosmologies et de leurs luttes pour survivre, sans qu’ils aient pour autant à perdre leur base et leur identité urbaines.

Keywords:

• Mozambique
• anthropology
• poverty
• urban–rural relations

Mots-clés:

• Mozambique
• anthropologie
• pauvrete
• rapports urbains-ruraux

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Lizete Mangueleze and Arlindo Uate of the Eduardo Mondlane University for their valuable contributions during fieldwork.

Notes

1. In line with Knauft (2002, 18), the term “modern” or “modernity” will be understood to mean “the images and institutions associated with Western style progress and development in a contemporary world,” which through processes of “appropriation, opposition and redefinition” (Ibid., 25) has become associated with “urban life” in Maputo.

2. This study is part of a lager research project entitled “The Ethnography of a Divided City: Space, Poverty and Gender in Maputo, Mozambique,” funded by the Norwegian Research Council (2012–2016). This particular sub-study draws on fieldwork that took place in the bairros of 25 de Junho A and B, and in Inhagoia A and B in the District of KaMubukwana in February/March 2015, but also draws on fieldwork from bairros in the districts of KaMaxaquene and Nlhamankula in other projects (Paulo, Rosário, and Tvedten 2011; Bertelsen, Tvedten, and Roque 2013).

3. As a capital for Mozambique, the city is awkwardly situated at the southern tip of the country, far from both the main population centers (in the north) and the most fertile agricultural regions (in central and northern areas).

4. One of the main public graveyards in Maputo.

5. The most remote province to which people were sent was Niassa, which was also known as “Mozambique’s Siberia.”

6. According to a report from the four bairros of Mafalala, Laulane, Khongolote, and Inhagoia (which forms part of this study), most of the heads of households were born in the city of Maputo (33%), in the provinces of Maputo (11.7%), Gaza (27.5%), or Inhambane (22.5%). The remaining 5% were largely located in Mafalala, with a population with roots in the northern province of Nampula (Paulo, Rosário, and Tvedten 2011).

7. According to the Third National Poverty Assessment (MPD 2010), Maputo has a poverty headcount of 36.2% and a poverty gap of 5.2%, with the poverty headcounts of the provinces of Maputo, Gaza, and Inhambane being 67.5, 62.5, and 57.9%, respectively – compared to a national poverty headcount of 54.7%. More recent data on inequality shows that the urban Gini coefficient (dominated by Maputo) is 0.55, with the equivalent figure for rural areas being 0.37 (INE 2015).

8. This also reflects recent population movements, with overcrowding and “slumification” of the formal congested city, followed by a gentrification of former peripheral bairros such as Khongolote and Zimpeto as people move out to avoid the city center. This entails an ensuing de facto ejection of the recent migrant/semi-rural population who can no longer find space, or afford, to live there (Bertelsen, Tvedten and Roque 2013; Paulo, Rosário, and Tvedten 2011).

9. According to a local authority source, these are usually “youngsters from the rural areas who have just moved to the city, are exploited, and hardly receive any pay.”

10. The stipulated income varies between 150–200 to 300–400 meticais (MT) per canteiro per month, depending on the work put in and the time of year.

11. The Zona Verde is the part of the city most susceptible to flooding, as evidenced during 2000 when all the machambinas and adjacent houses were washed away.

12. The term signifies “countryside” or “rural area,” but in a slightly more derogatory way than the more neutral campo.

13. The study referred to earlier (Paulo, Rosário, and Tvedten 2011) shows that during the week before the survey interview, 100 percent of the households had eaten rice or porridge, 95 percent had eaten bread, and 34.2 percent meat.

14. Some elders also attributed this to the fact that the cooperatives/associations were originally established by Frelimo’s independence hero and first president, Samora Machel, but thirty-five years later, most residents do not have that type of relationship with independent Mozambique’s early history.