A Spatio-Temporal Mosaic of Land Use and Access in Central Mozambique

Abstract

This article examines the spatial and temporal dimensions of access to land in Sussundenga District in central Mozambique. The article suggests that access to land is not only a socially embedded process, but is also spatialised through the area's history of settlement, colonial eviction, postcolonial resettlement, and war-induced displacement, creating a context of multiple and overlapping land claims and forms of authority to substantiate various claims. Consequently, land use and access is situated within a spatio-temporal mosaic signifying several interrelated and overlapping events that have created a patchwork of land use patterns and spatialised the forms of authority that produce the legitimacy to rule over people and land. When and where people requested and received land is in part shaped by the time period in which they settled in the area, creating distinctions between longstanding residents and recent arrivals. While no one reported being landless, the size, quality, and proximity to homestead differ between the long-term residents and new arrivals. By attending to the spatial and temporal dimensions of access to land in Sussundenga, how and why particular lands are subject to contestation, counter-claims, and in some cases, concentration in the hands of more powerful actors, becomes more visible and reveals the coexistence of multiple trajectories of social and ecological change.

Notes

^*This article is based on 16 months of fieldwork conducted in Mozambique (August 2005–December 2006) funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (GR 7333) and Fulbright Hays DDRA. I would like to thank Mr. Nelson Malungisa for his invaluable assistance with this project and Ms. Ana Rita Boane for transcribing several of the interviews used in this article. I am indebted to the Nucleus of Land Tenure Studies (NET) and Dr. Arlindo Chilundo at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo for providing an institutional affiliation and to the people of Sussundenga for their hospitality and willingness to share their experiences. I presented a version of this paper at the 2010 North Eastern Workshop on Southern Africa held in Burlington, Vermont, 9–11 April 2010 and would like to thank the participants for their insightful feedback and critical questions. I would also like to thank my dissertation committee: Bill Derman, Anne Ferguson, Beth Drexler, and David Wiley for their feedback on some of the material presented here and for their encouragement and support. I am grateful for Amanda Hammar's close reading and comments on an earlier draft and for my friendships with Christy Schuetze and Ippolytos Kalafonos from whom I have learned a lot about Mozambique. I also want to express my gratitude to Joost Fontein and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. I alone bear responsibility for any errors or omissions in this paper.

¹ J. Hanlon, ‘Renewed Land Debate and the “Cargo Cult” in Mozambique’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 30, 3 (2004), pp. 603–25.

² J. Ribot, ‘Theorizing Access: Forest Profits along Senegal's Charcoal Commodity Chain’, Development and Change, 29, 2 (1998), pp. 307–41.

³ G. Myers, ‘Competitive Rights, Competitive Claims: Land Access in Post-War Mozambique’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 20, 4 (1994), pp. 603–32.

⁴ J. Guyer, E. Lambin, L. Cliggett, P. Walker, K. Amanor, T. Bassett et al., ‘Temporal Heterogeneity in the Study of African Land Use: Interdisciplinary Collaboration between Anthropology, Human Geography, and Remote Sensing’, Human Ecology, 35 (2007), pp. 3–17.

⁵ S. Berry, ‘Social Institutions and Access to Resources’, Africa, 59, 1 (1989), pp. 41–55; R. Downs and S. Reyna (eds), Land and Society in Contemporary Africa (Durham, NH, University Press of New England, 1988).

⁶ S. Berry, ‘Concentration without Privatization? Some Consequences of Changing Patterns of Rural Land Control in Africa’, in Downs and Reyna (eds), Land and Society in Contemporary Africa, pp. 53–75.

⁷ Guyer, Lambin, Cliggett, Walker, Amanor, Bassett et al., ‘Temporal Heterogeneity’.

⁸ M.A. Pitcher, ‘Disruption without Transformation: Agrarian Relations and Livelihoods in Namupla Province, Mozambique 1975–1995’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 24, 1 (1998), pp. 115–40.

⁹ S. Berry, No Condition is Permanent: The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Sub-Saharan Africa (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1993); J. Fairhead and M. Leach, Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest-Savanna Mosaic (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996).

¹⁰ I use Sussundenga-sede to refer to the area of Sussundenga District that was once the centre of a Portuguese colonato, and today serves as the administrative centre of the district. This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork on access to land and water in Sussundenga District, the majority of which I carried out in Sussundenga-sede and surrounding areas. The data and interpretations presented in this article are based on participant observation, 75 semi-structured interviews with land and water users selected by random sample, and 15 semi-structured interviews with elders, longstanding residents, and chiefs on the socio-environmental history of the area.

¹¹ D. Moore, Suffering for Territory: Race, Place, and Power in Zimbabwe (Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2005), p. 4.

¹² Moore, Suffering for Territory.

¹³ P. Shipton and M. Goheen, ‘Understanding African Land-Holding: Power, Wealth, and Meaning’, Africa, 62, 3 (1992), pp. 307–25.

¹⁴ Berry, ‘Social Institutions’; Ribot, ‘Theorizing Access’.

¹⁵ C. Lund, Local Politics and the Dynamics of Property in Africa (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008).

¹⁶ In contrast to property, access includes a broader spectrum of legal and socially embedded structures, institutions, and relations. Ribot argues for a need to shift analysis from property to access in order to situate property as one mechanism along a continuum shaping access to various resources. In addition, access alone may not be sufficient for securing one's livelihood. The ability to benefit from a particular resource may be contingent on numerous factors such as access to capital, inputs, infrastructure, labour, favourable ecological conditions, and access to markets.

¹⁷ S. Berry, ‘Social Institutions and Access to Resources’, Africa, 59, 1 (1989), pp. 41–55; Berry, No Condition is Permanent; C. Lund, ‘Negotiating Property Institutions: On the Symbiosis of Property and Authority in Africa’, in K. Juul and C. Lund (eds), Negotiating Property in Africa (Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann, 2002), pp. 11–43; J. Ribot, ‘Theorizing Access’; P. Shipton, ‘Land and Culture in Tropical Africa: Soils, Symbols, and the Metaphysics of the Mundane’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 23 (1994), pp. 347–77.

¹⁸ S. Berry, ‘Debating the Land Question in Africa’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 44, 4 (2002), pp. 638–68; Lund, ‘Negotiating Property Institutions’.

¹⁹ Shipton and Goheen, ‘Understanding African Land-Holding’.

²⁰ Berry, No Condition is Permanent; J. and M. Watts, ‘Manufacturing Dissent: Work, Gender, and the Politics of Meaning in Peasant Society’, Africa, 60, 2 (1990), pp. 207–41; A. Hammar, ‘The Articulation of Modes of Belonging: Competing Land Claims in Zimbabwe's Northwest’, in K. Juul and C. Lund (eds), Negotiating Property in Africa (Portsmouth, Heinemann, 2002), pp. 211–46; Moore, Suffering for Territory; P. Peters, ‘Struggles over Water, Struggles over Meaning: Cattle, Water and the State in Botswana’, Africa, 54, 3 (1984), pp. 29–49; T. Ranger, Voices from the Rocks: Nature, Culture and History in the Matopos Hills of Zimbabwe (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1999).

²¹ Berry, ‘Concentration without Privatization’.

²² Berry, No Condition is Permanent, p. 13.

²³ B. Derman, R. Odgaard, and E. Sjaastad, Conflicts over Land and Water in Africa (East Lansing, Michigan State University Press, 2008).

²⁴ Shipton, ‘Land and Culture in Tropical Africa’, p. 350.

²⁵ Berry, ‘Social Institutions and Access to Resources in African Agriculture’; Berry, No Condition is Permanent; J. Bruce, ‘A Perspective on Indigenous Land Tenure Systems and Concentration’, in R. Downs and S. Reyna (eds), Land and Society in Contemporary Africa (Durham, NH, University Press of New England, 1988), pp. 53–75; A. Haugerud, ‘Land Tenure and Agrarian Change in Kenya’, Africa, 59, 1 (1989), pp. 61–90.

²⁶ C. Lund, African Land Tenure: Questioning Basic Assumptions (London, IIED Drylands Networks Programme Issues, 2000).

²⁷ P. Peters, ‘The Limits to Negotiability: Security, Equity and Class Formation in Africa's Land Systems’, in K. Juul, and C. Lund (eds), Negotiating Property in Africa (Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann, 2002), pp. 45–66.

²⁸ P. Peters, ‘Bewitching the Land: The Role of Land Disputes in Converting Kin to Strangers and in Class Formation in Malawi’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 28, 1 (2002), pp. 155–78.

²⁹ H. West and G. Myers, ‘A Piece of Land in a Land of Peace? State Farm Divesture in Mozambique’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, 34, 1 (1996), pp. 27–51.

³⁰ Myers, ‘Competitive Rights, Competitive Claims’.

³¹ H. Gengenbach, ‘I'll Bury You in the Border! Women's Land Struggles in Post-War Facazisse (Magude District), Mozambique’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 24, 1 (1998), pp. 7–36.

³² C. Tanner, ‘Law-Making in an African Context: The 1997 Mozambican Land Law’, FAO Legal Paper No. 26 (2002).

³³ The revised constitution of 1990 obliges the state to recognise rights obtained through inheritance or occupation.

³⁴ D.M. Hughes, ‘Cadastral Politics: The Making of Community-Based Resource Management in Zimbabwe and Mozambique’, Development and Change, 32, 4 (2001), pp. 741–68 documents the successful defence of smallholder land against a South African timber company.

³⁵ Título de Uso e Aproveitamento da Terra (Right to Use and Improve the Land).

³⁶ The definition of community under the law is purposefully vague to allow for different socio-ethnic composition.

³⁷ See J. Ferguson, Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order (Durham, Duke University Press, 2006).

³⁸ J. Schafer and R. Black, ‘Conflict, Peace and the History of Natural Resource Management in Sussundenga District, Mozambique’, African Studies Review, 26, 3 (2003), pp. 55–81.

³⁹ C. Tornimbeni, ‘Isto Foi Sempre Assim: The Politics of Land and Human Mobility in Chimanimani, Central Mozambique’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 33, 3 (2007), pp. 485–500.

⁴⁰ E. MacGonagle, Crafting Identity in Zimbabwe and Mozambique (Rochester, University of Rochester Press, 2007). For further discussion of the historical linkages between the Teve kingdom and the state complexes of the Zimbabwe plateau, see H.H.K. Bhila, Trade and Politics in a Shona Kingdom: The Manyika and Their Portuguese and African Neighbours 1575–1902 (Harlow, Longman, 1982); D. Beach, The Shona and Their Neighbours (Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 1994).

⁴¹ See L. Vail, ‘Mozambique's Chartered Companies: The Rule of the Feeble’, The Journal of African History, 17, 3 (1976), pp. 389–416 for an overview of company rule in Mozambique. See E. Allina-Pisano, ‘Negotiating Colonialism: Africans, the State, and the Market in Manica District, Mozambique, 1895–c.1935’ (PhD thesis, Yale University, 2002) and J. Maurício das Neves, ‘Economy, Society and Labour Migration in Central Mozambique, 1930–c. 1965: A Case Study of Manica Province’ (PhD thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1998) for in depth accounts of company rule and African resistance in central Mozambique.

⁴² See E. Allina-Pisano, ‘Borders, Boundaries, and the Contours of Colonial Rule: African Labor in Manica District, Mozambique, c. 1904–1908’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 36, 1 (2003), pp. 59–82.

⁴³ Matewe vakatanga kugara muSussundenga. (Sussundenga, 4 April 2006). All translations from Chiteve (Shona) are my own unless otherwise noted.

⁴⁴ Vakaberekwa muno. Varidzi venzvimbo. (Sussundenga, 4 April 2006).

⁴⁵ For debates concerning whether chiefs rule over subjects or territory in Manica Province see D.M. Hughes, From Enslavement to Environmentalism: Politics on a Southern African Frontier (Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2006); J. Schafer and R. Bell, ‘The State and Community-Based Natural Resource Management: The Case of the Moribane Forest Reserve, Mozambique, Journal of Southern African Studies, 28, 2 (2002), pp. 401–20; P. Virtanen, ‘Land of the Ancestors: Semiotics, History and Space in Chimanimani, Mozambique’, Social and Cultural Geography, 6, 3 (2005), pp. 357–77.

⁴⁶ Virtanen, ‘Land of the Ancestors’, pp. 365.

⁴⁷ Schafer & Black, ‘Conflict, Peace, and the History of Natural Resource Management’.

⁴⁸ Several interviewees expressed that the chingore was more active in the past than today.

⁴⁹ …munhu anoda kurima mumatoro nemumunda anoenda kuna chingore ondoti vaChingore, “Ndinodawo munda”. Mangwana mangwanani vanobuda voenda kunamambo voti “mambo ndine munhu ari kubuda pakugara nokurima”. Mambo woti, “zvakanaka ndazvinzwa zvino iwe chingore, endai mundomuratidza pane mupfudze pamatoro paangarima”. VaChingore vatumwa namambo vanoenda kundoratidza munhu munda wokurima womuratidza wogara. (Sussundenga, 1 November 2006).

⁵⁰ Aiwa, hamuna zvinonetsa panyaya yemunda nematoro nokuti munhu anenge ari paakaratidzwa kuva pamunda nematoro. (Sussundenga, 1 November 2006).

⁵¹ A machamba is primarily a subsistence plot planted with maize or sorghum and intercropped with a variety of beans, groundnuts, or peanuts.

⁵² Kutaura means to talk. By adding the suffix ana it becomes a reciprocal statement meaning talking or discussing with one another.

⁵³ J. Alexander, ‘Land and Political Authority in Post-war Mozambique: A View from Manica Province’, (University of Wisconsin-Madison, Land Tenure Centre, 1994).

⁵⁴ Das Neves, ‘Economy, Society and Labour Migration in Central Mozambique’, p. 38.

⁵⁵ J. Hanlon, Mozambique: The Revolution under Fire (London, Zed Books, 1984), p. 96.

⁵⁶ M.A. Pitcher, Politics in the Portuguese Empire: The State, Industry, and Cotton, 1926–1974 (New York, Oxford University Press), p. 183.

⁵⁷ Virtanen, ‘Land of the Ancestors’.

⁵⁸ J. Pfeiffer, ‘Desentendimento em Casa: Income, Intrahousehold Resource Allocation Labor Migration, and Child Growth in Central Mozambique’ (PhD thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1997), pp. 108–109.

⁵⁹ Alexander, ‘Land and Political Authority in Post-war Mozambique’, p. 6.

⁶⁰ Alexander, ‘Land and Political Authority in Post-war Mozambique’, p. 6.

⁶¹ Pfeiffer, ‘Desentendimento em Casa’, p. 110.

⁶² Raiva sango. (Sussundenga, 5 April 2006).

⁶³ Vakavhara nzizi ndokudziita mabarragem, vachida kuchengeta hove uye kudiridza zvirimwa zvavo matomatoe necove. (Sussundenga, 10 April 2006).

⁶⁴ Kwaiva nechibharo uye necontrato ye6meses. Vemuno vaienda kuTsetsera neTandara kwaitonhora. (Sussundenga, 6 April 2006).

⁶⁵ Vaiva vedivi ravarungu vaive vakagarika asi vaisava vedivi ravo vaitambudzwa. Vaisungwa vaichindoita contrato ye6meses. (Sussundenga, 5 April 2006).

⁶⁶ Hakusisina zvema contrato ye6meses. (Sussundenga, 5 April 2006).

⁶⁷ Kwaiva necontrato ye6meses. Pashure pe6meses dzecontrato munhu waizorora 6 meses dzinotevera. Dzinoteverazve dzacho waidokazve kucontrato. Hurumende yakabatana nevarungu vaiita kuti vanhu vaende kucontrato. (Sussundenga, 13 April 2006).

⁶⁸ Hanlon, Mozambique: The Revolution under Fire, pp. 96.

⁶⁹ Alexander, ‘Land and Political Authority in Post-war Mozambique’, p. 7.

⁷⁰ A. Isaacman and B. Isaacman, Mozambique: From Colonialism to Revolution, 1900–1982 (Boulder, Westview Press, 1983), p. 113.

⁷¹ Alexander, ‘Land and Political Authority in Post-war Mozambique’, p. 8.

⁷² Alexander, ‘Land and Political Authority in Post-war Mozambique’, p. 8; Pfieffer, ‘Desentendimento em Casa’, p. 115.

⁷³ J. Coelho, ‘State Resettlement Policies in Post-colonial Rural Mozambique: The Impact of the Communal Village Programme on Tete Province, 1977–1982’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 24, 1 (1998), pp. 61–86; Schafer and Black, ‘Conflict, Peace, and the History of Natural Resource Management’.

⁷⁴ ‘Dynamising groups’ served a variety of functions in the new villages from mobilising public work projects to raising political consciousness and choosing local leadership. See J. Hanlon, Mozambique: Who Calls the Shots? (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 11; Isaacman & Isaacman, Mozambique: From Colonialism to Revolution, pp. 116–121 for an overview of ‘dynamising groups’.

⁷⁵ H. West, ‘Sorcery of Construction and Socialist Modernization: Ways of Understanding Power in Postcolonial Mozambique’, American Ethnologist, 28, 1 (2001), p. 133.

⁷⁶ J. Alexander, ‘The Local State in Post-War Mozambique: Political Practice and Ideas about Authority’, Africa, 67, 1 (1997), pp. 1-26.

⁷⁷ H. Kyed and L. Buur, ‘New Sites of Citizenship: Recognition of Traditional Authority and Group-based Citizenship in Mozambique’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 32, 3 (2006), pp. 563–581, pp. 570.

⁷⁸ Kwaishupa nokuti vanhu vairima mangwanani; manheru votiza hondo. Vanhu vaibatwa zvechesimba pasina kusarudza zera vachiendeswa kundorwa hondo. Vaipiwawo masenha aipa nguva yokugumira kurima pazuva. (Sussundenga, 10 April 2006).

⁷⁹ Zvaisakwanisika kurima kure kure, asi mudhuze nevila chete. (Sussundenga, 5 April 2006).

⁸⁰ Waitorima uchitya kubatwa nemasoldier. Vanhu vaibatwa vaiurawa kana kumanikidzwa kuenda kuhondo. (Sussundenga, 19 April 2006).

⁸¹ Vivíamos nas mãos do governo. (Sussundenga, 5 October 2006).

⁸² ‘Os tribunais não resolvem os casos e os régulos tem medo’. (Sussundenga, 15 November 2006).

⁸³ J. Fontein, ‘Graves, Ruins, and Belonging: Towards an Anthropology of Proximity’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 17 (2011), pp. 706–27.

⁸⁴ This refers to an order after independence that people perceived as hostile to the new government had 24 hours to leave the country and could take up to 20 kilos of luggage.

⁸⁵ Based on the 1997 census, 92,622 people lived in the district while 14,977 people resided in Sussundenga-sede. Ten years later, the 2007 census recorded the district population at 129,851 (Nacional Instituto de Estatistica).

⁸⁶ See D.M. Hughes, ‘Refugees and Squatters: Immigration and the Politics of Territory on the Zimbabwe-Mozambique Border’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 25, 4 (1999), pp. 533–52 for a look at the reverse process where Mozambicans sought permission from local headmen to settle in Zimbabwe and subsequently became embroiled in boundary disputes with a private estate and conservation area. In 2005 and 2006, interviewees reported migrating from Dombe to the south, Rotanda to the west, from neighbouring provinces such as Sofala and Tete, Zimbabwe's eastern highlands, and even Harare.

⁸⁷ A. Hammar, ‘Ambivalent Mobilities: Zimbabwean Commercial Farmers in Mozambique’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 36, 2 (2010), pp. 395–416.