Post-conflict Agrarian Change in Angónia

353 Pages·2015·4.65 MB·English

by  Helen Porter

Pérez-Niño, Helena (2015) Post-conflict agrarian change in Angónia : land, labour and the organization of
production in the Mozambique-Malawi borderland. PhD Thesis. SOAS, University of London.

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Post-conflict Agrarian Change in Angónia:
Land, Labour and the Organization of
Production in the Mozambique-Malawi
Borderland

Helena Pérez-Niño

Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD

2014

Department of Development Studies
SOAS, University of London
Declaration for SOAS PhD thesis

I have read and understood regulation 17.9 of the Regulations for students of the
SOAS, University of London concerning plagiarism. I undertake that all the
material presented for examination is my own work and has not been written for
me, in whole or in part, by any other person. I also undertake that any quotation
or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of another person has
been duly acknowledged in the work which I present for examination.

Signed: ____________________________ Date: _________________
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Abstract
Dominant theories in development studies see war as development in reverse
and post-conflict reconstruction as the process of building institutions and
production systems from scratch. However, wars are embedded in longer
historical processes of social change. Social change shapes wars but wars also
shape and redirect patterns of social change. This is the case for the study of
post-conflict rural development, which has largely ignored the long-term
formation of social relations of production and the effects of war-economies.
This thesis proposes a historically-grounded analysis of post-conflict agrarian
change in the context of capitalist development with particular emphasis on the
organization of production and dynamics of social differentiation. It does so by
reconstructing the formation of the agrarian regime, identifying different social
groups and their relations of production, reproduction and exchange to examine
how these were transformed by the introduction of tobacco farming in the post-
war period.
The Angónia Highlands in central Mozambique were devastated by the civil war.
Besides the loss of life, productive assets were destroyed, fields were abandoned
and around 90 per cent of the population fled as refugees to Malawi. In the
decades after the end of the war the highlands became the epicentre of an
agricultural boom linked to the post-conflict adoption of tobacco under contract
farming. This thesis reconciles these contrasting periods by revealing the
continuity of agrarian relations through war and disaggregating the experiences
of different social groups. The thesis draws on primary research in Angónia,
including a survey of tobacco farmers and archival work.
The current regime is linked to a very long history of labour market participation
and an on-going process of commodification of the relations of production. It is
also proposed that war-time labour dynamics contributed to the transformation
of the organization of production. Both have resulted in changing property
relations and a more complex class structure.The thesis concludes that social
structure and war dynamics shape the contemporary agrarian regime at different
levels: the prevailing forms of land management have created different
production regimes within the district, while the households‘ labour hiring
balance in tobacco is responsible for the considerable extent of socio-economic
differentiation that characterizes contemporary Angónia.

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Table of Contents
List of Tables and Figures ........................................................................................... 6
List of Maps ................................................................................................................. 9
Acronyms ................................................................................................................... 10
Currency equivalents ................................................................................................. 12
Glossary ..................................................................................................................... 13
Acknowledgements .................................................................................................... 16
Maps ...................................................................................................................... 18
Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 21
Working hypotheses and research questions ............................................................. 25
Structure of the thesis ................................................................................................ 28
Chapter I: Contract farming in Mozambique: a survey of the literature ......................... 32
1.1. A Political economy of contract farming ........................................................... 33
1.2. Proletarianization as a historical tendency ......................................................... 45
1.3. Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 51
Chapter II: War in a borderland: historical processes and spatial relations in the political
economy of war ............................................................................................... 53
2.1. Socio-economic dynamics and the political economy of war ............................ 54
2.2. A critique of the spatial turn in African studies .................................................. 61
2.3. Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 75
Chapter III: Agrarian change in Angónia: case study and methodology ........................ 76
3.1 Agrarian change in Angónia: presentation of the case study .............................. 76
3.2 Researching rural Mozambique: methodology of the study ............................... 90
3.3 Three research sites .......................................................................................... 108
Chapter IV: Colonial Angónia, taming a frontier and the making of a labour reserve . 117
4.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 117
4.2. The making of Angónia .................................................................................... 125
4.3 The formation of the colonial agrarian structure .............................................. 130
4.4. Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 152
Chapter V: Independence and Civil War ...................................................................... 155
5.1. Frelimo‘s political traction in Angónia during the liberation campaign .......... 157
5.2. Independent Mozambique and Frelimo in power ............................................. 160
5.3. Angónia at war.................................................................................................. 172
5.4. The Malawian decade ....................................................................................... 182
5.5. Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 194
Chapter VI: Post-conflict agricultural reconstruction in Angónia ................................ 197
6.1 The adoption of tobacco under contract in Angónia......................................... 200
6.2 Drivers of tobacco contract farming adoption in Angónia ............................... 216
6.3 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 226
Chapter VII: Land relations: lineage, vernacular market and the changing patterns of
ownership and transfer .................................................................................. 228
7.1 Kinship and patterns of household formation and residence in Angónia ......... 230
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7.2 Vernacular land markets ................................................................................... 237
7.3. Contrasting clusters in terms of the land regimes ............................................. 245
7.4. Conclusions ...................................................................................................... 248
Chapter VIII: Labour relations in Angónia: hiring in and hiring out in historical
perspective ..................................................................................................... 252
8.1 The changing labour hiring balances in Angónia ............................................. 253
8.2. Classes of labour in tobacco farming................................................................ 256
Chapter IX: Socio-economic differentiation and class formation in contemporary
Angónia ......................................................................................................... 267
9.1 Social differentiation past and present ............................................................... 271
9.2 Measuring and theorizing social differentiation ................................................ 274
9.3 Towards an agrarian class structure in Angónia ................................................ 279
9.4 Wealth and dynamism in tobacco farming ........................................................ 293
9.5 Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 296
Chapter X: Conclusions ................................................................................................ 299
References ..................................................................................................................... 310
Annexes ....................................................................................................................... 322

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List of Tables and Figures
Figure 1.1 Main themes examined .................................................................................. 28
Table 1.2 Tobacco producing households in Angónia .................................................... 35
Graph 3.1a Mozambique: Tobacco Production .............................................................. 81
Table 3.1b Distribution production units with access to credit and inputs by province . 82
Graph 3.2 Cash-crop Production in Mozambique, by Province ..................................... 83
Table 3.3a Agricultural exports Mozambique in 2011(USD) ......................................... 84
Table 3.3b Agricultural exports Mozambique in 2011(tonnes) ...................................... 84
Table 3.4 Province of Tete: Tobacco Production by District in 2011 ............................ 85
Graph 3.5 Numbers of producers and share of output .................................................... 97
Graph 3.6 Lorenz Curve of tobacco production.............................................................. 97
Table 3.7 Final survey sample ........................................................................................ 98
Table 3.8 Summary of demographic characteristics of the sample .............................. 108
Figure 3.9 Schema of survey clusters ........................................................................... 109
Figure 4.1 Parental labour migrations by destination ................................................... 122
Figures 4.2 and 4.3 All eligible men in the sample divided in age cohorts .................. 123
Figure 4.3 Cohort 1, long distance labour migration by destination ............................. 124
Table 4.4 Tax-payers and forced labour in Tete, 1948 ................................................. 144
Table 4.5 Wage differentials in Sena Sugar Estates in 1931 ........................................ 147
Table 4.6 Angónia, location of able-bodied men registered in 1952 ............................ 151
Table 4.7 Destination of recruited forced labour from Angónia, 1952 ......................... 151
Table 5.1 Displacement and victimization of respondents in the sample ..................... 178
Graph 5.2 Year in which respondents fled their villages .............................................. 178
Table 5.3 Mozambican IDPs and refugees by destination ............................................ 183
Table 5.4 Origin of refugees in Malawi by province in 1993 ....................................... 184
Table 5.5 Return from Malawi by district of origin in 1993 ......................................... 184
Table 5.6 Respondent‘s economic activities during the war ......................................... 189
Graph 5.7 Year in which respondents returned to Angónia .......................................... 194
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Table 6.1 Tobacco indicators ........................................................................................ 203
Figure 6.2 Tobacco Value of Exports 1990-2011 (1000 US$) ..................................... 204
Figure 6.3 Unmanufactured Tobacco Production 1979-2011 (tonnes) ......................... 204
Table 6.4 Tobacco sectors: institutional arrangements ................................................. 205
Table 6.5 Tobacco concessions in 2005 ........................................................................ 210
Figure 6.6 Tobacco: area under cultivation by province (ha) ....................................... 214
Table 7.1a Survey respondents‘ marital status by gender ............................................. 231
Table 7.1b Survey respondents‘ marital status by cluster ............................................. 231
Table 7.2 Household residential patterns ...................................................................... 233
Table 7.3 Fields worked after marriage ........................................................................ 234
Table 7.4a Respondents who received land from their family ...................................... 235
Table 7.4b Landholding size for fields received from own family ............................... 235
Table 7.5 Land inherited by the household ................................................................... 236
Table 7.6a Headcount of respondents by channel of access to land and gender ........... 243
Table 7.6b Headcount of respondents by channel of access to land and cluster ........... 243
Table 7.7 Size of landholdings by channel of access to land* ....................................... 244
Table 7.8 Average landholding size by cluster ............................................................. 245
Table 7.9 Average area in tobacco by cluster (ha) ........................................................ 245
Table 7.10 Average income from tobacco by cluster (Meticais) .................................. 246
Graph 7.11 Residential patterns by cluster ................................................................... 246
Graph 7.12 Marital residential patterns in first union by age cohort (percentage) ....... 247
Table 8.1 Tobacco farmers, dominant productive dynamics ......................................... 255
Table 8.2 Maximum number of ganyu workers hired in a day 2011-2012 ................... 259
Table 8.3 Total number of seasoni workers hired during 2011-2012 ........................... 261
Table 9.1 Tobacco farmers by revenue quartiles (in Meticais) ..................................... 275
Table 9.1 Proposed class structure in tobacco agriculture in Angónia ......................... 282
Table 9.2 Classes of tobacco farmers in Angónia ......................................................... 287
Table 9.3 Detail of petty capitalist farmers hiring practices by subgroup .................... 291
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Table 9.4 Detail of petty commodity producers hiring practices by subgroup ............. 293
Table 9.5 Average number of workers hired by class of farmers ................................. 294
Table 9.6 Landholding and area in tobacco .................................................................. 295
Table 9.7 Average tobacco revenue in 2012 by classes of farmers (Meticais) ............. 295
Table 9.8 Farmers that own high value assets per category .......................................... 296

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List of Maps
Map 1.1 Mozambique .................................................................................................... 18
Map 1.2 District of Angónia, Province of Tete ............................................................. 19
Map 1.3 District of Angónia, Divisions Ulongue and Domwe ...................................... 19
Map 1.4 Sub-district of Ulongue ................................................................................... 20
Map 3.1 The district of Angónia after the 1986 territorial reform .................................. 79
Map 4.1 Nguni migrations and states in East Southern Africa, 19th century. ............... 131
Map 4.2 Portuguese prazos in the Zambezi ca. 1650 .................................................. 131
Map 4.3 Angónia and other recruitment areas for Sena Sugar Estates 1930-1960 ....... 141
Map 5.1 Field research sites in Angónia during the post-war period ........................... 174
Map 5.2 Electoral results first post-conflict election of 1994 ....................................... 181

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