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areas. 185 Third, another new category of smallholders is choosing to move to the area because
of available opportunities. Fourth, land previously held by smallholders is being granted to
nonlocal smallholders, commercial interests, government employees, and retired military
personnel.
In the first instance, displaced farmers are not leaving the district. While in 1992 many
expressed a desire to leave the government-created communal villages (and indeed many
have), they have not moved out of the district. One government administrator insisted that
over 200,000 displaced people were living in Nhamatanda District in 1992 (Myers, West, and
Eliseu 1993), and ano18t6her local government official stated that only 150 families had left the
district in July 1993. When interviewed, displaced farmers gave several reasons for staying
in the locality or, conversely, for not returning to their family lands. People said that they
felt the corridor was relatively safe, and that if the war resumed they would not want to be
far away. One older man remarked that he did not want to live through the same experiences
again if the war resumed in his native area; he preferred to remain landless in Muda. Others
stated that they would not return to the rural areas outside the corridor until the government
created more positive conditions, such as access to water, health facilities, and transportation,
or until the government agreed to help them rebuild their homesteads. This latter comment
was often voiced by female household heads, who frequently had no male relatives to rebuild
1so8meon7e. homesteads or the financial means to hire
We know little about the movements of the internally displaced in Mozambique. In our
field research in Sofala, we noted that more people (most of whom were internally displaced)
had entered the district than had exited. Some families moved to the corridor because of
opportunities there, not necessarily because they have land or are from the area. 188 At the
same time, smallholders frequently acknowledged that they had divided their households
between two locations: The family household, and particularly the children, remained in the
corridor, while other members exploited farmland outside the safety of the region.
185. There is some evidence suggesting that many people chose—and were able—to leave RENAMO-held
areas for government-controlled zones shortly after the peace accord was initiated. It is likely that RENAMO
was unable to completely control the large exodus of people shortly after the accord was signed. Given food
shortages and manpower constraints, RENAMO may have opted to ignore the exodus. However, current field
research in RENAMO-administered areas shows that RENAMO has reimposed tight controls on population
movement, particularly for people entering and exiting its administrative zones (see Alexander 1994).
186. Secretary for Muda Repatriation Center, personal communication, July 1993.
187. Interviews with smallholder farmers in Lamego and Muda, July 1993.
188. UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) and several NGOs are monitoring refugee
movement; however, few are carefully observing the movement of internally displaced families, a group that
in number exceeds the refugee population by a ratio of at least 4 to 1.
Whereas estimates of the number of refugees residing in foreign countries during the war range from 1
million to 2 million, estimates for the number of internally displaced vary from 4.5 million to 6 million. World
Refugee Survey, 1984-1993, approximates that 1.7 million Mozambicans were refugees and 4 million were
internally displaced (cited in Drumtra 1993, p. 9). We believe the actual figure for refugees to be slightly higher
because many who fled to South Africa were not counted; we calculate that the number of internally displaced
is close to 5 million.