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farmers who remained in the area did not keep or acquire rights to land. On the contrary,
many smallholders are farming in the corridor, albeit often on marginal lands in scattered
locations. Some farmers admitted to gaining access to land (usually on a temporary basis) by
clearing land that had gone to bush. One farmer in Muda was aware that the former
Portuguese owner might return soon and that he would have to abandon the land he had
cleared. Others said that they had secured land through customary lease arrangements: they
had borrowed land for a season from local families and paid in either cash or labor for its
use. A smaller number of farmers reported that they had purchased rights to land, usually on
a seasonal or temporary basis. 200 Finally, several farmers reported that they or other family
members acquired land through squatting.
We do intend to convey, however, that numerous returning refugees, displaced families,
and indigenous farmers are competing with each other for access to a limited resource in a
constrained area. At the same time, they are challenged with nonlocal commercial interests
who are buying land or acquiring land concessions from government officials.
Interaction among smallholders over access to potentially problematic land differed,
however. For example, in one case, an old man who had worked as the capatez (overseer)
on a colonial farm refused to allow squatters on the land, let alone any monetized
transactions. In another location, one family that claimed historical rights to land, which was
occupied by a Portuguese farmer during the colonial period, was leasing to landless families.
In some cases, land disputes were easily resolved; and in other instances, customary
authorities or government officials were asked to intervene. 201 Interaction between
smallholders and private commercial interests and between smallholders and the state was also
dissimilar. As noted, in some cases smallholders simply abandoned land that had been
distributed to commercial interests or reclaimed by returning enterprises; however, in other
cases farmers resisted such encroachment by remaining on the land and farming in marginal
areas, by squatting on prime land, and by registering complaints with locality government
officials. It is interesting that newly displaced families did not complain to local customary
authorities in any of these cases involving the state or commercial interests; instead, they
identified government officials and demanded solutions from them.
We found that tenure security was weak for many smallholders in Nhamatanda District.
Many rural families were obviously focusing only on the short term—they were planting for
the current season and hoped to reap their harvests before being expelled or forced to leave.
200. One farmer in Lamego affirmed that in 1992 the price for land outside the corridor was 100,000
meticais per hectare.
201. This disparate process requires closer examination; it is likely that such an investigation would reveal
more of the internal dynamics affecting control over natural resources at the local level.