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The frequency of reported land conflicts, often of a violent nature, is increasing
dramatically throughout the country. Conflicts have been recorded in every province; they
are occurring most often in areas where population is dense and capital investment is
prodigious. It is obvious that there is a relationship between population density, capital
investment, and official land concessions, on one hand, and the occurrence, location, and
frequency of land conflicts, on the other.
Customary authorities in Mozambique lack an officially sanctioned role in the process of
land distribution. Indeed, customary authorities are rarely encouraged by formal administra-
tors to become involved in the process of land distribution to commercial interests; more
frequently they are isolated or ignored. Efforts to bypass customary leaders, whether
successful or not, have affected power relationships at the local level, creating tensions within
many communities. It has also curtailed the power of customary authorities to protect and
defend their own positions as well as their ability to defend the resources of their communities
against acquisition by the state or private economic interests.
Smallholders and some larger commercial interests are gaining access to land in a variety
of ways, but this process is not well understood by policymakers and other government
officials in Mozambique. Farmers acquire land by reclaiming old "family land." For
smallholders, family land may include parcels to which they had rights in precolonial times,
holdings that they received or that they were forced onto during the colonial era, or areas that
were given to them after independence. Family land may be land that formerly belonged to
a private colonial farm, a colonial government-created village, a state farm, or a postindepen-
dence government-created village. Research reveals that in many areas there are multiple
conceivable claimants to the same piece of land. Many categories of people, with varying
degrees of justification, assert rights to land, though some feel that their claims have legal
basis. These beliefs that claimants' demands are legitimate make many land disputes
especially complex and acrimonious.
Smallholders are gaining access to land in other ways as well. They are clearing bush that
they consider to be unoccupied (but is usually part of their community's land). They are also
squatting on former colonial private farms and state farms, acquiring plots as tenants of new
commercial farmers, and occasionally purchasing rights to land. In a very few cases,
smallholders are receiving land through government-granted concessions (however, in most
reported cases these concessions were temporary).
The research shows that many former refugees and displaced families are leaving refugee
camps and other areas to which they were relocated, and it is clear that in many cases they
are moving to areas that do not contain home or family lands. In some instances, former
refugees and displaced people are unsure of where they should go; in others, smallholders are
choosing to move to localities that offer the best economic opportunities or the best physical
security, regardless of whether it is "where they came from." Other farmers are dividing their
time between two locations. Where or when people move—and what they do when they get
to the new locale—depends on many factors, including where they came from, how long they
were displaced, and the conditions they find in their new location. Government predictions
that refugees and displaced families will return to their areas of origin have proved