63
3. LAND ACCESS AND TENURE AFTER INDEPENDENCE
After independence, many local families attempted to acquire land in the scheme and
elsewhere in the Limpopo Valley. Between 1974 and 1976, for example, more than 6,000
families had moved into the irrigation scheme south of the city of Chokwe and an even
greater number were hoping to enter the area. Many of these people were trying to reclaim
lost land rights; those not originally from the area hoped to capitalize on new opportunities
created by Mozambican ownership of the irrigation scheme and infrastructure.'"
Most farmers were not successful in their attempts to acquire or reacquire land. The
process came to a halt in 1977, however, when the river flooded the lowlands. The
government moved smallholders from the lowlands, out of the irrigation scheme, and into
communal villages in the highlands. Perhaps 50 percent of the population of the entire
province was affected by the government villagization program (Isaacman and Isaacman 1983;
Araujo 1983, 1985). Some of those displaced claim that they had secure land rights in the
lowlands before they were dislodged; some have titles or other documents supporting their
land claims. Many communal villages (aldeias comunais) were established in both Chibuto
and Chokwe districts, and countless smallholder families were displaced from their lands. The
land available around the aldeias was often insufficient for the population and, in many cases,
was of poor quality. 19
Through nationalization, concurrent with the establishment of villages and the forced
movement of local families, the government assumed control of the irrigation scheme and the
colonato farms in Chokwe. The administration of the colonato was taken over by the central
government and converted to the Complexo Agro-Industrial do Vale do Limpopo (CAIL).
CAIL operated as a massive state farm. Local displaced smallholders were invited back to
the scheme to work, though not all who chose to work as CAIL farm laborers were
historically from the area—that is, not all state farm workers had occupied land in the area
before the colonial government established the colonato. This would lead to land conflicts in
the future since these laborers would claim land rights to which they were not historically
entitled and which would compete with those who were. At the same time, the independent
government of Mozambique created state farms by assuming control (by intervention or
nationalization) of other private colonial farms. Some of these farms, such as Matuba, were
located in the Limpopo Valley, north of the irrigation scheme (Myers, West, and Eliseu
1993).
The independent government established a new level of bureaucrats and a party structure
at the locality level, in many cases appointing officials who were not from the area. Although
these new officials were usually not former regulos (who were seen to have been collabora-
tors with the colonial power), research conducted in 1992 showed that many of the lowest-
level bureaucrats and state farm officials were related to the precolonial chiefs and colonial
regulos. It also revealed that many of the former regulos were related to former customary
118. Ibid.
119. Tanner, Myers, and Oad (1993); see also Weiss and Myers (1994).