70
sector commercial interests and joint-venture enterprises acquired land concessions. There
appear to be many people in the district who are from the district but who have no place to
live and little or no land to farm (see map 8). Some farmers who lived and farmed in the area
northwest of Matuba have returned to their farms and homesteads. The land in this area is
population of poor quality, however, and will support only a small
When the first round of field interviews was conducted in May 1993, farmers displaced
to Chilembene had just started to return to Chaimite. Most were quite insecure about their
safety and often said that they expected the war to resume. As a consequence, farmers were
investing a minimal amount of time and resources in agricultural production. A lot of time
was being spent on renegotiating land rights and land access with other returning farmers and
displaced families. Given the government relocation and villagization programs, farmers
returning to Chaimite were not always certain where they should farm. Some farmers in
Chaimite expressed concern that they would be forced to move again.
Most of the farmers interviewed in Chaimite were women, who reported several different
land-use strategies. Some of them were the vanguard of their families, responsible for
opening new lands or recovering family lands while their husbands and/or children remained
behind in Chilembene. In other cases, older wives remained with children while husbands and
senior sons moved back to Chaimite. Those who remained in Chilembene did so because they
wanted to maximize their access to resources and government services—and minimize risks
involved in a move away from those resources and areas they perceived as relatively secure.
Some women in Chilembene continued to work as laborers on other people's farms rather
than return immediately to Chaimite. Some reported that they remained in Chilembene to
protect their houses, which the government was destroying or threatening to destroy if they
were abandoned; others, displaced from greater distances, were attempting to farm in
Chaimite on a temporary basis until they could move on or return to their family lands.
A majority of the people interviewed in the centers for displaced people were women.
Many of them reported that they were waiting for their husbands to return from South Africa
before they made a decision to leave the camps. In some cases, women were forced to remain
in the camps in Chilembene because they lacked the financial resources to move.
There were at least two categories of individuals who were voluntarily displaced and
attempting to farm in the area: those arriving from RENAMO-administered areas, and
families from Chokwe District who had been relocated by the colonial and state farms. It also
became apparent that a new category of the displaced was emerging in Chaimite, that is,
individuals who were losing land to the private sector as the district and provincial
governments distributed land to commercial interests. Farmers reported that the lowlands
close to the river were difficult to recover since they were most often occupied or claimed
by such private commercial interests. Farmers and locality officials confirmed that locality
officials, infrequently in coordination with customary authorities, granted land to smallhold-
ers. Most of these grants were for land in the highlands, farthest (from 0.5 to 4 kilometers)
from the river.
133. See Weiss and Myers (1994); and Myers and Weiss (1994).