82
The prazo system was abolished in 1930 and the colonial government assumed direct
administrative control over more than 260,000 square kilometers (26 million hectares) of land
throughout the country. Sofala and Manica provinces were administered as one district
covering approximately 12.5 million hectares. Economic and administrative zones were
established after 1938 and twelve companies were given monopolistic control over the
production of cotton. The companies were allowed to buy cotton from native producers at
artificially depressed prices (lower than the prices paid to white settlers). These zones covered
more than half the country; two of them, Companhia Colonial do Buzi and Companhia
Nacional Algodoeira, covered vast areas in Sofala and Manica provinces. In these zones, the
government inSLisbon imposed a policy of forced cotton cultivation on indigenous black
Mozambicans.'
In the face of growing opposition (largely but not exclusively from black Mozambicans)
and the successes of FRELIMO in the early 1960s, the colonial government initiated the
development of the aldeamentos and colonatos. Aldeamentos were part of a forced
villagization program; peasants were moved into "strategic hamlets" as a buffer against
FRELIMO advances and to optimize colonial control of the local population. Aldeamentos
were created all over the country, particularly in the northern provinces of Tete, Niassa, and
Cabo Delgado. Between 50 and 60 percent of the indigenous population in these three
provinces was forcibly relocated, 153 resulting in population concentration, landlessness, and
declining agricultural productivity. The colonial regime did not begin the villagization
program in Sofala and Manica until 1971, and by then the government had few resources to
devote to its implementation.'
At about the same time in the 1960s, the colonial government started a colonization
program using colonatos. These colonies of white settlers and a few assimilados (assimilated
black Mozambicans) also were often located in strategic military areas; they, too, were used
as buffers against the advances of FRELIMO. The settlers were mostly poor Portuguese
farmers. The colonial government selected large tracts of prime land, surveyed and cleared
blocks for the colonos, and provided low-interest credit, seeds, and technical services. The
tracts were frequently already occupied by indigenous smallholder farmers, who were forced
off the land but who either remained on marginal land around the periphery of the colonato
or stayed on their old land as tenants of the colonos. Several of these blocks were established
in Sofala and Manica provinces. One colonato in Sussundenga District, Manica Province,
he5ctare5s.1 covered approximately 18,000
152. Isaacman and Isaacman (1983); Isaacman (1992, 1982, 1972); Lundin (1992a, 1992b); and Henriksen
(1983).
153. Ibid. See also Coelho (1993).
154. Ibid.
155. Alexander (1994); interviews with Hermes Sueiai, UREA (Unidaide de Reestrutacao de Empresas
Agrarias), Ministry of Agriculture, Maputo, February 1992 and August 1993.