Pérez-Niño, Helena (2015) Post-conflict agrarian change in Angónia : land, labour and the organization of production in the Mozambique-Malawi borderland. PhD Thesis. SOAS, University of London. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/20386 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this PhD Thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This PhD Thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this PhD Thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the PhD Thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full PhD Thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD PhD Thesis, pagination. Post-conflict Agrarian Change in Angónia: Land, Labour and the Organization of Production in the Mozambique-Malawi Borderland Helena Pérez-Niño Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD 2014 Department of Development Studies SOAS, University of London Declaration for SOAS PhD thesis I have read and understood regulation 17.9 of the Regulations for students of the SOAS, University of London concerning plagiarism. I undertake that all the material presented for examination is my own work and has not been written for me, in whole or in part, by any other person. I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in the work which I present for examination. Signed: ____________________________ Date: _________________ 2 Abstract Dominant theories in development studies see war as development in reverse and post-conflict reconstruction as the process of building institutions and production systems from scratch. However, wars are embedded in longer historical processes of social change. Social change shapes wars but wars also shape and redirect patterns of social change. This is the case for the study of post-conflict rural development, which has largely ignored the long-term formation of social relations of production and the effects of war-economies. This thesis proposes a historically-grounded analysis of post-conflict agrarian change in the context of capitalist development with particular emphasis on the organization of production and dynamics of social differentiation. It does so by reconstructing the formation of the agrarian regime, identifying different social groups and their relations of production, reproduction and exchange to examine how these were transformed by the introduction of tobacco farming in the post- war period. The Angónia Highlands in central Mozambique were devastated by the civil war. Besides the loss of life, productive assets were destroyed, fields were abandoned and around 90 per cent of the population fled as refugees to Malawi. In the decades after the end of the war the highlands became the epicentre of an agricultural boom linked to the post-conflict adoption of tobacco under contract farming. This thesis reconciles these contrasting periods by revealing the continuity of agrarian relations through war and disaggregating the experiences of different social groups. The thesis draws on primary research in Angónia, including a survey of tobacco farmers and archival work. The current regime is linked to a very long history of labour market participation and an on-going process of commodification of the relations of production. It is also proposed that war-time labour dynamics contributed to the transformation of the organization of production. Both have resulted in changing property relations and a more complex class structure.The thesis concludes that social structure and war dynamics shape the contemporary agrarian regime at different levels: the prevailing forms of land management have created different production regimes within the district, while the households‘ labour hiring balance in tobacco is responsible for the considerable extent of socio-economic differentiation that characterizes contemporary Angónia. 3 Table of Contents List of Tables and Figures ........................................................................................... 6 List of Maps ................................................................................................................. 9 Acronyms ................................................................................................................... 10 Currency equivalents ................................................................................................. 12 Glossary ..................................................................................................................... 13 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................... 16 Maps ...................................................................................................................... 18 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 21 Working hypotheses and research questions ............................................................. 25 Structure of the thesis ................................................................................................ 28 Chapter I: Contract farming in Mozambique: a survey of the literature ......................... 32 1.1. A Political economy of contract farming ........................................................... 33 1.2. Proletarianization as a historical tendency ......................................................... 45 1.3. Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 51 Chapter II: War in a borderland: historical processes and spatial relations in the political economy of war ............................................................................................... 53 2.1. Socio-economic dynamics and the political economy of war ............................ 54 2.2. A critique of the spatial turn in African studies .................................................. 61 2.3. Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 75 Chapter III: Agrarian change in Angónia: case study and methodology ........................ 76 3.1 Agrarian change in Angónia: presentation of the case study .............................. 76 3.2 Researching rural Mozambique: methodology of the study ............................... 90 3.3 Three research sites .......................................................................................... 108 Chapter IV: Colonial Angónia, taming a frontier and the making of a labour reserve . 117 4.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 117 4.2. The making of Angónia .................................................................................... 125 4.3 The formation of the colonial agrarian structure .............................................. 130 4.4. Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 152 Chapter V: Independence and Civil War ...................................................................... 155 5.1. Frelimo‘s political traction in Angónia during the liberation campaign .......... 157 5.2. Independent Mozambique and Frelimo in power ............................................. 160 5.3. Angónia at war.................................................................................................. 172 5.4. The Malawian decade ....................................................................................... 182 5.5. Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 194 Chapter VI: Post-conflict agricultural reconstruction in Angónia ................................ 197 6.1 The adoption of tobacco under contract in Angónia......................................... 200 6.2 Drivers of tobacco contract farming adoption in Angónia ............................... 216 6.3 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 226 Chapter VII: Land relations: lineage, vernacular market and the changing patterns of ownership and transfer .................................................................................. 228 7.1 Kinship and patterns of household formation and residence in Angónia ......... 230 4 7.2 Vernacular land markets ................................................................................... 237 7.3. Contrasting clusters in terms of the land regimes ............................................. 245 7.4. Conclusions ...................................................................................................... 248 Chapter VIII: Labour relations in Angónia: hiring in and hiring out in historical perspective ..................................................................................................... 252 8.1 The changing labour hiring balances in Angónia ............................................. 253 8.2. Classes of labour in tobacco farming...............................................................