Ambivalent mobilities: Zimbabwean commercial farmers in Mozambique

Journal of Southern African Studies

Volumn 36, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 395-416

  Hammar, Amanda ^a,b  

^a NORDIC AFRICA INSTITUTE   (Sweden)

^b UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN   (Denmark)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AGRICULTURAL WORKER; FORCED MIGRATION; LABOR MIGRATION; MIGRANT WORKER; MIGRANTS EXPERIENCE; MOBILITY; POPULATION MIGRATION; RELOCATION;

MANICA; MOZAMBIQUE; ZIMBABWE;

EID: 77954164749     PISSN: 03057070     EISSN: 14653893     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2010.485791     Document Type: Article

References (107)

1. Within Zimbabwe, this also included forms of 'displacement in place' or in situ displacement. See for example Magaramombe, this volume, and S. Lubkemann, Culture in Chaos: An Anthropology of the Social Condition of War (Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 2008) for a broader discussion of this concept.
2. For an overview see A. Hammar, 'Reflections on Displacement in Zimbabwe', Concerned Africa Scholars (ACAS) Bulletin, 80 (Autumn 2008).
3. The General Agriculture and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe (GAPWUZ) estimated in 2008 that 350,000 black farm workers had been displaced since 2000. Violent attacks on the remaining few hundred white-owned farms have escalated since the Global Political Agreement came into effect in February 2009. A further 66,000 farm workers are reported to have been displaced between February and September 2009. See 'New Invasions Leave 66,000 Farmworkers Homeless in Zimbabwe', Earth Times (US), 25 September 2009.
4. For a selection of various perspectives see J. Alexander, The Unsettled Land: State-making & the Politics of Land in Zimbabwe 1983-2003 (Oxford, James Currey; Harare, Weaver Press; Athens, Ohio University Press, 2006)
5. B. Kinsey, 'Zimbabwe's Land Reform Programme: Underinvestment in Post-Conflict Transformation', World Development, 32, 10 (2004), pp. 1,669-1,696.
6. D.S. Moore, Suffering for Territory. Race, Place and Power in Zimbabwe (Durham NC and London, Duke University Press; Harare, Weaver Press, 2005).
7. S. Moyo and P. Yeros, 'Land Occupations and Land Reform in Zimbabwe: Towards the National Democratic Revolution', in S. Moyo and P. Yeros (eds), Reclaiming the Land: The Resurgence of Rural Movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America (London, Zed Books; Cape Town, David Philip, 2005), pp. 163-205
8. L.M. Sachikonye, 'From "Growth with Equity" to "Fast Track" Reform: Zimbabwe's Land Question', Review of African Political Economy, 30, 96 (2003), pp. 227-40.
9. Other research focused on the effects of the Zimbabwe crisis on Mozambique, and Manica Province in particular, is gradually emerging. See, for example, A. Bolding, 'The Dynamics of Smallholder Irrigation Furrows in the Mozambique-Zimbabwe Borderlands: A Resilient Force of Agrarian Modernisation or a Last Resort for Marginal Communities?', paper presented at AEGIS-ECAS Conference, Leiden, July 2007, in panel on 'Political Economies of Displacement in Southern Africa'.
10. There was no single primary location from which most of the migrants came. They had farmed in places as diverse as Banket, Chiredzi, Darwendale, Harare, Headlands, Hwedza, Karoi, Lalapanzi, Masvingo, Mvurwi, Mutare, Raffingora. The majority seemed to have been engaged in mixed farming operations, combining a primary crop such as tobacco, sugar or maize with some cattle-raising and vegetable growing. Specialised intensive farming such as horticulture and flowers was less prominent, as was extensive cattle ranching.
11. On 'lifescapes', see S. Lubkemann, 'Involuntary Immobility: On a Theoretical Invisibility in Forced Migration Studies', Journal of Refugee Studies, 21, 4 (2008), pp. 454-75.
12. See Parsons, in this issue of JSAS, on the issue of grief.
13. On related paradoxes, see A-M. Simone, 'Introduction: Urban Process and Change', in A-M. Simone and A. Abouhani (eds), Urban Africa: Changing Contours of Survival in the City (Dakar, CODESRIA, London and New York, Zed Books, Pretoria, University of South Africa Press, 2005), pp. 1-26.
14. see also Lubkemann, 'Involuntary Immobility'.
15. See Bolding, 'The Dynamics of Smallholder Irrigation Furrows'.
16. This is distinct from work on the Zimbabwean-run commercial farms. Officially, the Zimbabwean commercial farmers were not allowed to employ Zimbabwean workers, since employment creation for local Mozambicans was one of the reasons for welcoming the farmers initially. But some of the former Zimbabwean farm workers nonetheless managed to arrange Mozambican papers for themselves.
17. F.P.T. Duri, 'Informal Negotiation of National Borders for Survival: The Foray of Mutare's Marginalised People to and from Mozambique, 2000-2008', paper presented at colloquium, 'Exploring the Hidden Dimensions of the Zimbabwe Crisis', Wits University, Johannesburg, 1-2 July 2009.
18. This constituted approximately half of the total (estimated) number of migrant farmers at the peak in the mid- 2000s. The actual number at any given time has not been possible to establish to date, but consistently the figure of 'about 80' was given by those interviewed.
19. J. Berger, The Shape of a Pocket (New York, Pantheon Books, 2001), p. 16. Of course, this is not uncommon in certain strands of anthropology.
20. See for example H.G. West, Ethnographic Sorcery (Chicago and London, Chicago University Press, 2007).
21. Around the same time, others were moving to Zambia, Malawi and elsewhere in the region or even as far as Nigeria, where British rather than Portuguese colonial history made official procedures and language more intelligible, in principle.
22. See O. Juergensen and H.P Krugman, 'Paradise Lost? A Blueprint for Niassa', Southern Africa Report, 12, 2 (1997). Mosagrius, an agricultural development programme, was a scheme agreed upon between the Mozambican and South African governments in May 1996, based on a concession of 220,000ha to a group of white Afrikaner farmers from South Africa for a combination of agriculture, cattle-ranching and eco-tourism. Only a few dozen farmers ever came, and within a few years all but a handful had left as the anticipated investment finance never materialised. The STS proposal notwithstanding, the conditions of migration of the Zimbabwean farmers, and the actual size of land allocations and forms of commercial agriculture undertaken in Manica Province, could not be compared with the Niassa experience.
23. My thanks to David Hughes for pointing me towards this lead.
24. While I gained access to some of the STS documentation for the proposed scheme, and many of the migrant farmers who felt 'conned' provided names of individuals who had worked for STS in some capacity or other, numerous attempts to contact the senior figures in the company proved fruitless. As such, it could not be established whose interests and what kind of capital underpinned the company, or if indeed it was still operational at the time of my research.
25. Each of these companies has an instructive story to tell in terms of understanding the conditions, struggles and effects of the Zimbabwean farmers in Manica Province, and their relationship to the role of local and global dynamics in broader processes of agrarian change. Unfortunately, there is no space here to recount these tales in detail. Suffice to say that Vilmar Roses eventually closed down due to a combination of allegedly poor management and fraudulent financing practices related to the funders; Vanduzi was bought out by British-based investors and expanded to become an important horticultural producer in the area, and significant employer of local labour in its packing plant (although in 2009 there were changes in management and at one point threats to close down because of the impossibly high costs of electricity); and only Gouda Gold remained in the hands of its original Zimbabwe owners (the Evanses) and continues to be successful, having accessed Dutch public-private sector financing with which to expand from cheese to milk production. Gradually, other successful farming and non-farming ventures have emerged - such as a pig farm in Sussundenga District, a building company in Chimoio - while others are in development.
26. See J. Hanlon and T. Smart, Do Bicycles Equal Development in Mozambique? (Oxford, James Currey, 2008). Hanlon and Smart refer to the subsequent downturn - somewhat simplistically - as 'the failed Manica Miracle'. Certainly, some of the figures provided (by Brendon Evans, former chairperson of the Zimbabwe farmers' association in Manica) about the dramatic drop in production after the peak in 2004, are indicative of a 'bust' on one level: for example, hectares of tobacco grown commercially in Manica Province dropped from a peak of 1,650 ha (having risen from 202 ha in 2001) to 280 ha in 2005; hectares of paprika between 2005 and 2006 dropped from 340 ha to 30 ha, and maize from 900 ha in 2004 to 70 ha by 2006. Even if total hectarage at the peak was low compared with commercial farming levels in pre-2000 Zimbabwe, it was a meaningful increase for this part of Mozambique, and the losses both to the farmers themselves and to labour and market growth were significant. However, my argument here is that it is insufficient to focus only on this boom/bust cycle around these activities. My own fieldwork over a number of years indicates that both the period before and after the so- called boom were much more diverse and complex and point to a far broader mix of actual and potential agricultural and related options for growth and poverty reduction in the area, depending on both internal (policy, support) and external (financing, market) factors.
27. MH, Chimoio, 20 May 2009.
28. See, for example, M.F. Chingono, The State, Violence and Development: The Political Economy of War in Mozambique, 1975-1992 (Aldershot, Avebury, 1996).
29. H. Englund, From War to Peace on the Mozambique- Malawi Borderland (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2002).
30. See P. Gibbon (ed.), Structural Adjustment and the Working Poor in Zimbabwe (Uppsala, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1995).
31. See P. Virtanen and D. Ehrenpreis, Growth, Poverty and Inequality in Mozambique, International Poverty Centre Country Study No. 10 (Brasilia, International Poverty Centre, 2007). They note an average of over seven per cent real annual growth rate during the 2000s, yet limited distribution of benefits means over half the population (an estimated ten million people) still live in absolute poverty.
32. Specifically, for analyses of international aid and private sector investment in post-independence Mozambique, see J. Hanlon, Peace Without Profit: How the IMF Blocks Rebuilding in Mozambique (Portsmouth NH, Heinemann, 1996).
33. M.A. Pitcher, Transforming Mozambique: The Politics of Privatization, 1975-2000 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002).
34. For a more recent critique of 'development' in Mozambique, see Hanlon and Smart, Do Bicycles Equal Development in Mozambique?
35. One response to the boom was the opening of a Zimbabwe-run private school in Chimoio to cater for the new migrant families, but which at one time even had boarders coming from people still resident in Zimbabwe. When the bulk of the farmers left Manica around 2005/6 the school faced serious viability problems and had to look to other local constituencies to rebuild its pupil base. Although innovative in many ways, the school - which taught all classes in English and geared itself towards international exam systems - prided itself on retaining strict 'Zimbabwean' values of 'discipline' and 'good manners'.
36. Under Mozambique's Land Law (1997), land can only ever be leased not owned and cannot be accessed without a process of 'community consultation' with local area residents. The extent to which such land is locally contested depends in large part on availability, and in most parts of Manica Province sufficient land for commercial purposes was said to be available. However, intense contestations over land have been reported in some areas such as parts of Barue District along the border with Zimbabwe, where Frelimo local party elites are allegedly trying to gain land through strong-arm tactics. Personal communication with Alex Bolding.
37. Figures from a presentation made by Brendon Evans, then chairperson of the Zimbabwe farmers' association in Manica Province (see AICAIM below), to a public meeting in Maputo, May 2006.
38. Evans presentation, see above. The figures did not distinguish between permanent and temporary workers.
39. This development could have had political as much as commercial significance, given Frelimo's interests in 'colonising' Manica and curtailing Renamo's historical domination in the area. On Renamo's origins and popularity in the province see Chingono, The State, Violence and Development.
40. Association of Commercial, Industrial and Agricultural Investors of Manica.
41. Figures for the number of white Zimbabweans operating farms or businesses in the area since 2000 - provided formally and informally by different sources - have ranged from 42 (Hanlon and Smart, Do Bicycles Equal Development in Mozambique?) to perhaps 100 at most. My own unconfirmed estimates are more in the region of 80 at the peak, around 2004/2005. Numbers have dwindled since then, possibly to around half of that. Part of the complication of counting is not knowing whether figures provided or guessed at refer to enterprises or actual numbers of people, since, as indicated, some migrated/operated as individuals and some as syndicates; some came with families or part families, some alone; and some settled part-time, some full-time. 33 Although the Association was open in principle to Mozambicans, the meetings were all conducted in English, and the few Mozambicans who initially attended soon withdrew from frustration.
42. See for example P. von Blanckenburg, Large Commercial Farmers and Land Reform in Africa: The Case of Zimbabwe (Aldershot, Avebury, 1994).
43. Interview with SM, Chimoio, 7 October 2006. 36 Interview with PR, Chimoio, 11 October 2006. 37 Interview with AR, Chimoio, 11 October 2006.
44. On the situation of white commercial farmers both pre- and post-2000, see Angus Selby's unpublished doctoral thesis, Commercial Farmers and the State: Interest Group Politics and Land Reform in Zimbabwe (Oxford, Oxford University, UK, 2006).
45. See V. Crapanzano, Waiting: The Whites of South Africa (London, Paladin, 1986). According to Hughes, white Zimbabwean farmers under threat or actually evicted from their farms in Mashonaland East in the early 2000s, while remaining in the rural sphere, attempted to re-invent themselves in one of three possible modes: as conservationists, missionaries, or agricultural development advisers (the latter described as a contemporary version of 'native commissioners').
46. See D.M. Hughes, '"Playing the Game" on Zimbabwe's White Highlands', paper presented at international conference on 'Political Economies of Displacement in Post-2000 Zimbabwe', Nordic Africa Institute and Wits University, Johannesburg, 9-11 June 2008. These options were not available to Zimbabweans in Mozambique.
47. Interview with DH, Harare, May 2009.
48. Historically, there were no commercial agricultural banks in Mozambique, and only recently some have begun opening up for this, alongside a few limited donor-funded, development-oriented grant and loan facilities managed by non-governmental organisations.
49. Interview with GB, Chimoio, May 2009.
50. In Zimbabwe, these aspects of the tobacco business were kept completely separate.
51. Some farmers reinforced these views of a few of their colleagues. I could not verify these accusations or refute them in any substantial way. However, my own direct experience and observations of those I interviewed did not hold up to this representation.
52. These trends, and their impacts on production, were well documented by AICAIM.
53. According to the MLT office in Chimoio, by 2008 the company had established contracts with up to 35,000 small-scale growers across Tete Province. This supplied the tobacco processing factory it had recently built in Tete town, employing close to 4,000 workers, which itself was a significant political factor in successfully monopolising government allocated operating concessions in the area. In 2008, MLT had established similar out- grower contracts with up to 6,000 growers in Manica Province, initially with plans to expand considerably. However, by 2010 the company was supporting only those small-scale growers who had paid back loans from the previous season, and were no longer planning an expansion. Logistical challenges in some terrain and broader problems of viability seemed to have affected the decision to scale back in this province. Growers who have left the sector have reverted to growing traditional crops of maize, beans and so on. Thanks to Grant Taylor (personal communication) for insights concerning recent developments.
54. See 'Mozambique: Country to Export 43,000 Tonnes of Tobacco', AIM, 2 September 2009 (accessed: http:// allafrica.com/stories/200909020926.html 3 October 2009).
55. S. Taylor, Lost in Africa (Johannesburg, 308 South Publishers, 2007). Besides recounting the period of farm invasions in Zimbabwe, the final chapter speaks of his time in Mozambique - referred to as 'Mozambleak' - and lists various professional and personal disasters blamed in combination on tobacco companies, the climate, dubious work partners and employers, and local thieves, as well as on his own penchant for heavy drinking and overly-ambitious river-crossing.
56. K. Uusihakala, Memory Meanders: Place, Home and Commemoration in an Ex-Rhodesia Diaspora Community (Ph.D. Dissertation, Research Series in Anthropology, Helsinki, Helsinki University Press, 2008).
57. Ibid., p. 214
58. Ibid. p. 215
59. B. Rutherford, Working on the Margins: Black Workers, White Farmers in Postcolonial Zimbabwe (London, Zed Books; Harare, Weaver Press, 2001).
60. My own identity as a Zimbabwean had always entailed an explicit distancing from any self-consciously 'white' community. More specifically it included a distancing from 'white farmers'. The kind of dogmatism this latter position entailed was necessarily challenged during the course of this research.
61. M. Jackson, In Sierra Leone (Durham, NC and London, Duke University Press, 2004).
62. Other implicit layers of race and power clearly remain entangled in these relationships, which will not be addressed here.
63. Determined to honour the contract he had signed with MLT, he was one of the few farmers still growing tobacco.
64. Interview with BH, Chimoio, 20 May 2009.
65. Interview with SM, 23 January 2008.
66. See, for example, 'White farmers flee to Mozambique', The Namibian (online), 20 December 2001
67. 'White farmers look to Mozambique', BBC World News (online), 15 August 2002
68. 'Exiled Zimbabwe farmers offered land in Mozambique', Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online, 25 November 2002. Any objections expressed by the ZANU(PF) government in Zimbabwe were evidently ignored.
69. For background on the gaps and contradictions of Mozambique's post-independence agricultural policy making, see H.G. West and G. Myers, 'A Piece of Land in a Land of Peace? State Farm Divestiture in Mozambique', Journal of Modern African Studies, 34, 1 (1996), pp. 27-51.
70. See 'Zim Farmers Bring Hope - and Anxiety to Mozambique', Cape Argus, 29 January 2004.
71. In practice, it seemed few farmers were working areas much larger than 30 to 50 ha.
72. On both the progressive nature of Mozambique's 1997 Land Law, and challenges to its actual implementation, see C. Tanner, 'The Reform and Implementation of Land Policy in Mozambique - a Case Study of FAO Support', Land Reform/Réforme Agraire/Reforma Agrarian, 2002/2 (online version).
73. By contrast, there have been reports of fairly intense conflicts over land in some parts of Barue District, close to the border with Zimbabwe in the north-western part of the district, where Frelimo local party elites are allegedly trying to gain access to land by muscling out local farmers.
74. See '50 Farmers Move to Mozambique', The Zimbabwe Independent, 28 June 2002
75. Zim Farmers Flood Mozambique', News 24 (SA), 14 October 2003.
76. See, for example, 'Zim Farmers Make Work in Moz', News24 (SA), 13 January 2004
77. 'Resettled Zim Farmers Create 4,000 Jobs', Business Day (SA), 15 January 2004.
78. Hanlon and Smart, Do Bicycles Equal Development in Mozambique?, pp. 32-3, estimate there to be around 100 'small commercial farmers' in Manica Province, but make no distinction between them in terms of size of plots or scale of operation. Some they mention are only working 2 ha, yet one would expect significant variations. There are also a number of larger-scale Mozambican commercial farmers (growing maize, potatoes, and other vegetable and fruit crops, as well as a large producer of fresh chicken) who are not discussed. 70 This critical view was expressed vociferously by a columnist for Noticias newspaper, Victor Machirica, who wrote several derisive pieces about the Zimbabwean farmers in December 2006.
79. Interview with SL, 20 January 2008.
80. A.E. Selby, Commercial Farmers and the State: Interest Group Politics and Land Reform in Zimbabwe (D.Phil. Thesis, Oxford University, 2006). As much of the literature on land-related questions in colonial Rhodesia and in post-independence Zimbabwe attest, such support to white commercial farming was made at the expense of support to emerging black farmers at different levels (or even to other sectors such as mining, tourism or manufacturing). This disadvantaged the majority of small-scale farmers and perpetuated the race-based dualistic agricultural (and tenure) system in Zimbabwe that has been central to ZANU(PF)'s discourse of the Third Chimurenga.
81. Although never remarked upon by the Zimbabwean farmers themselves, these are the same kinds of challenges and vulnerabilities faced by most small-scale farmers throughout Africa.
82. A number of marriages broke up in this setting.
83. There is mention in several of the ACIAIM minutes of various national or international banks expressing initial interest in providing loans to the Zimbabweans. However, little of this financing seems to have materialised, either due to unaffordable interest rates or the unconvincing viability of investment proposals.
84. This already had its origins in the mid-80s when a failing economy had compelled the Mozambican government to take on a structural adjustment programme. See A. Sucá, 'Land Reform in SADC Region: Mozambique Land Reform and Poverty Alleviation', paper presented at SARPN Conference on Land Reform and Poverty Alleviation in Southern Africa (Pretoria, Human Sciences Research Council, 2001).
85. P. de Wit, 'Land Law Reform in Mozambique: Acquired Values and Needs for Consolidation', (Rome, FAO, 2002).
86. Pitcher, Transforming Mozambique, p. 6.
87. C. Cramer, Civil War is not a Stupid Thing: Accounting for Violence in Developing Countries (London, Hurst & Co., 2006), pp. 261-2.
88. See also Pitcher, Transforming Mozambique, on the government's 'romantic fiction' of the self-sufficient peasant family living by subsistence.
89. Pitcher, Transforming Mozambique, p. 265.
90. See B. O'Laughlin, 'Through a Divided Glass: Dualism, Class and the Agrarian Question in Mozambique', Journal of Peasant Studies, 23, 4 (1996), pp. 1-39.
91. J. Sender, C. Oya and C. Cramer, 'Women Working for Wages: Putting Flesh on the Bones of a Rural Labour Market Survey in Mozambique', Journal of Southern African Studies, 32, 2 (2006), pp. 313-33.
92. C. Cramer, C. Oya and J. Sender, 'Rural Labour Markets in Sub- Saharan Africa: A New View of Poverty, Power and Policy', Centre for Development Policy and Research, SOAS, Policy Brief No. 1, November 2008, pp. 1-5.
93. This was despite a model that had been articulated when the Land Law was drafted, that aimed to facilitate the spatial co-existence and complementarity of different types and scales of land-use in a given area, and to promote 'partnerships' between rural communities in the so-called family or household sector and investors in large-scale commercial agriculture.
94. See de Wit, 'Land Law Reform in Mozambique
95. A. Marini, 'Partnership between Local Peasants and Large Commercial Investors: The Case of the Sugar Sector in Mozambique', Land Reform/Réforme Agraire/Reforma Agrarian, 2001/2 (online version).
96. Centro da Promocao da Agricultura/ Commercial Agriculture Promotion Centre.
97. Interview with FN, Chimoio, 5 October 2006.
98. All this contrasts sharply with the comprehensive support framework for commercial agriculture in Zimbabwe that had evolved over more than half a century, but which rapidly deteriorated after 2000. In Mozambique, besides the absence of both public and private finance and targeted subsidies, funding for agricultural research is negligible, and there are few if any formal links between agricultural research and extension services.
99. The general practice was not in itself news.
100. See, for example, M. Bowen, The State Against the Peasantry: Rural Struggles in Colonial and Post-Colonial Mozambique (Charlottesville, VA, University of Virginia Press, 2000).
101. Rumours abound - inevitably unsubstantiated or impossible to substantiate - with regard to how many companies are 'controlled' by the president, his family, and the party elite. On the other hand, a visible pattern is emerging - somewhat ironically given policy hesitation on other forms of commercial farming - of the 'government' awarding large land concessions to foreign multinational companies for major projects in timber, biofuel, tobacco, and other crops, with very limited controls over social and environmental impacts. For a broader discussion of the growing, although not new, phenomenon of large land deals in Africa, see L. Cotula, S. Vermeulen, R. Leonard, and J. Keeley, Land Grab or Development Opportunity? Agricultural Investment and International Land Deals in Africa (London/Rome, IIED/FAO/IFAD, 2009).
102. Interview with JB, Chimoio, 3 October 2006.
103. Interview with PR, Chimoio, 11 October 2006.
104. The xenophobic attacks in South Africa against mainly black African 'foreigners', which are a common if low-intensity feature of life but which intensified in mid-2008, testify to this.
105. For critical perspectives on this, see O. Bakewell, 'Research Beyond the Categories: The Importance of Policy Irrelevant Research into Forced Migration', Journal of Refugee Studies, 21, 4 (2008), pp. 432-53.
106. D. Turton, 'Conceptualising Forced Migration', Refugee Studies Centre Working Paper, 12 (2003).
107. R. Zetter, 'Labelling Refugees: Forming and Transforming a Bureaucratic Identity, Journal of Refugee Studies, 4, 1 (1991), pp. 39-62.