Government restricts Zimbabwean farmers

The Mozambican government has stressed that while welcoming Zimbabwean commercial farmers, the new arrivals must accept integration within local communities to avoid future land conflicts. In an interview with the Sunday newspaper 'Domingo', Agriculture Minister Helder Muteia said that a group of 63 white Zimbabwean farmers had requested 400,000 hectares of land in the central province of Manica - across the border from Zimbabwe. The government told them to apply individually, and for no more than 1,000 hectares each, the official news agency AIM reported. Muteia said the initial "gigantic" proposal - which included the building of roads, schools and clinics - threatened to create "islands of white development" and had serious social implications. "What we want is an integration of Mozambican farmers, so as to avoid social conflicts," he said. Mozambique's new land law is predicated on a tripartite approach involving the government, private investors and the local community. "If somebody wants to invest they have to reach agreement with the government, but also the local community to ensure the sustainability of the planned exercise," FAO Representative Peter Vandor told IRIN on Wednesday. In the case of the Zimbabwean farmers, "the government is really stressing this tripartite agreement" to avoid a repetition of Zimbabwe's land crisis. Mozambique expects a total of about 100 Zimbabweans to eventually relocate. Around 10 Zimbabweans are already farming 4,000 hectares each in Manica after earlier going through normal foreign investment procedures, AIM reported. Muteia, who visited the new farms, said: "The peasants are satisfied because each of the Zimbabweans has created between 40 and 60 jobs. They've brought work, they've brought development and a market, and people now have money. They've brought a whole new dynamic." The new group of applicants have now submitted individual requests, "and we are studying them project by project", Muteia noted. The Zimbabweans are proposing to grow maize, tobacco, fruit and vegetables, to develop forestry activities, and to breed cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and ostriches. The minister added that the Zimbabwean government was being kept informed "to avoid conflicts between the two countries". Out of Mozambique's 36 million hectares of arable land, only four million are cultivated. Mozambican agriculture is overwhelmingly subsistence farming. Because it is based almost exclusively on hand tools, there is a physical limit of between two to four hectares that a family can cultivate, Vandor said. Rural underdevelopment is exacerbated by the legacy of Mozambique's 17 years of civil war that destroyed infrastructure and commercial networks in the countryside. In the past, government policies also failed to prioritise the rural areas. The arrival of skilled Zimbabwean farmers with financial capital could help develop the agricultural potential of Manica, which straddles the strategic Beira transport corridor that links Mozambique to its western neighbour. "Not only is there the issue of increasing production for national consumption, but also for export," Vandor said. However, the Zimbabweans have complained that Mozambican procedures are too slow, AIM reported. "They're slow because we want to safeguard our approach to the problematic [issue] of land in Mozambique," Muteia responded. "That's why nobody has appeared in the press saying their land has been stolen. We're not going to let that happen. No Mozambicans are going to lose their land."