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Rural land markets in Moзambique, its impact on land conflicts |
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| 4. Current Rural Ways for Accessing Land |
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There is a large diversity of ways local people can get access to land and natural resources. Inheritance, requests, grabbing, buying and borrow are the most common ways from which local people can get access to land. These forms are guaranteed based on customary system. The family sector can have land security through one of those forms as long as it is know by the community.
It is important to state from the onset that all the farmers in the most of rural areas have land. This includes single women, unmarried men, and women living under a polygamy system and boys. Some families have divided land between husband and wife. The husband’s land produces for sale and the wife's for consumption. This situation is not however universal. This is strictly a family decision on which the local structure has no influence. In some cases access to land has been allowed to people who are not resident. The family sector can have land security through one of those forms as long as it is know by the community.
A number of studies have been carried out in many parts of the country to establish existing tenure systems and ascertain the access rights pertaining to the tenure systems. According to the New Land Law (1997), in Mozambique all land belongs to the state, but two broad tenure systems exist: traditional and modern. Land in the peasant sector is generally managed according to customary land tenure norms, where individual membership of the community gives that person the right to use community land, with the local leaders' knowledge. Land tenure security is acquired through community membership, which may be strengthened by planting trees on the land.
The most common channel for the transmission of lands is via inheritance. In general the amount of land rural people use (ґownґ under traditional rules) depends on the type of crops they produce, the amount of household labour, the type of production systems, the micro-climate variation and pressure for fertile lands.
Given a general shortage of labour power in the peasant sector, capacity to use the land is one of the key determinants of landholding, at household level. However, the increasing land shortage in the area has meant a tendency to parcel out family land ever more frequently, creating constraints on the ability to practice fallowing or crop rotation. Despite this pressure, not a single, official request has been made by local peasant farmers, for the Government to title their land. All requests for land have been made informally, via the traditional authorities, and principally through the regulo.
Most peasant households in the area cultivate two or more fields, situated slightly distant from each other to take advantage of different soil types and precipitation. Normally, a husband and wife / wives have their own, separate fields.
- Inheritance
This is the most common system for local people to have access to land under customary systems is the inheritance. Under this system a person get access to land from his ancestors. However, this has to come through a patrilineal system. According to Shumba et al (1996) the individuals from the area and with common ancestors can inherit a number of rights over the land and the natural resource from this traditional system. In general this process is respected by all members of the community and ruled by traditional leaders. Local families tend to occupy large area in order to their descending to have access to land under this process.
- Request
After the identification of unoccupied portion of a land and in some cases land not reclaimed, the individuals not residents in one areas can contact the leadership of a community to occupied that portion of land. After that the leadership has to verify if that portion of land is occupied. If not they can allocate the land to the person who request it. This process is done by the authority of the area, traditional or official or both.
- Land grabbing
Some people can get access to land by just grabbing by building a house or by cultivating a portion of land in the area without informing the local authorities. This process occurred particularly after the civil war . However these people are not security in the land because they are part of the community.
- Buying
In some area when a person wants to use a portion of a land or a resource in the land, particularly for a person living in the urban areas who wants to use a resource in the area he can buy to a local community. In this case the owner and the user establish a price in some time without the knowledge of community leaders and the occupation occurs after the agreement be reached. These types of agreements are very secret because they are not allowed by law. Usually who sells that are young people who want to get some money to move to urban areas.
- Borrowing
Some families can get access to land by borrowing based on the family relations and friendship or by a third person. This type of access to land occur within a family or a lineage and does not request an intervention of the community leaders. These who can allocate land using this system are elder people who can not use the resource and by humanity reasons and they allocate their land to some relatives or friends who are able to use it. In another cases a person can be allocated because the owner moves to other areas for long periods.
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