Mozambique’s north
South African farmers are moving into northern Mozambique, raising hopes, concerns and some belly laughs among inhabitants. Mercedes Sayagues reports
Rural folk in Niassa province have never been so entertained. First came the missionaries. Braving mud and dust, gaping potholes and flimsy bridges, dozens are preaching the Dutch Reformed Church gospel across northern Mozambique. They park their caravans, hang garlands, hook up a portable generator, and show a video of the life of Jesus Christ to Muslim villagers.
Then came the daring flying white men on microlites. It is a bizarre sight, a truck with South African plates towing the contraptions in one of Africa’s most remote corners. They swoop over villages, counting people; over the Niassa reserve, counting wildlife; they track rivers and roads and scenic spots for a tourist tented camp. Where they land, they sift soil slowly through the fingers.
Then came the settlers. Since last year, 14 South African families have settled in Niassa province through the “Mosagrius” agreement. Another handful will come from South Africa shortly, in time for the plant-ing season in November.
Mosagrius is a joint venture between the South Africa Chamber for Development of Agriculture in Africa (Sacada) and the Mozambican government. In a nutshell, Mozambique gives land; Sacada brings Afrikaner farmers; other investors put up the capital.
Niassa is the largest, least populated and least developed of Mozambique’s ten provinces. Larger than Portugal, it has perhaps three-quarters of a million people. Of its 12-million ha of arable land, less than 200 000 are under cultivation.
It has great potential for agriculture (maize, tobacco, groundnuts and cotton), cattle- ranching, logging and mining (gold, coal and diamonds).
Wildlife, including the big five, is abundant. Tourism could flourish on Lake Niassa (also known as Lake Malawi).
But Niassa is far from the centre of power – Maputo. Isolated by distance, then by civil war, it served as the rubbish dump of the country. The Portuguese sent their criminals. Frelimo sent its dissidents. Now Maputo sends South Africans – maybe this time the province will be developed.
Road traffic is so scarce in Niassa that the loaded caravans and trucks are obvious. Missionaries and visiting relatives go to the mission in Chiconono, 70km northeast of Lichinga and 10km from Muembe, sacred mountain and seat of the Yao kingdom in pre- colonial times.
Hunters head north, where wildlife abounds, left to breed during the 17-year civil war. Mosagrius farmers go to Matama, an old state farm and their transit centre, half- an-hour from the provincial capital, Lichinga.
The farm embodies Mozambique’s history. Set up by the Portuguese in the 1960s with forced labour, it survived the liberation war, which began in Niassa. After independence in 1975, Chinese agricultural engineers took it over, in one of Mozambique’s experiments with communist farming.
In 1985, the Chinese fled attacks by Renamo, leaving bright-blue tractors to rust. They also left patriotic slogans on walls: “To commercialise maize will increase the production and productivity of factories and businesses.” Nearby, comrade workers are encouraged to prepare for comrade president’s visit.
Throughout colonial times, liberation and civil war, South Africa first helped the Portuguese, then fueled internal conflict.
Today, the private sector reigns. The ruling party, Frelimo, is chummy with the former destabilising agent, South Africa. Renamo, the rebel group turned opposition party, is against settling its former ally in a province it can fairly consider its own.
On a warm Sunday morning at the end of July, a handful of settlers gathers under an olive-green tent for the service. Project leader Jan Pelser reads the parable of the prodigal son. Laurens and Hettie Lemmer, their four young children and a couple in their sixties, Alvin and Dolly, sing.
All the settlers interviewed exude political correctness. They will not take anybody’s land and can co-exist peacefully with local (black) people.
Six kilometres away, in the mud-and-straw village of Lucheringo, a group of men talks to a community worker. “We’ve had the Portuguese and the Chinese as neighbours, but the South Africans are the weirdest,” they chuckle.
They say the settlers never give them a lift into town. They only come to the village to buy goats. When they do, they don’t get out of the car: they beckon, negotiate a price, pay and go. Their feet never touch our soil, their skin never touches ours, says one.
From biscuits to tea, by plane, car or truck, the settlers bring all their supplies. “They only buy kapulanas (African cloth). Or the odd bag of sugar if they’ve run out of stock,” says shopkeeper Abdullah Amad Mussa.
This has earned the settlers the nickname of “banana farmers”: South African visitors to southern Mozambique are called “banana tourists” because they bring their food and drink and only buy bananas.
Nevertheless, in the countryside, poor villagers pin hopes of jobs, cash and better roads on the foreign farmers. Demobilised soldiers need jobs. The cash economy has all but disappeared in remote Majune district, slotted, with Sanga district, for Sacada.
The settlers are a motley group. The Lemmers are a closely knit family, kind and hardworking. Pelser is far keener on wildlife than on farming. Some feel there is no place for them in the new South Africa. Others spearhead agribusiness into northern Mozambique. Some are adventurers – which raises questions about Sacada’s selection process.
Earlier this year, Paul Healy and a team from the Irish NGO, Concern, were in Majune. A white South African woman, in her early thirties, drove up in a cabin-roofed pickup, accompanied by two South African black workers. She was looking for 20 000ha she claimed to have been granted next to the Lugenda river. She had seen the property from a helicopter. Could they show her the way?
“This is a recipe for conflict,” says Healy. “No government or Sacada official brought her. This is not the way it should happen.”
Pelser confirmed the mysterious woman was part of Mosagrius but had since been expelled, due to “problems with Mozambican workers”. Saying it was a painful subject, he declined to explain anymore. Yet the woman is still around. Occasionally she comes to Lichinga to do some shopping.
“South Africans are given crazy privileges in Niassa,” says Healy. “They can do what they want and come out clean. What is the message being sent?”