Two recent reports on Mozambique offer a shocking insight
into the nightmare model of growth being forced on the continent in this new phase of global corporate neo-colonialism. Millions of small farmers and peasants are its victims.
The first looks at mining in the northern province of Tete
In a taste of what is to come, 1,500 formerly
self-sufficient farming families have been forcibly removed from their homes,
to arid areas, far from rivers and markets, to make room for the miners. They
have lost access to fertile land, water and work and now rely on food aid, says a report from Human Rights
Watch.
The second report looks at the ProSAVANA plan, presented as
an aid partnership with the Japanese and Brazilian governments, but in reality
a massive corporate land grab cooked up by “experts” with close connections to
the corporations. It would seize over 10 million hectares of land in three
provinces – Nampula, Niassa, and Zambézia – where four million people currently
live and farm.
The plan has been made in secret, with no consultation
whatsoever. A copy was leaked to
a group of civil society organisations and their report deserves to be read
in full because it exposes what is happening throughout Africa and parts of Asia too. The group says:
Corporations are the big
beneficiaries of this Master Plan. They will get control over land and
production and they will control the trade of the foods produced, which will be
exported along the roads, rail lines and Nacala port that other foreign
corporations will be paid to construct with public funds from Mozambique and
Japan. Foreign seed, pesticide and fertiliser companies will also make a
killing from this massive expansion of industrial agriculture into Africa .
ProSAVANA will wipe out seed saving, local knowledge and
food cultures and traditional land management. It will force peasants on to
fixed parcels of land, ending traditional, itinerant, mixed agriculture. They
will be forced to produce under contract to the corporations and go into debt
to buy seeds, fertilisers and pesticides. Many will be forced to sell up,
allowing big local farming concerns to step in, and the friends of the
government will be at the front of the queue.
Some Mozambicans will profit from this. Portugal 's richest family has set up a joint
venture with a company controlled by the friends and family of Mozambique 's president.
Mozambicans struggled for a decade in a bloody war against Portuguese colonial
rule, which ended with independence in 1975. The party leading that struggle
was FRELIMO, the governing party now colluding with the land-grabbers.
The claim is that farmers' rights will be protected by the
World Bank's RAI (Responsible Agricultural Investment) standard but this is
rubbish. Every land grab in the world claims to be operating on RAI and it has
not prevented millions being driven out to let the corporations in.
Hot money is pouring into Africa ,
with some countries experiencing rapid increases in gross domestic product, but
at the expense of millions of lives crushed in the rush for profit-driven
growth. Mozambique
is currently achieving growth of around 7.5% per year but its people remain
amongst the poorest in the world.
The kind of farming being imposed is unsustainable and short
term. It will lead to the creation of a dustbowl and will emit huge quantities
of CO2. It will not increase access to food but will only speed up the export
of calories from Africa to the rest of the
world.
The movements that led the independence struggles throughout
Africa have degenerated into pro-capitalist
parties with no vision other than enriching the few at the expense of the many.
They have no more conception of democracy than our own rulers here. Only a surge
towards the formation of real democracies, in Africa and also here in the UK , can
transform the situation. Then, together, we can co-operate for each others'
development and end corporate plundering once and for all.
Penny Cole
Environment editor
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