MIGRANT LABOR AND FORCED RICE PRODUCTION IN SOUTHERN MOZAMBIQUE - THE COLONIAL PEASANTRY OF THE LOWER LIMPOPO VALLEY

This paper traces the origin and evolution of the system of forced rice production which the Portuguese colonial state introduced to the lower Limpopo River Valley of southern Mozambique in the late 1930s. The colonial state's attempt to develop the area's agricultural potential in the service of the colonial economy was thwarted, however, by the area's earlier transformation into a labour reserve for South Africa's mining-based economy. The system of migrant labour, which established itself in southern Mozambique during the first decades of the twentieth century fostered the emergence of a pattern of semi-proletarianization and subsistence agriculture that was to prove largely intractable to Portuguese attempts to foster the growth of capitalist and peasant commercial agriculture in the area. © 1991, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.