Paper short abstract:

How current transformative processes in land tenure affects matrilineal land in Mozambique still appears as a ‘non-issue’. This paper explores available scholarly literature on matriliny, aiming to establish a better basis for representing contemporary Makhuwa women’s rights and interests in land.

Paper long abstract:

Future land use in Africa is currently being shaped through far-reaching transformative processes. In Mozambique, ongoing individual and household land titling programmes are accompanied by agricultural intensification and investment initiatives. These will result in diverse local responses of change and continuity in gendered social relations, including women’s relationships to land. Given the historical presence of matrilineal institutions in northern Mozambique, one would expect transformative land processes to bring up questions about the resilience of matrilineal lineages and of matrilineal norms and practices. Still, matriliny is hardly discussed, either in current debates on land in Africa in general or in more localized fora in the region. What one encounters as a researcher on women’s land rights among the rural Makhuwa, is contradictory information both concerning matrilineal institutions and what matrilineal land rights ‘really’ mean. Africa’s colonial history involved both material and ideological interests in land and people/labour on the colonial powers’ part, shaping what is currently available concerning matriliny, particularly in anthropological literature. Recurring themes here are the ‘puzzle’ related to men’s roles, control over children, and the conception of matriliny as disintegrating or ‘doomed’ and, within a developmental framework, without a future. Interlinkages between knowledge construction and policies have historically shaped representations of essential resources such as land. As a backdrop for the current status of matrilineal land as a ‘non-issue’, this interlinkage invites renewed critical revisits of available literature, in order to develop better representations reflecting women’s relationship to land among present-day rural Makhuwa.