Presentation short abstract

This paper focuses on the relationship between the mining industry and small-scale local farmers in Moatize, Mozambique, demonstrating how farmers organize to confront a powerful state-backed mining company, which expropriated their livelihood means.

Presentation long abstract

This paper examines the relationship between the mining industry and small-scale local farmers in Moatize, Mozambique. It examines how farmers organise to oppose exploitation and reclaim expropriated land and resources following displacement and resettlement. It will analyse the various forms of mobilisation adopted by small farmers, including overt and covert actions which escalated into violence and were subsequently suppressed by the police, raising issues of human rights violations. It argues that the resistance to land expropriation in Moatize is a rejection of the mining exploitation model that is devastating the territory on which livelihoods and access to different medicines depend. Small farmers have struggled to safeguard their land rights, which are acquired through customary tenure and are threatened by coal extraction practices. Although seemingly weak in the face of a powerful mining industry backed by the state, the paper argues that small farmers mobilized and confronted this industry, demonstrating their agency and achieving some of their demands.

Keywords: Small farmers, land rights, mobilization, coal mining, resistance, displacement, resettlement and medicine.