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In 1975, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique
(Frelimo) led the country to independence after a ten-year
guerilla war against Portuguese colonial rule. Peasants were
essential to the victory, but once in power Frelimo evolved
from a popular liberation movement into a bureaucratic
one-party state whose policies proved to be as inimical to
the peasantry as those of the Portuguese colonial regime.
These policies not only characterized the socialist phase of
Frelimo rule; they continued during the period of economic
and political reform that took place in the 1990s under the
auspices of the International Monetary Fund. Merle L.
Bowen's book offers a fresh assessment of the impact that
such policies, pursued by postindependence states and NGOs
alike, have had on the peasantry and agricultural production
in Africa.
In contrast to accounts that blame the state, the elite,
or the peasantry itself for the agricultural crisis in
postcolonial Africa, Bowen argues that Mozambique's decline
in production is rooted in policies established during
colonialism and continued by Frelimo. By tracing shifts in
policy over a longer period than previous studies and across
changing regimes, Bowen provides solid evidence that the
continuation of colonial policies under the Frelimo
government alienated the peasantry and contributed to
internal conflict.
Bowen refuses to treat the peasantry as a homogeneous
mass. Drawing on oral data, archival research, and published
accounts, she charts the rise and fall of a stratum of
middle class agricultural producers in southern Mozambique
that she deems central to the problem of food production.
Like those of the colonial government, Frelimo's
anti-peasant policies are rooted in a desire to prevent this
middle class from becoming politically and economically
independent and thereby acting as a counterweight to state
power. To address the agricultural crisis, Bowen calls for a
reconsideration of Mozambican and IMF policies to support
rather than suppress capital accumulation within this rural
middle class.
Through its careful consideration of the peasantry and
the role of NGOs, The State Against the Peasantry offers a
nuanced understanding of the development process that has
taken place in Mozambique and other southern African
countries since independence.
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