Through a divided glass: Dualism, class and the Agrarian question in Mozambique

Abstract

This article argues that if we look at rural differentiation not only as emerging class stratification but also as changing divisions of labour, expressed in the diversification of rural livelihoods, we can see that proletarianisation in Mozambique was a deeply rooted process at Independence. The Frelimo party's vision of agrarian class structure was, however, based on a dualist model of a homogeneous subsistence‐oriented peasantry opposed to an enterprise sector. Strategic options based on this vision proved to be economically unworkable and politically compromising. Subsequent years of war have neither levelled class stratification nor reduced rural livelihoods to homogeneous subsistence production. Hence the dualist premises underlying the smallholder model now projected by critics of Frelimo's socialist options are similarly flawed.