IRIN Web Special on land reform in Southern Africa

Graciela Joao, 37, a mother of four, has lost her home and land twice. The first time was when her first husband died, and the second when she separated from her second husband. She now lives with her children in a hut built by her father. She did not claim a share of either of the properties in the marriages.

To survive Joao sells sweet potatoes, which she grows on her small plot of land. Her ex- husband does not contribute to the maintenance of their children.

Joao is typical of many women who are not benefiting from a progressive land law passed six years ago and hailed as a major triumph for women farmers.

Mozambique has one of the most gender-friendly land laws in the region. It aims to protect the rights of land usage for small-scale farmers, who make up over 99 percent of agriculture and are the mainstay of the economy.

The land continues to belong to the state, but before the land law was passed in 1997, written evidence for the right to use it was needed in any land dispute. Most rural farmers, especially women, did not have access to written contracts - over 70 percent of women in Mozambique cannot read or write. Moreover, bureaucratic processes and a scarcity of courts and legal advice in the rural areas made access to the justice system difficult and complicated.

The new law was a major breakthrough because it combined formal and customary law. Not only did it recognise written documents in land usage cases, but also customary tenure systems and the rights of people who had occupied land for over 10 years in good faith - this meant that land occupied for 10 years, while believing nobody else had a legitimate claim to it, could legally be cultivated.

Civil society groups even secured a clause that said women were entitled to property rights. With that clause and Mozambique’s progressive constitution, which enshrines equal rights for men and women, it was hoped that women would be more protected.

"We saw the Land Law as a victory,” Lorena Magane of the Rural Association of Mutual Support (ORAM) told IRIN. "Before, under patrilineal culture, a woman would be the one to work on the land, but if she divorced her husband, she would have to return to her parents' land."

Even in the north, where society is largely matrilineal, in the event of divorce the woman’s male relatives would have the right to the property. "The woman could never have her own land."

"In theory the law is nice, but there are lots of problems in implementing it," said Rachael Waterhouse, joint editor of a report "Strategic Women, Gainful Men: Gender, Land and Natural Resources in Different rural Contexts in Mozambique". She told IRIN that "formal law isn't accessible, but under customary law women have secondary rights."

This may change when the draft Family Law, approved in general, is debated again and specifics such as the crucial issue of who is the head of the family - traditionally the man - are discussed. The decision may be left to each couple and lead to the greater empowerment of women.

The land issue became especially pertinent when the millions of displaced people and hundreds of thousands of refugees returned home after 16 years of civil war between the government and the opposition RENAMO.

Since then, over 10 years of peace has meant that people can farm again, but Mozambique still has a long way to go before peasant farmers produce and market sufficient quantities to escape from a subsistence living.

ORAM has supported communities as well as individuals in land disputes. It is currently working on 10 such cases in the northern province of Zambezia, brought to the attention of the NGO by community leaders, almost all of whom are men. "Women are being thrown off their land, but they either don't know about the law or are not empowered to use it," said Mangane.

The challenge is to inform people, especially women in rural areas, about the law, and for the women to feel empowered enough to use it.

"There needs to be an intensive campaign around the land law," Mangane said. Women MPs, who form over 30 percent of Mozambique's parliament, could also do more to support their constituents around the land issue.

[Ends]