ABSTRACT
The creation and enforcement of policies have been proposed as necessary to protect rural dwellers from dispossession by land grabs. Failing to consider the influence of the micro-politics of the policy implementation phase, these policies are insufficient. Based on an in-depth case study from southern Mozambique of a collision between a green grab and a land grab, this paper describes how two policies were used, first to facilitate a land grab and then to rescind the land concession. At a shifting intersection between politics ‘in the air’ and politics ‘on the ground’, convergence and later divergence among powerful groups shaped the space for policy enactment.
