ABSTRACT
This chapter intends to discuss issues of land access and rural development within the context of the policies pursued in Manica under the colonial and independent governments of Mozambique. Since it does not claim to offer an exhaustive analysis of the land issue' in Mozambique. It focuses on the relationship between land access and rural development on the one hand, and the distinctive element that characterized much of the discussion on Mozambique in the past, labour, on the other. The chapter addresses land and labour issues in the province of Manica, Mozambique, from a historical perspective stretching from the colonial period to the present day. The Portuguese colonial governments gave up their historical nationalist support for European small farmers and promoted, instead, a rural development model made up of big companies side by side with a labour reserve of small African peasants and a developing sector of larger African progressive' farmers.
