The Mozambique Cotton Cooperative: The Creation of a Grassroots Alternative to Forced Commodity Production

Abstract

In 1957 a dozen northern Mozambicane living in the Makonde highlands organized the Mozambique African Voluntary Cotton Society. By 1959 membership had increased to almost three thousand and output per grower far exceeded per capita yields of neighboring peasant producers. A year later the colonial state outlawed the cooperative. Portuguese officials claimed that it had become a hotbed of subversive activity. Subsequent efforts by the leaders of the banned organization to form a rice cooperative met a similar fate. Despite its short life, the Mozambique African Voluntary Cotton Society played a significant role in the economic and political history of the colony. It was among the first independently organized African agricultural cooperatives in the country. Whereas its counterparts in neighboring colonies were almost exclusively formed to combat the exploitative marketing practices of foreign middlemen, the Mozambique African Voluntary Cotton Society also sought to protect its members from labor abuses inherent in the system of forced cotton production. As a grassroots movement, firmly implanted among Makonde peasants, the cooperative provided a hospitable terrain for covert anti-colonial activities while serving as a training ground for some of Mozambique's future nationalist leaders. Finally, its links to the cooperative movement in neighboring Tanganyika and to TANU (Tanganyika African National Union) suggest the significant, though generally overlooked, impact the British colony had on the growth of nationalism in northern Mozambique. The significance of the Mozambique African Voluntary Cotton Society transcends the details of its own history. Like cooperatives in other parts of Africa, it permitted peasants free space in which to operate while simultaneously binding them firmly to the colonial-capitalist system.