In 1975, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo) led the country to independence after a ten-year guerilla war against Portuguese colonial rule. Peasants were essential to the victory, but once in power Frelimo evolved from a popular liberation movement into a bureaucratic one-party state whose policies proved to be as inimical to the peasantry as those of the Portuguese colonial regime. These policies not only characterized the socialist phase of Frelimo rule; they continued during the period of economic and political reform that took place in the 1990s under the auspices of...