Portuguese Colonial Intervention, Regional Conflict
and Post-Colonial Amnesia :Cahora Bassa Dam, Mozambique 1965-2002
Allen Isaacman, Director, ICGC-MacArthur Program
University of Minnesota
214 Social Sciences
267-19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455 USA
Tel: 612-626-0832
Email: isaac001@umn.edu
Chris Sneddon
Environmental Studies Program/Department of Geography
Dartmouth College
6017 Fairchild
Hanover, NH 03755 USA
Tel: 603-646-0451
Email: CSSneddon@Dartmouth.Edu
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Pedro Claudio Gremi for his assistance in
identifying research sites in the Estima region. We have also benefited from the
2
important work of Arlindo Chilundo, Luís Covane, Uygar Özesmi, Richard
Beilfuss and Ken Wilson. Ryan Hoover has been particularly helpful. Barbara
Isaacman’s thoughtful suggestions and criticisms have enhanced the quality of this
project and of this article. Funding for the study was provided through a Research
and Writing grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, a
grant from the Graduate School of the University of Minnesota. A portion of the
research and writing for one author (Sneddon) was carried out under the auspices
of a grant from United States Institute of Peace.
3
Abstract
This paper examines the history of Cahora Bassa dam in Mozambique and how
the project became and continues to be a focal point of regional conflict. The
dam’s conception and construction were deeply linked to the Portuguese colonial
state’s concerns over security and military operations against revolutionary forces.
In the post-independence period, the dam and its transmission lines became
important targets for apartheid South Africa’s campaign to destabilize the
FRELIMO regime. FRELIMO, in turn, sought to domesticate the “white elephant”
of Cahora Bassa for its own developmental purposes. Most recently, Cahora Bassa
has become the center of geopolitical struggle among Mozambique, Portugal and
South Africa over control of the dam’s hydroelectricity. The Mozambican
government’s desire to construct a new dam, Mphanda Nkuwa, on the Zambesi
represents a startling example of post-colonial amnesia. Despite the history of
Cahora Bassa, the Mozambican state’s efforts to harness economic benefits from
the Zambesi, above all other social and ecological goals, appears to be pushing
towards the construction of what could very well be another white elephant.
4
Portuguese authorities hailed the construction of Cahora Bassa dam in the
early 1970’s as a breath taking engineering and hydrological feat. It was a
monument to Lisbon’s colonial legacy and an affirmation of its commitment to
remain in Africa. For state planners the massive hydroelectric project located on
the powerful Zambesi River in a remote corner of Mozambique (see Figure 1),
also confirmed that nature could be conquered and transformed to serve the
people of the region. In short, the dam was a testimony to Portugal’s “civilizing
mission” framed in the ideology of high modernism.1
The construction of Cahora Bassa dam evoked quite a different response
from FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique, or Front for the
Liberation of Mozambique). The nationalist forces contended that Cahora Bassa
was an integral part of a military and economic alliance between Portugal and
South Africa designed to provide cheap energy to South Africa and perpetuate
white rule in the region. For almost seven years, FRELIMO waged an
unsuccessful guerrilla campaign to block construction of Cahora Bassa, which
was completed in December 1974. Six months later Mozambique gained its
independence.
But independence merely intensified the conflict over Cahora Bassa
between the new government and the apartheid regime. Stuck with the dam, the
newly installed FRELIMO government had little alternative but to discard its
long-term opposition to the hydroelectric project. In a radical departure from its
previous stance, it hailed Cahora Bassa as a symbol of liberation which would
help the people of Mozambique achieve economic prosperity, transform the
5
strategic Zambesi valley and bring the impoverished nation a new source of hard
currency by exporting energy to markets throughout the region, not just to South
Africa.
Pretoria, however, was committed to using its vast military might to
subvert this agenda. Concerned about FRELIMO’s historic ties to the African
National Congress (ANC) and its non-racial socialist agenda, South African
security forces began a sustained military and economic campaign to destabilize
the Mozambican government and destroy the country’s infrastructure. High on its
list was Cahora Bassa. For more than a decade, South African backed RENAMO
guerrillas repeatedly sabotaged the dam’s power lines effectively paralyzing the
hydroelectric project, while simultaneously terrorizing hundreds of thousands of
peasants who lived adjacent to the Zambesi River. Ironically, tensions over
Cahora Bassa have persisted even after the dismantling of the apartheid regime
and the ascension to power of the ANC.
While numerous case studies have explored the social and political aspects
of dam projects, their ecological consequences, and the manner in which social
and ecological impacts are intertwined,2 Cahora Bassa has received little attention.
We have explicated elsewhere the intricately linked environmental and social
histories of Cahora Bassa.3 Here, we emphasize how Cahora Bassa has,
historically, been situated within a complex arrangement of political and military
conflicts occurring at both transnational and national scales. A more incisive
understanding of the project’s social and ecological ramifications is necessarily
linked to the project’s history as a fulcrum of political and military activity.
6
This politico-military aspect of the dam goes some way towards
explaining the dearth of information on the dam’s social and ecological
implications. We shift the principal angle of vision from a state-centered
approach, which privileges military security and water resource development, to
one that explores the interconnection between livelihood security and national
security consequences. Until recently, we knew little about the lived experiences
of the thousands of peasants forced to relocate from their historic homelands.4
Their story remains hidden in the opaque shadows of the dam. We knew even less
about the impact of Cahora Bassa on down-river communities, whose river-fed
gardens and grazing lands are no longer seasonally irrigated by the Zambesi River
and whose fishing areas have been greatly reduced. Similarly, we need to explore
the impact of South Africa’s destabilization campaign on the social and ecological
resiliency of the diverse communities inhabiting the riverine zone. In exploring
these gaps in our knowledge, we are also mindful of the ways in which the lack of
information is not an innocent by-product of inattention. As Cahora Bassa evolved
from plan to actual edifice, the colonial government supported some
investigations into the dam’s consequences and actively suppressed others.
Addressing these issues, even in a preliminary way, creates the possibility of
writing an alternative history of Cahora Bassa, one which stresses that human
security, or livelihood security, ecological resilience and economic development
are entangled processes.5 This is particularly important in the current climate of
debate over the dam wherein such issues have largely been overlooked.
7
Insert Figure 1
Map of the Zambesi Basin showing damsites.
Because this article is concerned with the livelihoods of communities
affected by the dam and the political struggles that made Cahora Bassa an
important security issue, their accounts figure prominently. These oral testimonies
not only challenge the prevailing colonial formulation of the planning,
construction and effects of Cahora Bassa, but offer an alternative narrative—a
detailed interior view of life before and after the dam. They also provide
important insights about how peasants perceived, explained and coped with
ecological changes in the river basin over time and open up new areas of inquiry
about the environmental impact of the dam.6
We proceed to an overview of the interrelations between flooding and
livelihoods in the Lower Zambesi Valley, the portion of the Zambesi basin
downstream of the Cahora Bassa reservoir. We then discuss the ways in which the
construction of Cahora Bassa was inserted into broader political struggles over an
independent Mozambique and, briefly, the dam’s immediate effects on riparian
communities. Next comes analysis of how Cahora Bassa and the Lower Zambesi
Valley became enmeshed within South Africa’s destabilization campaign. We end
with an exploration of the current struggle between Portugal, which still retains
majority ownership of the dam, South Africa and Mozambique over the long-term
future of the hydroelectric project and the FRELIMO government’s decision to
build a second dam some 70 km downstream of Cahora Bassa at Mphanda
Nkuwa. In light of the devastating social and ecological consequences of Cahora
8
Bassa the official representation of the new dam as a path toward progress
requires officials and experts disconnected from the countryside to silence the
rural poor. It necessitates a type of state sanctioned historical amnesia and a
displacement of the manner in which riverine communities constructed and
interpreted their past.
Floods and livelihoods in the Mozambican Zambesi: an overview
Perhaps the most important hydrological factor in understanding the
rationale for construction of Cahora Bassa and its subsequent effects was the
pronounced seasonality of pre-dam Zambesi flows. Prior to the construction of the
dam, and even after the construction of the Kariba Dam on the middle reaches of
the Zambesi, natural floods of between 9,000 and 13,000 cubic meters per second
(cms) occurred about two out of every three years in the lower portion of the
basin.7 Flooding typically occurred in February-March, and on occasion in
January or April. After peak flows, the waters slowly receded until NovemberDecember. During the 1957 flood period, approximately 90 percent of the
floodplain was inundated at a distance of 2-3 kilometers from the river channel.8
Annual flooding of the river had a serious impact on the riverine communities and
their natural habitat as well as for the European sugar plantations located near the
mouth of the river.9 Indeed, flood control was one of the presumed advantages of
building the dam.
But there is another dimension to this story. As waters from the rainy
season floods slowly receded, they left a rich deposit of nutrients along the
9
shoreline. In lowland areas, such as Inhangoma in the region of Mutara, this
spillover often extended over a several-kilometer stretch of land. Peasants
throughout the valley considered these rich dark makande soils of the floodplains
to be the most desirable agricultural sites in the region.10 Beatriz Maquina, an
elderly woman living near Songo (located adjacent to the damsite) who had
farmed her entire life, stressed that the “makande land located near the banks of
the river always gave us good production. We cultivated a great deal of sorghum
as well as some corn.”11 The dependence on the floodplains was true down river as
well. Luís Manuel, who farmed down river in the Sena region concurred: “My
father had two fields, but the one on the river’s edge was more important since it
yielded a great deal of sorghum and millet as well as sweet potatoes and beans.”12
Across the river at Mutara Caetano Francisco Figuerida and his fellow –
villagers confirmed that the annual floods insured that “ we were able to cultivate
many different crops including sorghum, corn ,millet and several types of
beans.”13 All the elders with whom we spoke distinguished makande from the
more common sandy, rocky ntchenga soils which did not retain water and were
difficult to farm.14 Average annual rainfall in the Lower Zambesi Valley ranges
from 600-700 mm in the arid and semi-arid regions near Tete and the Cahora
Bassa reservoir to 1,000-1,200 mm in the sub-humid regions of the Delta.15 The
low rainfall in the more arid regions of the valley and the irregularity of rainfall
throughout the basin meant that access to the makande river-fed soils was critical
to insure household food security. Droughts occur regularly, often with
devastating consequences to the crops. Without makande lands peasant
10
households faced the prospect of crop failures on a regular basis and, even in the
best years, little likelihood of producing a second annual crop.16
Peasant cultivation of river-fed land constituted a critical feature of the
complex and highly adaptive indigenous agronomic system. Carlos Soda Churo,
who was forced to relocate because of the dam, described farming practices prior
to the impoundment, in some detail:
Before Cahora Bassa each family had several fields. The number and size
varied depending on strength of a person and the size of his family. The
land near the river was very good. It was called makande. When the river
rose and then receded in June, the area that had been covered with water
was very good for farming. There we first planted maize. We cultivated
beans in the same field as the maize. Beans needed something to rest on
and the maize stalks served well. Nearby we cultivated a second small plot
with sweet potatoes, tomatoes, cabbage and more beans. We harvested our
gardens in September and October before the rains and flooding. By
November we were working in our larger fields away from the river. On
the ntchenga soils we planted sorghum, which does not require as much
water. The mixed ntchenga - makande soils were better for maize, which
needs more moisture than sorghum. Some people planted peanuts in their
maize fields. We harvested these crops in June and July and then returned
to our gardens.17
Churo’s account highlights three important features of the indigenous
agronomic system, which was built on a rich repertoire of historical farming
practices and detailed micro-ecological knowledge. First, and foremost, the food
production systems of local agriculturalists co-evolved with the seasonal cycle of
the river's flooding patterns. Decisions regarding the spatial and temporal patterns
of food production—including selection of the most appropriate crops and
amounts planted, with reference to the season and different micro-ecological
zones—were finely tuned to changes in the river's discharge rates as well as
11
variations in soils and sunlight. Second, intercropping was an effective laboursaving device, since several crops could be tended simultaneously. Cultivating
peanuts in maize fields had the added advantage of restoring badly needed
nutrients to depleted ntchenga soils. Finally, households spent most of the year
engaged in agricultural production in order to minimize labour bottlenecks and to
ensure an adequate supply of food.
The unregulated Zambesi provided sustenance to riverine communities in
two other important respects. Before Cahora Bassa approximately 60 species of
fish inhabited the river.18 While the density of most species varied, elders recalled
that the Zambesi provided an abundance. They relied on a variety of fishing
techniques. Some used nets, made from sisal and cord, which they laid in the main
channel of the river. Others paddled their canoes to rich fishing grounds, where
they deposited poisons from local plants into the water.19 Most fishermen used
locally produced weirs (mackonga) which they placed at strategic points near the
shoreline.
We fished with mackonga in which we placed bits of massa [porridge].
The fish, attracted by the massa, would enter the mackonga and they
would be trapped. The next morning we would return. The mackonga
would be filled with fish, some of which we traded with our neighbors for
sorghum, maize or even a chicken. People who had nothing to trade could
buy a large fish for five escudos [about 17 cents].20
The river also attracted large herds of animals from the nearby forests. Impala,
gazelle, elephants, buffalo and eland regularly watered on the banks of the
Zambesi and adjacent wetlands, where they became easy prey for skilled hunters.
12
Game was an integral part of the local diet. As a relish accompanying the evening
porridge, it provided an important source of protein. Peasants also consumed meat
in larger amounts at important social occasions and at rituals propitiating the
ancestor spirits. All of this changed, however, with the construction of Cahora
Bassa.
Portuguese Colonial Intervention and the Building of the Dam
In the 1950s, after the British had constructed a dam on the Zambesi 100
miles upstream at Kariba, Portuguese colonial planners began to contemplate a
similar undertaking at Cahora Bassa Gorge in Mozambique. In, 1956 the Overseas
Minister, Raul Ventura, dispatched a team of hydrologists to survey the Zambesi
region and investigate the possibility of impounding the river at Cahora Bassa.
The result was a highly influential and optimistic report regarding the potential
benefits of a dam at the gorge. In the words of the report’s authors:
It is clear that the utilization of those possibilities, accompanied by a welldefined policy of industrial development and mineral prospecting and
mining could completely transform the economic prospects for the
Province of Mozambique and, in consequence, for metropolitan Portugal.
Rarely have conditions occurred which are so favorable for the economic
development of a region.21
Almost immediately the Salazar regime had established a river basin authority
whose mandate was to develop the Lower Zambesi. The Missão de Fomento e
Povoamento de Zambeze (MFPZ) was modeled on the United States’ Tennessee
Valley Authority (TVA). Five years later the MFPZ produced a voluminous fifty-
13
six volume final report, which confirmed the previous assessment that a dam
would be highly beneficial to the region.22
Both in scale and function the proposed dam was radically different from
its British counterpart. In contrast to the Kariba hydroelectric scheme, created
solely to provide cheap energy for the copper mines in colonial Zambia and for
the European farming and industrial sectors in colonial Zimbabwe, Portuguese
planners conceived of Cahora Bassa as a multipurpose project designed to expand
agricultural productivity, develop mining and promote forestry, reduce
Mozambique’s dependence on foreign imports and enhance the living conditions
of the indigenous populations.
Unlike Kariba, strategic security considerations drove much of the
planning behind Cahora Bassa and elevated the urgency of the project. Portuguese
officials believed that the project would help blunt guerrilla advances south of the
strategic Zambesi River in important ways. They theorized that the lake behind
the dam, stretching from Songo to Zumbo, would impede the relatively easy
access FRELIMO forces had to the heart of Mozambique from its bases in Zambia
and Malawi. Lake Cahora Bassa, projected to be 500 kilometers in length and, at
places, several kilometers in width, would be a formidable geographic barrier.
Moreover, they predicted that the anticipated economic development stimulated
by the hydroelectric project would dramatically increase the size of the white
settler community in the region who would provide the first line of defense
against the exiled African guerrillas.23 Colonial planners estimated that as many as
80,000 immigrants would settle in the Zambesi Valley, including many former
14
soldiers. The Portuguese Chief of the General Staff, General V. Deslandes, was
unequivocal about the strategic role which these armed communities would play:
It is urgent that we settle in the overseas territories the biggest possible
number of former military people. The collaboration and mutual support
between the civilian and military populations, the absolute coordination
between the military, political, social and economic actions, is the only
way to achieve the desired victory.24
Mozambique’s inability to consume even ten percent of the anticipated 2,075megawatt output from Cahora Bassa made the project even more problematic.
From the outset, military pressure and growing international opposition—
linked directly to the ongoing struggle between FRELIMO and the colonial
government—complicated the construction of the dam. FRELIMO had vowed to
sabotage Cahora Bassa. In 1968 they initiated a guerrilla offensive in Tete, the
home district of Cahora Bassa. By the end of the decade a sizable force was
operating in the area adjacent to the proposed dam site. One senior Portuguese
military official estimated that at least 1,800 well-armed guerrillas had crossed the
Zambesi from Zambia and Malawi and were beginning to pose a serious threat.25
FRELIMO’s anti-dam strategy benefited from a well-organized and highly visible
international campaign to block western financing and construction of the dam.
“What happens at Cabora Bassa” declared the Programme to Combat Racism of
the World Council of Churches, “is central to the fight for Mozambique and to the
future of Southern Africa.”26 Moral outrage and threats of boycotts motivated a
number of Italian and Swedish companies to withdraw their support for the
project.27
15
Security threats and economic uncertainty propelled key supporters of the
dam within the Portuguese state to lobby for an energy and military agreement
with South Africa. Such an alliance they contended would guarantee a market for
Cahora Bassa’s surplus power and incorporate Mozambique into South Africa’s
security zone. Based on projections that its power requirements would double
between 1967 and 1980, the apartheid regime needed a secure supply of cheap
energy and was anxious to blunt the “black onslaught” as typified by the
independence movement in Mozambique. In 1969 Lisbon signed a $515 million
agreement with ZAMCO – a South African-dominated consortium with partners
in West Germany, France, Italy and Portugal – to build the dam. This agreement
reconfigured the Cahora Bassa project into a single purpose hydroelectric scheme
to be financed by the sale of cheap electrical power to South Africa.28 With little
evidence of settler interest in this malarial infested zone and little prospect of
investment from Portuguese mining or agricultural interests, Lisbon had few
options but to scale back its ambitious development plan.
In sharp contrast to their concerns about the financial and security
dimensions of the dam, colonial officials and state planners paid little attention to
the potential consequences of the hydroelectric scheme for African peasants and
their environment. They presumed that increased economic activity would have a
trickle-down effect on ‘subsistence’ African cultivators living in the Lower
Zambesi basin. Authorities expressed confidence that the riverine communities
would benefit from the introduction of new farming techniques, new markets for
16
their commodities, new job opportunities, and being regrouped into modern
villages.29
Colonial authorities gave even less consideration to the ecological impact
of the proposed dam. In 1973, the Missão de Ecológia Aplicada do Zambeze
(MEAZ) commissioned a pre-impoundment survey of water quality, vegetation,
soils and climate.30 The following year a small team of researchers affiliated with
the University of Lourenço Marques conducted a biophysical survey of the Lower
Zambesi Valley. Underfunded, poorly conceived, and often of shoddy quality,
these investigations yielded few insights into the Zambesi’s ecosystems.31 One
scientist closely associated with the project decried
the lack of ecological specialists with local knowledge who should be
dealing with the interdependence and interrelationships of the whole
Lower Zambesi as one integrated system. This danger is compounded as
authority in both land-use planning and decision-making is vested in nonecological experts.32
Economic planners and civil engineers committed to completing the construction
of the hydroelectric project without delay simply ignored the research from
scientists that ran counter to their grand design.33
We have written elsewhere about the actual construction of the dam and its
impacts on the workers who built it.34 Suffice to say that the colonial regime built
the hydroelectric project on the backs of 3,000 African laborers who constituted
the bulk of the work force.35 Although nominally free, the Africans were recruited
into a highly regimented, ethnically divided and racialized labor regime. In sum, it
was a regime in which (1) Africans were assigned the most grueling and
17
dangerous tasks, (2) work obligations were often secured through coercive extralegal methods, (3) Africans were prohibited by custom and practice from holding
supervisory positions, (4) the living and working condition of black laborers was
distinctly inferior to that of their European supervisors, and (5) Portuguese
officials brutally stifled any dissent. The precarious working conditions are
evident in the words of Pedro da Costa Xavier:
At the intersection of two tunnels a large rock, larger than this house, fell,
collapsing the tunnels and trapping the men and machines inside it.
Company officials were unable to rescue the men and they ultimately had
to seal off the tunnel. Many people died. It was more than twenty. There
were smaller accidents as well. When the ropes, which were harnessing
men working on the edge of the dam broke, people would fall to their
deaths. Sometimes, when we were working in the tunnel, there would be
rockslides and people would be killed. Others would suffer serious
injuries. It was very dangerous work, not only for the Africans, but for the
Europeans who worked with them.36
In addition to such periodic catastrophies, universally harsh working
conditions and labor unrest, colonial authorities faced a concerted campaign by
FRELIMO to subvert, harass and impede construction of the dam. Although
senior nationalist leaders made bold pronouncements about sabotaging the project
and enjoyed substantial support among the workers, this was never a realistic
option. The colonial regime had erected three heavily armed defensive rings
around Songo (near the dam site) enclosed by doubled barbed-wire fences and one
of the world’s largest minefields, making it virtually impossible for the guerrillas
to get within striking distance of the dam. Instead small bands of insurgents mined
the dirt roads and railroad lines and ambushed trucks carrying essential equipment
18
to the dam site. To minimize these attacks the Portuguese tarred the mail road
between Songo and Tete, cleared the bush adjacent to the roads, organized daily
convoys and patrolled the train tracks more aggressively. Nevertheless these
defensive tactics did little to dislodge the insurgent forces. In November 1972,
FRELIMO forces launched their boldest initiatives, highlighted by a mortar attack
on the provincial airbase at Tete and eleven attacks on trains bringing critical
material from the Indian Ocean port of Beira to Cahora Bassa.37 During the next
two years they continued to ambush lorries, attack trains and periodically blow up
roads and bridges. There is also some evidence that they began to target power
lines built to transmit energy to South Africa which were particularly vulnerable.
Despite FRELIMO’s efforts, by 1974 the widely acclaimed dam was virtually
complete. Lost in the shuffle were the thousands of Mozambican peasants who
had been forcibly relocated from the flood plains.
The Disruption of Riparian Communities
From the initial planning phase, it had been an article of faith that the
long-term benefits of the dam would far outweigh any short-term inconveniences
in the lives of the riverine communities. Despite such assurances from colonial
planners, Cahora Bassa had immediate, multiple and far-reaching consequences
for the displaced communities whose homelands and farms were flooded to create
the massive lake behind the dam. Yet it was not simply being evicted from their
homes and ancestral lands that proved so devastating. Unlike other powerless
groups around the world displaced by hydroelectric schemes, the Zambesi
19
peasants were herded into strategic hamlets with few basic amenities. These
aldeamentos were an integral part of Portugal’s broader counterinsurgency
program designed to cut FRELIMO off from its rural base of support.38 A South
African journalist who was one of the few foreign reporters allowed into the war
zone noted the close linkages that FRELIMO had already forged with the
peasantry. “It is axiomatic that guerrillas cannot be beaten if the local people
support them from fear or desire. Strong local support is shown by how little
information Africans here give the Portuguese about FRELIMO.”39
Thus, the forced relocation of several villages due to inundation from
Cahora Bassa meshed extremely well with the counterinsurgency goals of the
colonial state. Claiming to protect the peasantry, Portuguese officials began to
evict communities near the damsite in, 1972, two years before the actual
impoundment of the river. Under pressure from an expanded war and construction
deadlines, local authorities did not even pay lip service to the notion of voluntary
resettlement. With no warning, people in the area to be inundated were simply
told they would have to leave. 40
Although colonial authorities initially claimed that only 25,000 Africans
would be displaced, by the end of, 1973 the number had jumped to over 42,000.41
Peasants were effectively held captive.They were under constant surveillance.
Their movement was controlled. Their only access to the outside world was
through a military checkpoint guarded by milita round the clock. Anyone who
tired to leave without permission or who returned from his or her field after the
20
midday curfew was harshly interrogated and often beaten as a suspected
FRELIMO agent.42
Inside the camps conditions were rudimentary at best. A typical
aldeamento contained between one thousand and fifteen hundred residents. They
lived in mud and wattle huts laid out in a grid enclosed by a barbed wire fence.
The original planning documents called for each aldeamento to maintain a school,
health clinic, water pumps, grist mills, warehouse for food reserves, social hall
and football field at cost of $9 million.43 Except for a handful of model
encampments, few of the “protected villages” had all, or even most, of these
amenities.44
Furthermore, the designated lands which the government had cleared were
rocky, hard to work and not very fertile and often far from the strategic hamlets.
One state agronomist acknowledged candidly that “ none of the sites chosen [in
the Chiuta region] have the minimum conditions for agriculture”(quoted in
Coelho:289).45 They stood in sharp contrast to the lands left behind. Jack
Sobrinho, who was forced to relocate to an aldeamento in Estima summed up the
general consensus: “The land at Chicoa Velha was good land. The land here was
hard and full of rocks, so it produced nothing.”46 The arid conditions and absence
of rain-fed lands dramatically reduced agricultural yields. So too did the colonial
policies which limited each household to one small plot—typically less than a
hectare in size. Peasants were forbidden to farm two or three fields strategically
located in different ecological zones in order to take advantage of variations in
soils, sunlight and moisture availability and to minimize risks. Government
21
agronomists, by discouraging intercropping on the grounds that it created “messy”
fields, exacerbated the problems of productivity.
That the displaced communities experienced increased food shortages and
malnutrition is hardly surprising, in light of the restrictive government policies
and the harsh environment. Without rain, good lands and sufficient time to work
the fields, there could be no corn or sorghum.47 There were also fewer
opportunities to make up food deficits through hunting and fishing. In spite of
government plans to protect the herds that roamed in the river valley and adjacent
forests,48 large numbers of animals drowned when the Zambesi was impounded.
Even in those areas where game survived, Portuguese military authorities
prevented peasants from carrying rifles and severely restricted their movement.49
Food shortages exacerbated the incidence of sickness and death which
seems to have increased markedly in these uprooted communities. The very young
and very old were particularly vulnerable. It is important to stress that the
evidence before and after the impoundment is fragmentary and that health and
sanitary conditions varied from one strategic hamlet to another. Moreover, the
colonial regime did try to inoculate at-risk populations to prevent tuberculosis and
yellow fever and provided medication to limit the debilitating effects of malaria.50
Nevertheless, the empirical evidence suggests that inadequate rural diets,
combined with problems caused by poor sanitary conditions regularly exacerbated
by heavy rains in January and February, left many rural communities reeling from
cholera. In aldeamentos located near Lake Cahora Bassa water-borne parasitic
22
illnesses such as schistosomiasis and malaria posed new health threats.51 Bernardo
Tapuleta Potoroia recalled this distressing time:
There was a great deal of hunger and many people also suffered from
diseases during this period. There were serious problems with cholera,
small pox, and malaria. Many people died. No one knew why or how this
happened, just that many people were dying.52
In the final analysis, displacement adversely affected everyone, but it did
not necessarily affect them equally. Chiefs, who received housing,53 state
subsidies and choice tracts of land, suffered less than their subjects. Peasant
women probably suffered more than their male counterparts. Certainly the
demands on their labour were greater. Most were forced to cope as best they could
with the hardships of daily life inside the strategic hamlets. This meant caring for
children, walking long distances to gather firewood and fetch water, assisting the
sick and the elderly and performing a wide array of other household chores in
addition to working on their household plots. By contrast, most men simply
farmed. Others clandestinely fled to Zimbabwe or found employment at the dam
site. However, difficult the living and working conditions of these male laborers,
they were appreciably better than being penned up in the aldeamentos.54
Peasants living down river, though not forcibly relocated because of the
hydroelectric project, nevertheless had their lives disrupted in multiple ways. The
construction of the dam set in motion long term process that had devastating
hydrological, ecological and social consequences for riparian communities living
adjacent to the flood plains. The hasty filling of the reservoir—against the advice
of environmental scientists involved in ecological impact studies but favored by
23
the military —effectively cut off river flows downstream of the dam for four
months from December 1974 to March 1975. Despite knowledge that the lower
Zambesi downstream of Cahora Bassa was highly dependent on the main channel
for continued flows, dam operators refused to allow compensatory releases
through the dam during the filling of the reservoir. Predictably, the dramatically
reduced flow rate to less than 60 cubic meters per day for over three months had
catastrophic results below the dam.55
This was precisely the time of year in the natural flow regime of the Lower
Zambesi when rising flood waters triggered crucial changes in the feeding and
reproductive behavior of fish and other organisms. Downstream fisheries were
almost wiped out following the filling of the reservoir, and the flood-dependent
ecosystems of the delta region—and the numerous wildlife dependent on these
ecosystems—were also severely impacted.56 Dam operators reversed course in
April 1975 and precipitously released a massive flow of water without any
warning to the riparian communities. The results were catastrophic. Villages were
flooded, local drinking water was contaminated and many cattle, goats and other
livestock were swept away in Other problems included a catastrophic release of
water from the dam in April that destroyed downstream dwellings and livestock
and water shortages for some urban areas.57 But the worst was still to come.
By early June of 1975, the dam was in full operation. Cahora Bassa turned
the Lower Zambesi into a regulated river, one whose principal function was to
provide cheap energy to South Africa. The waters of the middle Zambesi were
being channeled through the turbines of Cahora Bassa on a daily basis, directed
24
according to the power generation needs of the engineers of Hidroeléctrica de
Cahora Bassa (HCB), a joint Portuguese-Mozambican company charged with
managing the dam’s day-to-day operations. The transformation of the river’s
annual cycle from a punctuated, season-specific flow regime with a fairly regular
pattern of flood timing, magnitude and duration to one with irregular floods,
relatively constant flow rates and unpredictable high flow durations—without
regard to the agricultural cycle—was complete.58
Down river communities immediately felt the consequences of the
unpredictable discharges from the dam. They continue to suffer from irregular
flood cycles until this day. Peasants living down river on both banks of the
Zambesi stressed that because of these uncertainties they have been forced to
abandon their fertile gardens adjacent to the river and to cultivate in upper lands
only, far from the Zambesi . These lands are appreciably less fertile dependent on
uncertain rains and yield only one harvest a year. A small number of farmers
continue to risk planting on the river’s edge and on the islands that dot the river,
but acknowledge that more often than not at least a portion of their crops are
washed away by unexpected discharges from the dam.59 The water “destroyed our
fields on the banks of the river,” complained Caetano Francisco Figuerido and his
fellow villagers living in Inhangoma, near the confluence of the Shire and
Zambesi Rivers.60 Their words were echoed by Cheia Amado of Caia: “The water
destroyed all our fields; because of the uncertain floods we had to abandon all the
fertile lands near the river.”61
25
All the peasants with whom we spoke attributed the rupture of the
historical food growing cycle and the increased hunger to the irregular flooding.
Luis Manuel and his neighbors put it bluntly. “Hunger became much more
common after the construction of Cahora Bassa. There was never a month when
discharges did not provoke some unexpected flooding and suffering.”62
The construction of the hydroelectric project adversely affected food
security in one other important way as well. With the opening of the dam there has
been a sharp decline in the size and quantity of the down river fish population.
Fishermen claim that the turbines and gates at Cahora Bassa prevent bigger fish
from passing through. As a result larger species tend to remain in the lake behind
Cahora Bassa. Elders stress a second factor that contributed to the demise of the
fish population. In the days before the dam, the seasonal floods triggered the
annual breeding cycle for many species and created large areas of warm shallow
water along the flood plain, which were rich in nutrients and ideal for breeding.63
The large number of fishing camps and drying racks that were clearly present in
the 1970’s no longer operate.64 The decline in flood plain fisheries has
impoverished many fishing communities who relied on their catch both as a
valuable source of protein and to provide cash to purchase foodstuffs and other
basic necessities.
The irregular discharges coupled with periodic floods have also had a farreaching, if difficult to measure, ecological impact on the region below the dam.
Large floods, such as in 1978 and 1996 precipitated a great deal of erosion on the
rivers edge. The raging river not only washed away fertile soils, trees and other
26
vegetation, but deposited sandy soils making the region less fertile.65 Further
south in the Zambesi delta, mangrove forests and shrimp fisheries, critical features
of the estuarine system, have been particularly degraded by the lack of the predam seasonal floods which brought nutrients and sediments to the delta zone.
Preliminary indications suggest that the long-term prognosis for shrimp fishermen
is particularly bleak.66 These devastating consequences of the dam were
compounded by South Africa’s destabilization campaign. The Zambesi river
valley was one of the apartheid regime’s critical targets.
South African destabilization and FRELIMO’s failure to domesticate a White
Elephant
With independence and state power, FRELIMO was arguably in position
to advance policies whose goal was nothing short of transforming Mozambique’s
distorted economy. This would, it was hoped, reduce the independent country’s
dependence on South Africa’s apartheid regime.67 Under an agreement worked
out in the late 1960s and signed at the time of the dam’s completion, Eskom, a
South African parastatal electricity utility would receive all electricity produced
by the dam. State planners, committed to large-scale social engineering, were
confident that Cahora Bassa would play a pivotal role developing the Zambesi
Valley and improving the lives of millions of Mozambicans across the country
who lacked electricity. Together with the organization of a network of state farms
and communal villages, Cahora Bassa would, in the Marxist parlance of
27
FRELIMO, be instrumental “in the socialization of the countryside.” President
Machel was adamant on this point.
We cannot irrigate without energy. The electrification of the central area of
the north and of the south of our country is fundamental for us to be able
to meet the needs of agriculture. We must domesticate the “white
elephant” Cahora Bassa. This “elephant’s” ivory—electricity and
irrigation—should go to our agriculture and industry ... Within the next
decade the north bank power station [at Cahora Bassa] must begin
functioning and numerous dams must be built for irrigation and
electrification.68
Domesticating the “white elephant” was not an easy task. Under the, 1974
Lusaka Peace Accord, Lisbon assumed responsibility for the enormous debt
incurred in building the dam. Until it was repaid, Portugal—under the auspices of
HCB—rather than the Mozambican state, retained effective control (nearly 82
percent of the project) over Cahora Bassa. That Mozambique’s total energy
requirement was less than ten percent of the dam’s output further complicated
FRELIMO’s efforts to harness the hydroelectric project for domestic purposes.
Moreover, the cash-starved nation lacked the capital to develop the agricultural
and industrial sectors that—as envisioned in the original planning documents for
the dam—could utilize the energy it produced.
Despite these constraints, the government did undertake a number of new
economic initiatives so that Cahora Bassa would not simply be a source of cheap
energy for the apartheid regime. In 1978 it began building power stations to
provide energy from the dam to the provincial capital Tete and the nearby
coalmines at Moatize, the largest in the country. Two years later, Cahora Bassa
28
started supplying electricity to Tete, whose obsolete thermal power station burned
up to 20,000 tons of coal annually, and to the colliery, which had relied on
imported diesel for its generators.69 At the same time, the National Water
Commission announced plans to use the water stored by the dam to help irrigate
more than 210,000 hectares of choice farmlands in the Lower Zambesi Valley.70
In the early 1980s, Mozambique signed an agreement with India to process
bauxite from that country at an aluminum plant using power from the dam.71 State
planners also proposed developing commercial fishing, tourism and a shipping
industry on the lake behind Cahora Bassa. In 1981 they signed an agreement with
Bulgaria to help fund these projects.72
All of these proposed projects appeared negligible when compared with
plans to build a second set of transmission lines and sub-stations on the northern
banks of the Zambesi at the damsite.73 The new energy system would provide
cheap energy to the densely populated provinces of Zambezia and Nampula,
located on the coast in the northern reaches of the country. Both were major
agricultural zones that produced most of the country’s cotton, tea and sugar for
export. Zambezia was also a major food producing area. These provinces also
assumed strategic political importance because FRELIMO had mounted a very
intense campaign in this area to pressure reluctant peasants to join communal
villages.74 One of the incentives that the state held out to the populace was the
promise of Cahora Bassa electricity.75 In 1980 the government signed a multimillion dollar agreement with France and Italy to begin the first phase of the
project, which was to be completed two years later.76
29
Before most of the projects could get underway, South Africa intensified
its destabilization campaign directed at the FRELIMO regime, effectively
paralyzing these projects. The apartheid regime’s undeclared war against
Mozambique and RENAMO’s role as South Africa’s principal weapon are well
documented.77 It was part of a broader strategy to ensure Pretoria’s hegemony
over the southern African region in order to defend the political and economic
interests of the apartheid state and to insulate the African National Congress and
its movement from linkages to sympathetic regional regimes.
Within six months of Mozambique’s independence in 1975, South African
security forces working with their Rhodesian counterparts had created RENAMO
and trained and armed the insurgents.78 Between 1976 and 1979 Mozambique
suffered from more than 350 RENAMO and Rhodesian attacks. Although the dam
itself was left unscathed, anti-FRELIMO forces periodically targeted regions
adjacent to Cahora Bassa and regularly sabotaged power lines and sub-stations.79
With the fall of the Rhodesian government in 1980 and the independence
of Zimbabwe, the apartheid regime transferred RENAMO headquarters and bases
from Rhodesia to the Transvaal, a northern province of South Africa adjacent to
Mozambique. South African security treated the guerrillas as a surrogate army,
providing RENAMO with large supplies of war materials, including rockets,
mortars and small arms, critical logistic support and instructors. The latter,
according to the guerrilla leader Alfonso Dhlakama, would “not only teach but
also participate in the attacks.”80 By 1981 RENAMO forces were being
transported into Mozambique by South African helicopters and re-supplied by
30
airdrops and naval landings along Mozambique’s expansive coast.81 The guerrilla
forces sabotaged bridges and railroad lines, mined roads, destroyed warehouses
and attacked state farms. RENAMO’s renewed offensive was part of a broader
campaign that South African security forces orchestrated to destroy
Mozambique’s infrastructure, paralyze the economy and bring the young nation to
its knees.82
Cahora Bassa’s power lines were an especially attractive target. At first
glance such a strategy might seem counter productive since the pylons were
transporting energy to South Africa. But set within Pretoria’s broader
destabilization strategy, designed to punish Mozambique for its support of the
ANC, it made perfect sense to military planners. After all, FRELIMO had placed
great importance on the Cahora Bassa’s potential to transform the countryside.
Paralyzing the hydroelectric scheme underscored the country’s vulnerability.
These attacks also enabled both the RENAMO leadership and the apartheid
regime to claim that the guerrillas were a legitimate nationalist movement
opposed to the Marxist policies of FRELIMO and not simply a puppet of
Pretoria.83 That Cahora Bassa power lines provided only 8% of South Africa’s
energy, which meant that domestic consequences for the apartheid regime were
relatively minor.84
The results of the attacks on power lines were both predictable and
devastating. The Mozambican government lacked the capacity to protect the 4,000
pylons which cut across 900 kilometers of remote country. As early as 1981
RENAMO forces had dynamited pylons near Espungabera reducing electricity
31
exports by 50%. It took six months to repair the lines.85 This pattern was repeated
on a regular basis. Guerrillas destroyed power lines and towers and mined the
adjacent areas making it virtually impossible for the government to repair them.
These attacks did not cease even after the South African government promised
that they would as part of the 1984 Nkomati Peace Accord and in subsequent
bilateral negotiations.86 In fact, RENAMO, which had begun to take on a political
life of its own, escalated its attacks as a way of pressuring the Mozambican
government to enter into direct negotiations. By 1988, 891 pylons had been
destroyed and that number doubled again over the next three years.87 The cost of
repairing the power lines was estimated at $500 million—almost three times the
total value of Mozambican exports.88 RENAMO’s military campaigns in Tete and
Zambezia provinces, moreover, had effectively blocked plans to develop the
Zambesi Valley and electrify the northern part of the country. The dam remained a
white elephant of benefit to neither the national economy nor local economies of a
struggling Mozambique.
In addition to paralyzing Cahora Bassa and destroying many other strategic
economic targets, RENAMO initiated a reign of terror throughout the riverine
zone, particularly in areas considered loyal to the government. Among the most
vulnerable communities were the peasants who had been displaced by the dam
and been herded into strategic hamlets during the colonial period. With
independence, the barbed wire surrounding their villages was taken down and the
guards were removed, leaving them defenseless. Since their original homes were
32
under water, most had little alternative but to remain where they were. They were
easy prey. According to Vernácio Leone:
When RENAMO would come into a village, they would call all the people
together. Then they would go into the house and steal all that was inside.
They ordered the people back into their homes and set them on fire. People
elsewhere heard these stories, so when RENAMO was coming, they would
flee to Estima (an administrative center).89
Vernácio’s neighbors Supia Sargent and Carlos Churo remember that many ablebodied men and women fled to Zimbabwe.90 Others were forced to take even
more extreme measures to survive.
After independence people from Chinyanda Nova returned to their
homelands in Chinyanda Velha [near the damsite], but could not remain
there for a long time because the Rhodesians started to attack. So we had
to return to Chinyanda Nova [near a government base] and have remained
here ever since. But we were not free from war because RENAMO began
to attack. They burned our houses, raped our wives and daughters and
robbed our goats. We were forced to live in the mountains for four years.
We slept there and only returned at daybreak to cultivate our fields.91
Peasants downriver from the dam suffered similar abuses from marauding bands
of RENAMO guerrillas. Listen to the words of Faminsani Chenje who lived in the
village of Mushenge in southern Tete province.
The first time they came was in 1986. They were looking for food. It was a
small group of about fifteen men. They took cattle, chickens and goats. A
lot of villagers started fleeing to Tete [town] then because the war had
come to Mushenge. But most of us stayed in the village. It was our home.
Then, in June 1986, the Matsange [RENAMO] came again early in the
morning. It was still dark. This time they came right into the village. They
called for everyone to come out of their houses. Then they killed ten
people and mutilated ten others, including myself. Two soldiers cut off my
ears with knives. They said we were working for FRELIMO.92
33
Overall, South Africa’s destabilization campaign had devastating consequences
on the riverine communities. Many villages were obliterated, fields destroyed and
health clinics burned. It is hardly surprising that thousands of peasants who
survived these attacks experienced food shortages and malnutrition. Many starved.
Death rates from yellow fever, tuberculosis and malaria soared.93 Throughout the
region, the social fabric of rural society was destroyed. At the same time the
apartheid regime and its RENAMO allies managed to paralyze electricity
production so that Mozambique derived no economic benefit s whatsoever from
the dam. From 1982 to 1997, Cahora Bassa’s five massive hydroelectric
generators stood idle (Gebhardt, 1997).
Struggles over power and water: from Cahora Bassa to Mphanda Nkuwa
The most recent points of contention over Cahora Bassa revolve around
two central issues: control of the hydroelectricity from the dam and the proposed
construction of the Mphanda Nkuwa dam on the Zambesi some 70 km
downstream of Cahora Bassa. Both debates beg the question of whether or not the
lessons of Cahora Bassa and its socio-ecological and political-economic relations
have been adequately absorbed by the analysts and decision-makers contemplating
water resource development in Mozambique and other parts of southern Africa.
The discourse of hydroelectricity, prominent in both conflicts, has effectively
overwhelmed and erased many of the salient concerns in the Lower Zambesi
dealing with ecological restoration of the delta and improved livelihood
conditions for basin residents.
34
Since the late 1990s, three critical issues have dominated discussions of
the current and future operations of Cahora Bassa and its role in the development
of southern Africa. The first concerns the actual control of the dam, which is
currently run by the nominally independent Hidroelectrica de Cahora Bassa
(HCB). The second, and obviously connected, issue relates to the massive debt—
estimated in most accounts at US$2.5 billion—owed to Portugal by the
Mozambican state. This debt accrued during the first 15 or so years of the dam’s
non-operation when, as detailed earlier, sabotage by RENAMO guerillas
prevented any electricity from Cahora Bassa reaching its targeted market in South
Africa. The final issue involves a debate between HCB and the South African
utility Eskom over the appropriate and fair market value of Cahora Bassa
electricity sold to South Africa. These issues now frame much of the debate over
Cahora Bassa, leaving little room for the crucial questions of ecological integrity
and sustainable livelihoods for the Lower Valley’s residents and ecosystems.
One of the central irony’s of Cahora Bassa’s post-colonial history is the
simple fact that the government of Mozambique has received virtually no
substantive benefits from what was intended to be the dam’s primary function, the
production and sale of hydroelectricity. Following the transfer of power from
Portugal to the FRELIMO government in 1974-1975, the fate of Cahora Bassa
remained unclear. Under the accords of the 1974 peace agreement, HCB received
an 82 percent share of ownership in the dam, while the government of
Mozambique received 18 percent of the shareholdings.94 In theory, ownership and
control of the dam would eventually pass out of HCB’s hands into those of the
35
Mozambican state, as profits from sale of the electricity grew. Yet, as detailed
above, Cahora Bassa’s transmission lines and the damsite itself became important
foci of military conflict during the Mozambican civil war. As a result of the
continuing sabotage of the lines running to South Africa, the newly installed
FRELIMO government was able to neither transmit electricity nor accrue funds
from its sale. During this period, Portugal directed financial resources to the repair
of transmission lines and to maintenance of the dam itself, and has estimated the
amount to be repaid by Mozambique to be on the order of US$2.5 billion. A
certain percentage of the debt consists of funds borrowed by the colonial
Mozambican state for construction of the dam.95
In the face of this massive sum in arrears to Portugal, the Mozambican
government has sought an effective means to reduce or erase the debt, and assume
full control over Cahora Bassa’s operations. This transfer of control over the dam
would, in theory, provide Mozambique with the means of utilizing its electricity
for sale and for domestic consumption in industries and households. As of 2002,
Mozambique’s minister of minerals and energy resources, Castigo Langa, was
pushing for Portugal to approve transfer of full control of the dam to
Mozambique, a position that did not sit well with the Portuguese administrators of
HCB, who presumably would advocate for a slower transfer of control.96
Yet concerns over outright control of the dam itself have recently been
overshadowed by questions of where the electricity from Cahora Bassa actually
goes, and how much it costs. A 1988 agreement between Eskom and HCB, the
Portuguese company contracted to operate Cahora Bassa, stipulated that the South
36
African utility would get a minimum of 1,450 MW generated from CB’s single
power station. However, from the time rehabilitation of Cahora Bassa’s
transmission lines in 1998, when it began producing electricity again at full power
(something never previously achieved), Eskom was obtaining only 850 MW (or
60 percent) of the station’s generated electricity. Of the remainder, 400 MW has
been designated for Zimbabwe’s electricity utility, Zesa, and 200 MW for
Electricidade de Mozambique (EDM). The EDM electricity actually passes
through South Africa before being “repatriated” to the southern Mozambican
provinces of Maputo and Gaza, where almost all of it is consumed by a large
aluminum smelting facility.97
This pattern, of Eskom and South Africa having a near monopoly on the
purchase of Cahora Bassa’s electricity, set the stage for the current struggles over
prices. In 2002, in the midst of Maputo’s demands for greater control over the
dam, HCB representatives began claiming that price for electricity being sold to
Eskom was woefully low. The struggle reached a peak in October 2002, when
HCB cut off the flow of electricity to Eskom and South Africa, asserting that the
US$0.01 per kilowatt-hour (kwh) was a “ruinous price” and a blatant attempt by
Eskom to exploit its power as almost sole buyer of Cahora Bassa electricity.98 As
summed up by HCB board chairman Carlos Anjos Veiga,
We have a power purchase agreement that was established between
Portugal and South Africa in 1969. Many things have changed here in
Africa. Portugal is no longer the colonial country. Mozambique is an
independent country, and even the regime in South Africa has changed, so
we need a new power purchase agreement that is more appropriate to the
present situation in this region.99
37
HCB demanded, at a minimum, a doubling of the price and immediate
negotiations for establishment of what they perceived would be an even higher
rate, one that reflected the true market value, in the future. Eskom countered that
the cutting-off would have little effect in that it had ample energy reserves from
internal sources. Mozambique has been critical of HCB’s position. Prime Minster
Pascoal Mocumbi openly disagreed with the HCB decision to cut off power to
South Africa, arguing it was “not the most suitable method” for resolving
conflicts.100
While the “crisis” was temporarily resolved in November 2002 following a
meeting among South African, Portuguese and Mozambican government
representatives, there is every indication that conflicts over Cahora Bassa’s
electricity will continue. Portugal appears committed to retaining control of
Cahora Bassa, through HCB, at least until the massive debt owed by Mozambique
for the dam can be substantially paid off. A higher price for electricity sold to
Eskom, reportedly the same US$0.07 per kwh that HCB is receiving from sales to
Zesa in Zimbabwe, would help move towards this goal. Maputo, however, would
like to receive more power from the dam and somehow gain greater control by
increasing the government’s share of the dam. South Africa has up to now backed
the Mozambican position, purportedly to guarantee the low rates it has heretofore
been paying for Cahora Bassa electricity.101
Still, Portugal’s goals with regard to control over Cahora Bassa remain
somewhat vague and contingent on the prevailing political winds in Lisbon. For
example, following the failure of the ousting of the Socialist Party in early 2002,
38
talks among the three countries regarding the future of the dam, held under the
auspices of the trilateral Joint Commission on Cahora Bassa, bogged down.102
Later that year, Portuguese representatives lobbied the Mozambican government
to remove the controversial minister of energy and natural resources, Castigo
Langa, from his post. Langa has been a strong supporter of transferring
management responsibilities for Cahora Bassa to Mozambique.103 HCB would
prefer to hold on to Cahora Bassa, and thus retain Portuguese control, at least until
Mozambique can pay off at least a portion of the massive debt. In the meantime,
HCB is suspicious of Eskom and South Africa’s intentions with regard to
asserting control over the entire southern African system of energy production and
distribution. Confronted with South African plans to privatize all energy
infrastructure in the region, the Chair of the Board of Directors of HCB recently
told the attendees of a symposium on hydro-power in Africa that transmission
lines in southern Africa should be publicly managed and hence independent from
private bodies managing electricity production (e.g., hydroelectric stations). Under
this logic, HCB could concentrate more resources on improving Cahora Bassa’s
production and worry less about the distribution system and associated
expenses.104
The struggles over ultimate control of the dam’s hydroelectricity and who
will benefit from its production and sales are unlikely to be resolved in the near
future. The debates themselves, however, have occurred at levels, or scales, that
are abstracted from the actual Lower Zambesi basin and its residents. These
debates clearly center on the product—hydroelectricity—of the Cahora Bassa
39
project rather than on the dam’s alteration of the river and its continuing socioecological consequences. The overarching focus of recent discourses on
hydroelectricity foments a powerful type of post-colonial amnesia whereby, once
again, the consequences of producing power, measured in lost livelihoods and
deteriorated ecosystems, are shunted out of sight. This amnesia is even more
apparent as the Mozambican state considers building another massive dam project
a relatively short distance downstream form Cahora Bassa.
The transnational conflict for control over hydroelectricity is also reflected
in recent debates over the construction of the Mphanda Nkuwa105 dam, to be built
70 km downstream from the Cahora Bassa damsite. An Investors Conference for
the Mphanda Nkuwa Hydroelectric Project, held on 30 May 2002, was attended
by more than 200 representatives of government officials, large energy companies,
contracting companies, equipment manufacturers, consultants and investment
banks. The meeting’s intent was clear: to mark the official launching of the
project and to invite investors to pre-qualify for implementation of the dam, which
government sources indicate would begin in 2004 or 2005.106 The proposed
hydroelectric dam would generate roughly 1,300 MW. The dam’s reservoir,
estimated at 97 square kilometers, would displace approximately 1,400 people
according to government documents. While the government has estimated the cost
of the project to be somewhere in the neighborhood of US$1.3 billion,107 other
sources have advanced an estimate closer to US$2.5 billion.108
Mozambique’s promotion of Mphanda Nkuwa must be seen in light of
broader shifts in the country’s political economy and the discourse of rapid
40
development. In its current quest for economic development, Mozambique has
placed heavy emphasis on encouraging foreign investment and privatization. In
the words of Castigo Langa, the government is very much
aware of the role the private sector can play in the development of national
energy infrastructure, both for its enormous capacity to mobilize the
necessary financial resources and for its potential in fostering efficiency
and competitiveness, our Government has decided to open the national
market for private investments.109
The government enacted legislation in the late 1990s with the specific aim of
encouraging the participation of the private sector in all aspects of the energy
industry. This is part of the inexorable logic of the proposed Mphanda Nkuwa.
The funds necessary to build the gigantic dam, and thus further exploit the power
of the Zambesi River for industrialization and electricity sales, are far beyond the
financial capacities of Mozambique. Private investment is in fact the only path
towards construction of the dam. To this end, energy minister Castigo Langa
headed a delegation of officials to Brussels, London, Paris and Bonn in October
2002 to solicit interest among investment bank and other finance organizations.110
Discussions of the project have not proceeded without critique.
Representatives of Livaningo, a Mozambican NGO based in Maputo, have
repeatedly called for greater investigation of the dam’s downstream impacts,
which they feel are almost sure to include further damage—due largely to the
trapping of additional sediments behind the dam—to the prawn and other fisheries
in the Zambesi’s coastal estuary. As asserted by Livaningo’s Anabela Lemos:
Our main concern on this project is that it has not included a study carried
41
out in accordance with the WCD (World Commission on Dams)
guidelines, taking into account public opinion and needs, ascertaining
whether the power is needed, looking at the impacts, and offering a series
of alternatives…How can it be possible to think of another dam project,
without first finding the correct solution to minimize existing problems?
111
Bryan Davies, a South African ecologist who has worked in Zambesi ecosystems
for the past three decades, is even harsher in his assessment of Mphanda Nkuwa.
He calls the decision to seek investment for Mphanda Nkuwa “ill-advised,
expensive and…probably politically motivated.”112 One resident of Tete, Antonio
Mandiftma, questions the project’s ability to promote development in the province
where it will be built: “What people need are jobs, not projects that will in the end
employ only a few people.”113 Construction of a dam at M’panda Ncua would also
make obsolete current plans that seek to restore the Lower Zambesi’s ecological
systems through controlled flood releases from Cahora Bassa. This plan would,
according to its backers, confer livelihood benefits to the residents of the Lower
Zambesi Valley by restoring pre-Cahora Bassa levels of floodplain fisheries and
agricultural production.114
In addition to these social and ecological concerns, the emerging debate
over Mphanda Nkuwa also highlights the difficult position of the Mozambican
state vis-à-vis its capacities and desire to promote development of the Lower
Zambesi beyond Cahora Bassa. Some observers see the government’s promotion
of Mphanda Nkuwa as a way of placing political-economic pressure on HCB and
the government in Lisbon. If Mphanda Nkuwa exists and is generating electricity,
the need to repatriate the profits from Cahora Bassa becomes less urgent, and
42
helps break HCB’s monopoly on energy production in Mozambique.115 However,
it appears at this juncture that plans for constructing Mphanda Nkuwa are
proceeding apace, and that concerns over the projects socio-ecological
ramifications have taken a back seat to the search for rapid economic
development.
Conclusion: regional conflict and Cahora Bassa
Conflicts over water occur at multiple scales and must be interpreted
accordingly. In an earlier work, we laid bare the intertwined social and
environmental histories of the building of Cahora Bassa from the perspective of
the people, residents of the Lower Zambesi Valley, most directly affected by the
dam and those laborers who constructed the dam.116 These first-hand accounts
stressed the conflict between livelihoods and ecosystems on the one hand, and the
developmental goals of the colonial state on the other. The focal point of conflict
was the alteration of the Zambesi River by the Cahora Bassa dam. This paper
argues that there is another important dimension to the conflict over Cahora
Bassa, one linked more to international and regional political processes. In this
case, the alteration of the Zambesi by Cahora Bassa became inscribed in the
ongoing struggle between FRELIMO and the Portuguese colonial state, which, as
attested by those who lived the civil war, played havoc with their live and
livelihoods.
Cahora Bassa is deeply implicated in the same political and economic
processes—the struggles, first, between FRELIMO and the colonial state and,
43
second, between the independent Mozambican government and RENAMO
rebels—that gave rise to military conflict. The dam was initially conceived to
bolster the capacity of the colonial state to retain power over its territory. The
apartheid regime of South Africa—under agreement to purchase Cahora Bassa
electricity—was necessary to abet this goal. As evidenced by the selective
character of pre-dam investigations and the active suppression of proposed
research, social and environmental considerations were effectively subordinated
by colonial planners intent on transforming the river. Upon inheriting Cahora
Bassa, the newly independent government attempted to domesticate the “white
elephant” to spur economic development, a goal that South Africa-backed
RENAMO sought to thwart by all means. Both the civil strife and Cahora Bassa
had severe and confounding impacts on the ecological and human locales of the
Lower Zambesi Valley, yet both originated in the dynamics of national and
regional political economies. And the struggle over Cahora Bassa’s power
continues, as the Mozambican state’s recent attempts to capture the financial
benefits of the dam have encountered another, transnational scale of struggle
between Portugal and South Africa.
Too often forgotten in the discourse on water, development and national
security are the people whom large dams are purported to help. This paper has
explored the deleterious socio-economic and environmental changes brought
about by Cahora Bassa dam and South Africa’s destabilization campaign. It is part
of an alternative history of Cahora Bassa which argues that the historical
memories and lived experiences of these riverine communities must figure
44
prominently both in any scholarly analysis of the effect of Cahora Bassa and in
new initiatives to remedy the situation. This alternative history is still a work in
progress.
Finally, that serious consideration is being given to building a new dam at
Mphanda Nkuwa, seventy miles downstream from Cahora Bassa, suggests that
lessons of the past are still being obscured in the name of development. Given the
social and ecological histories of Cahora Bassa, in addition to the regional
political and economic conflicts so entwined in these histories, a new dam at
Mphanda Nkuwa is a startling example of historical amnesia. There is thus far
little in the discourse of the new project’s promoters to suggest that the lessons of
Cahora Bassa—devastated livelihoods and ecosystems and little if any genuine
economic benefits to Mozambique—have been adequately considered by postcolonial state politicians and planners. Despite the history of Cahora Bassa, the
Mozambican government’s desire to harness economic benefits from the Zambesi,
above all other social and ecological goals, appears to be pushing towards the
construction of what could very well be another white elephant.
1
For a discussion of high modernism see James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes
to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
2
For seminal contributions to the debates over large dams and their impacts, see Goldsmith and
Hildyard, William Adams, Wasting the Rain: Rivers, People and Planning in Africa (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1992); Patrick McCully, Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics
of Large Dams (London: Prometheus, 1997); and World Commission on Dams, Dams and
Development: a New Framework for Decision-Making (The Report of the World Commission on
Dams) (London: Earthscan, 2000).
3
Allen Isaacman and Chris Sneddon, “Towards a social and environmental history of the building
of Cahora Bassa Dam,” Journal of Southern Africa Studies 26 (4) (2000): 597-632.
4
Isaacman and Sneddon, “Towards a social and environmental history”.
5
William Adams, Green Development: Environment and Sustainability in the Third World
(London: Routledge, 1990); A. Isaacman, “Historical Amnesia, or the Logic of Capital
45
Accumulation: Cotton Production in Colonial and Post-colonial Mozambique,” Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space 15 (1997): 757-790.
6
In May 1998, Allen Isaacman conducted approximately 40 interviews with displaced peasants
who live in the region of the reservoir at Cahora Bassa as well as with workers who helped to
construct the actual dam living in the Lower Zambesi Valley (e.g., Chipalapala, Estima, Sena,
Nyatapiria. In July 2000, Allen Isaacman and Arlindo Chilundo, A professor at Eduardo Mondlane
University, and a team of students interviewed more than 75 peasants in the down river regions of
Caia, Chemba and Sena. They continued this research in July and August of 2001. In all these
locations we selected both elderly women and men who had lived in the region adjacent to the
Zambesi River. For a discussion of the strengths and limits of life histories and oral sources of
information, see Isaacman (1993).
7
SWECO/Swed Power, “Cahora Bassa Hydroelectric Scheme—Stage II. Pre-investment Report,
Part 5—Ecology,” (Stockholm: SWECO/Swed Power, 1983), 55.
8
SWECO/Swed Power, “Cahora Bassa,” 59-68.
9
During the same 1957 flood mentioned above, three population centers (Ancuaze, Chiramba and
Mutarara) in the Lower Zambesi Valley were inundated (SWECO/Swed Power, “Cahora Bassa”).
10
In the down-river regions of Sena, Caia and Mutara these rich river-fed soils are known in the
local vernacular as ndrongo, mpumbo and matope.
11
Interview with Senteira Botão, Eliot Jumbo Muatisembero Sargento and Beatriz Maquina,
Chipalapala, 26 May 1998.
12
Interview with Luís Manuel, Regulado Sangoma, Sena, 20 July 2000.
13
Interview with Caetano Francisco Figuerido et al., Muatara 18 July 2000
14
Interview with Senteira Botão et al; Interview with Supia Sargent and Carlos Soda Churo,
Estima, 22 May 1998; interview with Sene Simico, Mauzene Dique and Mzwengane Mafala-Njala,
Nyatapiria, 27 May 1998; interview with Bento Estima and Joseph Ndebvuchena, Estima, 19 May
1998.
15
SWECO/Swed Power, “Cahora Bassa”; and Bryan Davies, “The Zambezi River System,” in
Bryan Davies and Keith Walker, eds., The Ecology of River Systems (Dordrecht: Kluwer
Academic Press, 1986), 225-267.
16
Interview with Luís Manuel; interview with Caetano Francisco Figuerido et al., Inhangoma,
Mutarara, 18 July 2000.
17
Interview with Supia Sargent and Carlos Soda Churo, Estima, 22 May 1998.
18
P. Jackson and K. Rogers, “Cabora Bassa fish populations before and after the first filling
stage,” Zoologica Africana 11 (1976): 377
19
Interview with Supia Sargent and Carlos Soda Churo; interview with Caetano Francisco
Figuerido et al.; interview with António Djáse, Beiro, 5 July 2000.
20
Interview with John Paul and Khumbidzi Pastor.
21
Quoted in Peter Bolton, “The Regulation of the Zambezi in Mozambique,” Ph.D. Thesis,
University of Edinburgh (1983), 445-446.
22
See Bolton, “The Regulation”.
23
For a comprehensive analysis of the Portuguese policy see J. P. C. Borges Coelho, “Protected
Villages and Communal Villages in the Mozambican Province of Tete (1968-1982): A History of
State Resettlement Policies, Development and War,” Ph.D. Thesis, University of Bradford (1983).
24
Quoted in D. Marchant, “The dam at Cabora Bassa,” Venture 23 (1971): 28-31.
25
W. Nussey, “The War in Tete a Threat to All in Southern Africa,” Johannesburg Star, 1 July
1972.
26
World Council of Churches, Cabora Bassa and the Struggle for Mozambique. London: WCC,
1971), 2.
27
United Nations, “Economic Conditions in Mozambique with Reference to Foreign Interests,”
Conference Room Paper SCI/71/5 (New York: United Nations, 1971), 38.
28
For a detailed discussion of these negotiations see Keith Middlemas, Cabora Bassa:
Engineering and Politics in Southern Africa (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975), 20-30.
29
M. Vidigal, “Cabora Bassa: História Perspectivas. Justificação. Aspectos Económico Financeiros. Interesse Nacional do Empreendimento,” Electricidade (Lisbon) 14 (1970): 7-20.
46
30
A. Hall, I. Maria, C. Valente and B. Davies “The Zambezi River in Moçambique: The PhysicoChemical Status of the Middle and Lower Zambezi Prior to Closure of the Cabora Bassa Dam,”
Freshwater Biology 7 (1977): 187-206.
31
B. Davies, “Rehabilitation Programme for Cahora Bassa and the Lower Zambezi,” Report
submitted to International Crane Foundation and Ford Foundation (1996).
32
K. Tinley “Morromeu: wrecked by the big dams,” African Wildlife 29 (1975): 24.
33
Davies, “Rehabilitation Programme”.
34
Isaacman and Sneddon, “Towards a social and environmental history”.
35
There were approximately 750 Europeans who held all the technical, administrative as well as
most clerical positions.
36
Interview with Pedro da Costa Xavier, 23 May 1998, Songo.
37
Rhodesian Herald, 17 November 1972, 3.
38
B. Jundanian, “Counterinsurgency in Mozambique,” World Politics 6 (1974): 519-540; Borges
Coelho, “Protected Villages”.
39
Nussey, “The War in Tete”, 1.
40
Interview with Pezulani Mafulanjala, Maurício Alemão and Bernardo Tapuleta Potoroia.
41
Gabinete do Plano do Zambeze [GPZ], “Relatório de Actividade,” (Lisbon, 1974), 28. This
figure includes Africans relocated down river at Caia. It is difficult to determine the actual number
since there was a great deal of secrecy surrounding the forced villagization program. One author
estimated that upwards of 200,000 peasants in Tete district were interned (see Jundanian,
“Counterinsurgency in Mozambique”).
42
Interview with Pezulani Mafulanjala, Maurício Alemão and Bernardo Tapuleta Potoroia.
43
GPZ, “Relatório de Actividade,” (Lisbon, 1971), 46; GPZ, “Relatório de Actividade,” (Lisbon,
1972), 20.
44
Jundanian, “Counterinsurgency in Mozambique,” 527.
45
Quoted in Borges Coelho, “Protected Villages,” 289.
46
Interview with Jack Sobrinho and Wiseborn Benjamin, Estima, 20 May 1998.
47
Interview with Pezulani Mafalanjala, Maurício Alemão and Tapuleta Potoroia
48
For a discussion of this ill-fated plan see A.H.M., Governo Geral, Cota 864, ‘Plano Base Para
Salvamento e Transferencia da Fauna Brava da Albufeira de Cahora Bassa em Moçambique’, K.
L. Tinley, March 1973.
49
Interview with John Paul and Khumbidzi Pastor
50
GPZ, “Relatório de Actividade” (1974), 59-63.
51
Bolton, “The Regulation,” 161-162.
52
Interview with Pezulani Malalanjala, Maurício Alemão and Bernardo Tapuleta Potoroia.
53
Overseas Companies of Portugal. “The Other Face of Cabora Bassa,” (Lisbon, n.d.).
54
Interview with Vernácio Leone, Estima, 22 May 1998; Interview with John Paul and Khumbidzi
Pastor.
55
Downriver communities depended on the annual replenishment of nutrients from the flooding
Zambesi for growing crops in the river’s floodplains. HCB engineers stopped the river flows in
December, when the annual inundation of floodplains below the damsite typically occurred, and
thus severed the annual flooding cycle. Commenting on the reckless pace of filling, one scientist
lamented, "Our work was ignored by the very people who requested the [ecological] survey in the
first place" [Bryan Davies, “They Pulled the Plug Out of the Lower Zambezi,” African Wildlife 29
(1975): 26-28].
56
Davies, “They Pulled the Plug”.
57
Peter Jackson, “Ecological Studies on the Middle Zambezi prior to Kariba and Cahora Bassa and
the Need for Surveys of the Lower Zambezi prior to the Creation of Further Hydro-electric Dams,”
Paper presented at the Workshop Sobre O Uso Sustentavel da Barrágem de Cahora Bassa e do
Vale do Rio Zambese, Songo, Mozambique, 29 September-2 October 1997.
58
For a detailed discussion of the long-term social and ecological effects of Cahora Bassa, see
Isaacman and Sneddon, “Towards a social and environmental history”.
59
Interview with Caetano Francisco Figuerido et al., Inhangoma, Mutarara, 18 July 2000;
Interview with Ceia Amado and Regulado Mapagadi, Caia, 20 July 2000.
47
60
Interview with Caetano Francisco Figuerido et al., Inhangoma, Mutarara, 18 July 2000.
Interview with Ceia Amado and Regulado Mapagadi, Caia, 20 July 2000.
62
Interview with Luis Manuel.
63
Interview with Ina’cio Tlonse Guta et.al, Tsetsha, 21 July 2000; Interview with Manuel Tale et
al., Tsetcha, 21 July 2000.
64
B. Chande and P.Dutton, “Impacts of Hydrological Change in the Zambezi Delta to Wildlife and
their Habitats with Special Attention to the Large Mammals”, Paper presented at Workshop Sobre
O Uso Sustentavel da Barrágem de Cahora Bassa e do Vale do Rio Zambese, Songo,
Mozambique, 29 September-2 October 1997.
65
Interview with Caetano Francisco Figuerido et al.
66
Isaacman and Sneddon, “Towards a social and environmental history,” 609.
67
The FRELIMO regime inherited “a bankrupt and backward country, technical constraints (e.g.,
few trained or experienced Mozambicans), and an exaggerated economic dependence on the
apartheid South Africa” [Merle Bowen, The State against the Peasantry: Rural Struggles in
Postcolonial Mozambique (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 2000), 11].
68
Agência de Informação de Moçambique [AIM], Information Bulletin 38 (1979), 6.
69
AIM, Information Bulletin 47 (1980), 18.
70
AIM, Information Bulletin 63 (1981), 16.
71
AIM, Information Bulletin 70 (1982), 2.
72
AIM, Information Bulletin 58 (1981), 16.
73
See SWECO/Swed Power, “Cahora Bassa”
74
C. Geffray, A Causa das Armas (Porto: Afrontamento, 1991).
75
Allen Isaacman and Barbara Isaacman, Mozambique from Colonialism to Revolution, 19001982 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), 155.
76
AIM, Information Bulletin 47 (1980), 18.
77
See W. Finnegan, A Complicated War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); M. Hall
and T. Young, Confronting Leviathan: Mozambique since Independence (London: C. Hurst and
Co., 1997); A. Isaacman, “Conflict in Southern Africa: The Case of Mozambique,” in R. Hunt
Davis, ed., Apartheid Unravels (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1991), 183-212.; and
A. Vines, RENAMO: Terrorism in Africa (London: James Currey, 1991).
78
Gordon Winter, Inside BOSS: South Africa's Secret Police (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin,
1981), 545.
79
AIM, Information Bulletin 45 (1980), 27.
80
Alfonso Dhlakama, “Relatório Referente a Sessão do Trabalho de R.N.M e do Representativo
do Governo Sul Africano,” MNR Document, 25 October 1980.
81
Hall and Young, Confronting Leviathan.
82
Hall and Young, Confronting Leviathan, 129.
83
Vines, RENAMO, 26-28; R. Domingos, Untitled summary of conversations with Orlando
Christina. RENAMO document. Zoabostad, 4 November 1980.
84
Vines, RENAMO, 27.
85
AIM, Information Bulletin 58 (1981), 13.
86
Vines, RENAMO, 28-30.
87
M. Gebhardt, “Switching to Cahora Bassa,” Mail and Guardian, 19 December 1997.
88
Sabotage of the transmission lines during the civil war continues to stymie the government’s
plans to garner economic benefits from Cahora Bassa. A significant part of the debt that
Mozambique owes to the Portuguese-run HCB is accounted for by the cost of replacing the more
than 2,000 pylons destroyed by RENAMO forces. As pointed out by Castigo Langa,
Mozambique’s Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, “if Cahora Bassa had operated
normally, and the [transmission] lines had not been sabotaged, the undertaking [paying off the debt
to HCB] would have been fully amortised by now” (quoted in Panafrican News Agency,
“Mozambique Seeks to Wrestle Power Dam from Portugal,”
http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200101080449.html (2001).
89
Interview with Vernácio Leone.
90
Interview with Supia Sargent and Carlos Churo.
61
48
91
Interview with Peter Size and Fedi Alfante, Estima, 22 May 1998.
Africa Watch, “Conspicuous Destruction,” (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1992), 47.
93
Africa Watch, “Conspicuous Destruction”.
94
Engineering News [South Africa], “Cahora Bassa power flows, but talks to continue,”
http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/eng/news/today/ (2002).
95
Xinhua News Agency, “Portugal to make fresh offer on Cahora Bassa dam in Mozambique,” 5
September 2002.
96
Sapa-LUSA, “Giant hydroelectric plant threatens to cut SA supplies,”
http://www.sabcnews.com/africa/southern_africa/0,1009,45254,00.html (2002).
97
Engineering News, “Cahora Bassa power”
98
AIM, “Veiga Anjos attacks Eskom,” 7 October 2002.
99
Quoted in Sylvia Smith, “The Cahora Bassa dam,”
http://www.rnw.nl/development/html/030218cahora.html (2003).
100
AIM, “Mocumbi reacts to Cahora Bassa decision,” 18 October 2002.
101
Africa Energy Intelligence, “Shadow Boxing over Dam,”
http://www.africaintelligence.com/ps/AN/Arch/AEM/AEM_341.asp (2003).
102
Xinhua News Agency, ““Portugal to make fresh offer”
103
Indian Ocean Newsletter, “Castigo Langa under pressure,”
http://www.africaintelligence.com/ps/AN/Arch/ION/ION_1010.asp (2002).
104
AIM, “Veiga Anjos”. Eskom has recently put forth an ambitious scheme to create a private
regional electricity supply project that would more effectively link energy producers and
transmission grid systems in the entire southern Africa region. While the implications are not yet
clear, Carlos Veiga Anjos, chair of the board of directors of HCB, criticized Eskom’s intentions as
an effort “to possess everything and control everything” in the region.
105
While appearing in various arrangements in the media and gereal literature, this is the spelling
suggested by Castigo Langa, Opening Address, Investors Conference for the Mphanda Nkuwa
Hydroelectric Project, Maputo, 30 May 2002.
106
República de Moçambique, “Mepanda Uncua Hydropower Project, Mozambique: Development
Prospect,” Minstério dos Recursos Minerais e Energia, Maputo, 2002.
107
Frederico Katere, “Project opens flood gates of resentment,” The East African Standard
[Nairobi], 7 August 2002.
108
International Water Power & Dam Construction, “Developing Mphanda Nkuwa,”
http://www.connectingpower.com/story.asp?iss=8&sC=2017106 (2002).
109
Langa, Opening Address.
110
Gbenga Alaran, “Foreign investors sought for US$1.3bn Hydroelectric Dam,” World Markets
Analysis, 18 October 2002.
111
Platt’s African Energy, “Mepanda Uncua hydro plans stir opposition,” 18 October 2002. The
World Commission on Dams (WCD) released a seminal report in 2000 detailing the social and
ecological considerations, and the participatory planning process, that would move the
construction of large dams towards more sustainable outcomes.
112
Quoted in Katere, “Project opens”.
113
Quoted in Katere, “Project opens”.
114
Richard Beilfuss, “Can this River Be Saved: Rethinking Cahora Bassa Could Make a
Difference for Dam Battered Zambezi,” World Rivers Review 14 (1999): 8-11.
115
See Katere, “Project opens” and Ryan Hoover, “Damming the Zambesi for Aluminum:
Proposed Dam a ‘Power Play’ to Gain Control of Upstream Dam?” World Rivers Review 16(5)
(2001): 10-11.
116
Isaacman and Sneddon, “Towards a social and environmental history”.
92