Dams 4

Displaced People, Displaced Energy, and Displaced Memories: The Case of Cahora Bassa,
1970-2004
Author(s): Allen Isaacman
Source: The International Journal of African Historical Studies , 2005, Vol. 38, No. 2
(2005), pp. 201-238
Published by: Boston University African Studies Center
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40034919
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International Journal of African Historical Studies 38, 2 (2005) 201
DISPLACED PEOPLE, DISPLACED ENERGY,

AND DISPLACED MEMORIES:
THE CASE OF CAHORA BASSA, 1970-2004*
By Allen Isaacman
The construction of the Cahora Bassa Dam in the early 1970s attracted a great
deal of international attention.1 Portuguese colonial authorities, engineers,
hydrologists, and journalists heralded the dam's majestic 510-foot walls, its five
massive General Electric turbines, and the vast man-made lake covering more
than 2600 square kilometers. For them, Cahora Bassa was both agent and symbol
of the developers' will to conquer nature in the cause of mankind. Government
officials predicted the dam would provide badly needed energy, end flooding,
expand irrigated farming for poor peasants, increase mineral output, and facilitate
communication and transportation throughout the strategic Zambesi River Valley.
This vast region covers more than 225,000 square kilometers and includes almost
a quarter of Mozambique's population. As a follow-up to this technological
triumph, they envisioned building a second dam 70 kilometers south of Cahora
Bassa at Mphanda Nkuwa.
The colonial development narrative was imbued with an ethical message

championing the moral responsibility of Lisbon to improve the life of its "back-
ward subjects" and to bring them into the twentieth century under Portugal's
tutelage. Joaquim Moreira da Silva Cunha, minister of overseas territories,
declared that Lisbon's objective was "to tame the wild river and transform it into
a valuable tool for progress ... for the betterment of the indigenous peoples who
are an integral part of the Portuguese nation."2 State officials acknowledged that a
I want to thank Richard Beilfuss, Arlindo Chilundo, and Christopher Sneddon with whom
I have collaborated closely on various dimensions of this project. The article has benefited from
the rigorous criticism offered by Jean Hay, George Roberts, and Richard Roberts. Funding for this
project was provided through a grant from the Graduate School of the University of Minnesota
and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
1 The name was usually spelled Cabora Bassa during the colonial period.
^ Joaquim Moreira da Silva Cunha, Cahora Bassa: Que sdo os Beneficidrios (Lourenco
Marques, 1970), 5-6. The colonial regime was influenced by the apparent success the British had
building Kariba Dam four hundred miles up-river. Portuguese officials failed to consider the

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202 ALLEN ISAACMAN
small number of peasants whose homelands would be inundated by t

would have to be relocated, but they insisted that such a sacrific
broader economic and social good. Moreover, those who lost their land
resettled in modern planned communities with schools, electricity,
clinics.3 In short, the hydroelectric project represented the pinnacle o
"civilizing mission" and underscored its commitment to remain in Af
nitely.
Anticolonial forces, led by the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique

(FRELIMO), saw the project quite differently. The nationalist forces insisted that
the Cahora Bassa Dam was part of a military and economic alliance between
Portugal and South Africa designed to provide cheap energy to the apartheid
regime and to perpetuate white rule in the region. They pointed to a 1969 agree-
ment in which ZAMCO, a South African-dominated consortium, committed $515
million to build the dam.4 The accord, they contended, reinforced the existing
strategic alliance between Lisbon and Pretoria and incorporated Mozambique into
South Africa's security zone.5 At the United Nations, the FRELIMO representa-
tive was unequivocal. "Cahora Bassa," he affirmed, "is a crime not only against
the Mozambican people, but also against the entire people of Southern Africa and
of Africa as a whole."6
FRELIMO vowed to sabotage Cahora Bassa. In 1968 they initiated a guer-

rilla offensive in Tete, the home district of Cahora Bassa. By the end of the
multiple ways that the Kariba Dam created serious problems downstream and complicated their
project at Cahora Bassa.
3 Ibid.
4 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. For a
detailed discussion of these negotiations see Keith Middlemas, Cabora Bassa: Engineering and
Politics in Southern Africa (London, 1975), 20-30.
5 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.
6 World Council of Churches [hereafter WCC], Cahora Bassa and the Struggle for
Mozambique (London, 1971), 2.

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DISPLACED PEOPLE, DISPLACED ENERGY 203
decade a sizable force was operating in the area adjacent to the proposed dam site.
Senior Portuguese military officials estimated at least 1,800 well-armed guerrillas
had crossed the Zambesi from Zambia and Malawi and were beginning to pose a
serious threat.7 Small bands of insurgents planted mines in the dirt roads and
along railroad lines and periodically ambushed trucks carrying essential equip-
ment to the dam site. To minimize these attacks, the Portuguese tarred the main
road between the provincial capital of Tete and the construction site at Songo,
cleared the bush adjacent to the roads, organized daily convoys and patrolled the
train tracks more aggressively. Colonial military planners believed that the pro-
jected 500-kilometer lake behind the dam would be a formidable geographic
barrier and would impede the easy access of FRELIMO forces to the heart of
Mozambique from their bases in Zambia and Malawi.
FRELIMO 's strategy benefited from a well-organized and highly visible

international campaign to block Western financing and construction of the dam.
"What happens at Cahora 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."8 In Europe, moral outrage and threats of boycotts
motivated a number of Italian and Swedish companies to withdraw their support
for the project.9 In the end neither the intermittent guerrilla attacks nor the boycott
succeeded. The Portuguese had begun the construction of Cahora Bassa dam in
1970 and they were able to complete it in December 1974 by imposing a highly
regimented labor regime. 10
7 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. See W. Nussey, "The War in
Tete a Threat to All in Southern Africa," Johannesburg Star (1 July 1972).
8 WCC, Cahora Bassa, 2.
^ United Nations, "Economic Conditions in Mozambique with Reference to Foreign

Interests," Conference Room Paper SCI/71/5 (New York, 1971), 38.
10 Elsewhere Chris Sneddon and I have written about the actual construction of the dam and
its impact on the workers who built it. Suffice it to say here that the colonial regime built the
hydroelectric project on the backs of 3,500 African laborers who constituted the bulk of the work
force. 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 dangerous tasks, (2) work obligations were often secured through coercive
extra-legal 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

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204 ALLEN ISAACMAN
Six months later, Mozambique gained its independence. Stuck with

dam, the newly installed FRELIMO government had little alternative
discard its long-term opposition to the hydroelectric project. In a radical de
from its previous stance, FRELIMO hailed the liberating potential of the d
its central role in Mozambique's new socialist project. "We must domestic
white elephant Cahora Bassa,"11 declared Mozambique's President S
Machel. State planners, committed to large-scale social engineering, were
dent the huge hydroelectric project would play a pivotal role develop
Zambesi Valley and improving the lives of millions of Mozambicans who
electricity. Together with the organization of a network of state far
communal villages, Cahora Bassa would, in the Marxist parlance of FRELI
be instrumental "in the socialization of the countryside." President Mach
adamant on this point:
We cannot irrigate without energy. The electrification of the centra

of the north and of the south of our country is fundamental for us
able to meet the needs of agriculture. We must domesticate the "w
elephant" Cahora Bassa. This "elephant's" ivory- electricity and irri
tion-should go to our agriculture and industry.... Within the next de
the north bank power station [at Cahora Bassa] must begin functio
and numerous dams must be built for irrigation and electrification.12
The new leadership hoped the dam would also generate an important sou
hard currency by exporting energy not just to South Africa, but through
region.
The centrality of Cahora Bassa in the postcolonial development strategy

continued even after the Mozambican government abandoned its socialist agenda
in 1987. 13 Facing serious economic problems at home and mounting pressure
from the IMF and the World Bank, the former Marxist government introduced a
market-oriented economy and set out to attract foreign investment. Although the
anticipated beneficiaries would be quite different, the state continued to celebrate
the transforming potential of the hydroelectric project. State officials believed that
to that of their European supervisors, and (5) Portuguese officials brutally stifled any dissent. See
Allen Isaacman and Chris Sneddon, "Towards a Social and Environmental History of the Building
of Cahora Bassa Dam," Journal of Southern African Studies 26 (2000), 610-16.
11 Agenda de Informacao de Mocambique [AIM], Information Bulletin 38 (1979), 6.

12 Ibid.
13 M. Anne Pitcher, Transforming Mozambique: The Politics of Privatization, 1975-2000

(Cambridge, 2002), x.

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privatization and cheap energy would lure foreign investment and that Cahora
Bassa could provide the electricity for new plants and factories stimulating rapid
economic growth. The government's announcement in the mid-1990s that it
would build a second hydroelectric project at Mphanda Nkuwa underscored
Mozambique's commitment to large energy dams as a key to development.
Thus, despite their very different social and economic agendas and ideo-
logical predilection, the colonial regime, the socialist postcolonial state, and its
free-market successor each heralded Cahora Bassa. For those who held the reigns
of state power the dam had become a potent symbol of the power of science,
technology, and social engineering to master nature and insure human progress.14
It was high modernism at its best.15
A markedly different story about Cahora Bassa has been silenced all too
long. It is a story that riverine communities in the Zambesi Valley tell and one
that needs to be heard. When peasants speak of the dam, they recall memories of
forced eviction from their homeland, being herded into strategic hamlets, and the
unpredictable discharges of water that destroyed their crops and flooded their
fields. In short, they offer an alternative narrative of Cahora Bassa whose over-
arching themes are about displaced people, displaced energy, and displaced
memories.
For the purpose of this paper I am employing the term "displace" in

several slightly different ways.16 In its most conventional usage it means to
remove or to shift someone or something from its customary place. I use
"displace" in this sense to capture the lived experiences of riverine communities
violently dislodged from their historical homelands, which were inundated by
Lake Cahora Bassa and whose people were forcibly relocated to protected
villages. I also use the term to refer to the forced removal of Africans living in the
Songo highlands whose lands were taken over by ZAMCO,17 the multinational
14 This infatuation with large dams was not unique to the rulers of Mozambique. Throughout
the 20th century massive dams were heralded by those in power as a mark of modernity, economic
growth, and national achievement no matter what the ideological commitment of the state nor the
cost to local communities and their environs. See Patrick McCully, Silenced Rivers: The Ecology
and Politics of Large Dams (London, 2001).
15 For a careful analysis and critique of the ideology of high modernism see, James Scott,
Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes To Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New
Haven, 1998).
^ My analysis is inspired by Gyandendra Pandey's important work Memory, History, and

the Question of Violence (Calcutta, 1 999).
17 For a discussion of the role of ZAMCO, see Middlemas, Cabora Bassa.

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206 ALLEN ISAACMAN
corporation that constructed the dam. The term also captures the ex
down-river peasants who had to abandon fertile flood plains and isla
that were ruined by unpredictable discharges from the dam.
In addition to people, energy and water were displaced as well. T

function of the dam is to produce electricity, but not for local cons
Instead up to 1450 megawatts were transported over an 1800-kilome
of pylons stretching from Cahora Bassa to the power grids of South
energy was used, and continues to be used, to power the mines, farm
of South Africa. In short, the dam has converted a free resource- th
energy of the Zambesi River- into an export commodity.
By storing water in a large reservoir behind the dam where it c

to generate electricity, Cahora Bassa altered the critically important
of the river and disrupted the pattern of seasonal flooding essential for
The dam also trapped sediments that had previously flowed downstre
deposited in the channel's floodplains, fertilizing the soils. As a resu
communities as well as the natural habitat were effectively robbed
nutrients and energy.
I am also employing the term "displace" to suggest the ways the

colonial and postcolonial narratives have dislodged and rendered inau
stories and lived experiences of the riverine people. This silencing is
due to the uneven relations of power in the production and dissemi
knowledge. As Michel-Rolph Trouillot reminds us, "the past does no
pendently from the present."18
Both the colonial state and its postcolonial successor constructed

silence around Cahora Bassa, and the only story that was given c
theirs. Absent from the official state narratives about the project a
testimonies of the women and men, old and young, who lived adjace
river.19 Their accounts not only challenge the prevailing discourse o
Bassa, but offer a detailed interior view of life before and after the
often than not, these stories highlight the devastating consequences o
Their accounts also provide important insights into how peasants cope
18 Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production

(Boston, 1995), 15.
19 During the colonial period, the government silenced all critics of the project
handful of planners in the socioeconomic section of the state commission who rai
about the likely adverse effects of the dam.

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creatively adapted to the ecological changes in the river basin.20 In light of the
experiences that the rural poor so eloquently document, their personal narratives
also call into question the official representation of the proposed new dam at
Mphanda Nkuwa as an engine for prosperity and progress.
Because this article is concerned with the livelihoods of riparian commu-

nities and the stories they tell about the changes precipitated by the dam, it is
important to explore briefly the pre-existing physical and agricultural regimes.
From there the article analyzes the complex and interrelated forms of displace-
ment previously noted.
The Hydrology of the Zambesi and Pre-Dam Indigenous Agronomic Prac-

tices: An Overview
Unlike the riverine communities content to co-exist with the mighty river, state
planners saw the dam as an opportunity to harness the waterway and radically
transform the physical and economic landscape of the Zambesi Basin. Two
hydrological factors are critical in explaining the colonial regime's rationale and
enthusiasm for building the Cahora Bassa. First, there are only a few locations in
the Zambesi River Basin suitable for dams or hydroelectric plants and even fewer
along the Mozambican portion of the river. Most of the basin is located on the
Central African plateau and the waters flow slowly through low plains and
swamps, providing few potential sites for dams.21 The Cahora Bassa' s thousand-
foot high gorge through which the Zambesi flowed was a rare exception, carrying
the waters of the Kafue, Luangwa, and a dozen other smaller rivers. The steep
rapids and fast-moving river made Cahora Bassa the most perilous obstacle on the
20 In May 1998, 1 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, Arlindo Chilundo (a professor at Eduardo Mondlane University), a team of students,
and I interviewed more than 75 peasants in the down-river regions of Caia, Chemba, and Sena.
They continued this research in July and August 2001. In all these locations we selected elderly
women and men who had lived in the region adjacent to the Zambesi River.
21 Although the Cahora Bassa dam and reservoir are contained entirely within Mozambique,
the vast bulk of the Zambesi drainage basin, the third-largest river system in Africa, lies outside
the country. The catchment area that feeds the dam covers an estimated 1.3 million square
kilometers extending across seven other southern African nations- Angola, Botswana, Malawi,
Namibia, Tanzania , Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

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208 ALLEN ISAACMAN
Zambesi, inspiring fear in the hearts of Europeans and Africans alik

also an ideal site for a mammoth hydroelectric project. Even though co
international conventions restricted dams to half that height, Portugue
believed that the height of the gorge would have allowed them to bu
sand-foot-high dam.23 For Portuguese engineers and state planners,
river and building the dam represented the ultimate confirmation that n
be subdued and biophysical systems transformed.
Second, and most relevant for this article, was the pronounced s
of Zambesi flows and the serious impact of annual floods on the river
nities and their natural habitat as well as on the European sugar plant
the river's mouth.24 One official publication estimated that flooding
rainy season annually destroyed several million dollars worth
produce.25 Before the dam, natural floods in the lower portion of t
between 9,000 and 13,000 cubic meters per second (cms) occurred abo
of every three years.26 Flooding was most acute in February and Ma
peak flows, the waters slowly receded until November-December.
For proponents of Cahora Bassa, flood control was one of the mo

advantages of the dam project.27 Once every decade or so, the river
three times its normal flow rate and flooding reached catastrophic pro
the quarter-century before the construction of the dam, three large f
tated the region.
The torrential waters were descriptively named, in the ways of stor

to keep a memory of a world gone awry. Cheia M'bomani, in 1952, i
22 Allen Isaacman and Barbara Isaacman, Slavery and Beyond: The Making
Chikunda Ethnic Identities in the Unstable World of South-Central Africa,
(Portsmouth, 2004), 141-55.
23 Middlemas, Cabora Bassa, 17.
^During the same 1957 flood mentioned above, three population centers in
Zambesi Valley (Ancuaze, Chiramba, and Mutarara) were inundated. SWECO/
"Cahora Bassa Hydroelectric Scheme- Stage II, Pre-investment Report, Part
(Stockholm, 1983).
25 Cahora Bassa on the Move (Lisbon, n.d.), 21.
26 SWECO/Swed Power, "Cahora Bassa," 55. For an important analysis of the h

the Zambesi Riber, see Richard Beilfuss and David Dos Santos, "Patterns of Hydrol
in the Zambezi Delta, Mozambique," Working Paper #2, Zambezi Wetlands
Program (Baraboo, 2002).
27 Silva Cunha, Cahora Bassa: Que sdo os Beneficidrios.

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bered as "the flood that destroyed everything."28 Cheia N'sasira, six years later,
recalls "the rushing waters that forced people to live on the top of termit
mounds."29 In 1969 water remained above the flood stage level for 222 days,
causing considerable hunger and destitution. Elders refer to this unusual dry
season flood as Cheia Nabwaririr, "water coming from the ground."30 One of the
justifications for building Cahora Bassa was to eliminate such traumatic events.
Yet there is another way to view this flooding. Over the millennia, the
Zambesi valley was sustained by the annual ebb and flow of the river (see Figure
1). Annual floodwater spilled over onto the floodplains in January, February, and
March, irrigating crops, rejuvenating grasslands where livestock and wildlife
grazed, and stimulating the reproductive cycle of countless plants, animals, and
fish. As waters from the rainy season floods receded, they left a rich deposit of
nutrients along the shoreline. In lowland areas, such as Inhangoma in the region
of Mutara, this spillover often extended over a vast stretch of land (see Figure 2).
Figure 1. Map of the Zambesi River Basin showing geopolitical boundaries and large reservo
28 Interview with Regulo Antonio Joao Chipuazo, Regulado Chipuazo, 7 July 2000;
interview with Marosse Inacio et al., Regulado Chave, 19 July 2000; interview with N'sai Ant6nio
et al., Regulado Tchetcha, 21 July 2000.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.

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210 ALLEN ISAACMAN
Peasants throughout the valley considered the rich dark soils of the floo
(known in different areas as makande, ndrongo, mpumbe, and matopo) th
desirable land in the region.31 "The makande soil located near the banks
river always gave us good production," stressed Beatriz Maquina, an e
woman living near Songo. "We cultivated a great deal of sorghum as
some corn,"32 in the area adjacent to the dam site. Her neighbor Pe
Mafalanjala concurred. "Everything we planted grew well
and then receded, the area that had been covered with water
Figure 2. Pre-impoundment Zambesi River floodplains based on the
31 In the down-river regions of Sena, Caia, and Mutara, these

mpumbo, and matope.
32 Interview with Senteira Botao, Eliot Jumbo, Muatisember

Maquina, Chipalapala, 26 May 1998.
33 Interview with Penzulani Mafalanjala, Mauricio Alemao, and Ber

Masecha, 25 March 1998.

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Peasants living on the floodplains down river derived similar benefits.

Luis Manuel, a farmer in the Sena region, told a common story: "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."34 Across
the Zambesi River on the northern bank at Mutara Caetano, Francisco Figuerida
and his fellow villagers stressed that the annual floods ensured that "we were able
to cultivate many different crops including sorghum, corn, millet, and several
types of beans."35 All the elders with whom we spoke distinguished the fertile
alluvial soils from the more common sandy, rocky terrain that did not retain water
and were difficult to farm.36
The low rainfall in the more arid regions of the valley and the irregularity
of rainfall throughout the basin meant that access to the river-fed alluvial soils
was critical to insure household food security. This was particularly true in the
arid and semi-arid regions near Tete and the Cahora Bassa reservoir, where the
average annual rainfall was between 600 and 700 mm.37 But even in areas that
were somewhat more humid, droughts occurred regularly, often with devastating
consequences to the crops. Without makande lands, peasant households would
have faced the prospect of crop failures on a regular basis and, even in the best
years, would have had little likelihood of producing a second annual crop. Peas-
ants stress that in all but a few instances the floods were a gift, not a predica-
ment.38
The capacity of the indigenous people to develop productive responses to

the floods constituted a critical feature of a complex and highly adaptive indige-
nous agronomic system. Carlos Soda Churo, both a farmer and a storyteller,
described local practices before 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
34 Interview with Luis Manuel, Regulado Sangoma, Sena, 20 July 2000.
35 Interview with Caetano Francisco Figuerido et al., Mutarara, 18 July 2000.
36 Interview with Senteira Botao 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.
37 By contrast, rainfall in the sub-humid regions of the delta was 1000-1200 mm. See
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, 1986), 225-67.
38 Interview with Luis Manuel; interview with Caetano Francisco Figuerido et al.,
Inhangoma, Mutarara, 18 July 2000.

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212 ALLEN ISAACMAN
land near the river was very good. It was called makande. When
rose and then receded in June, the area that had been covered w
was very good for farming. There we first planted maize. We c
beans in the same field as the maize. Beans needed something t
and the maize stalks served well. Nearby we cultivated a second s
with sweet potatoes, tomatoes, cabbage, and more beans. We ha
our gardens in September and October before the rains and flo
November we were working in our larger fields away from the
the ntchenga soils we planted sorghum, which does not require
water. The mixed ntchenga-makande soils were better for maiz
needs more moisture than sorghum. Some people planted peanuts
maize fields. We harvested these crops in June and July and then
to our gardens. 39
Antonio Joao Chipuazo, who lived down river from Churo, also r
how he took advantage of different micro-ecological zones to insure fo
in the period before the dam:
I had three plots of land on each of which I mixed several differe

The first one was located on the high ground close to my h
second close to a lagoon, and the third on the banks of a tributa
Zambesi River. When it began to rain heavily I stopped cultivatin
field close to the river, which would get flooded. As the rains co
shifted my attention first to the area near the lagoon and then
region near my residence. After the water receded I return
gardens near the river which were very fertile.40
As we see in Chipuazo's and Churo's accounts, three important fe

the indigenous agronomic system emerge, each relying on a rich rep
historical farming practices and detailed micro-ecological knowledge
most obviously, the life of the local communities and the life of the
inextricably intertwined. The food production systems co-evolve
seasonal cycle of the river's flood patterns. Decisions regarding the s
temporal patterns of food production- including selection of the most
crops and amounts planted, with reference to the season and differe
ecological zones- were finely tuned to changes in the river's discharg
well as variations in soils and sunlight. Second, intercropping was an
labor-saving device, since several crops could be tended simultaneous
39 Interview with Supia Sargent and Carlos Soda Churo, Estima, 22 May 1998.
40 Interview with Antonio Joao Chipuazo.

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vating 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 labor bottlenecks and to
ensure an adequate supply of food.
The unregulated Zambesi provided sustenance to riverine communities in

two other significant ways. Before Cahora Bassa approximately 60 species of fish
inhabited the river.41 While the density of most species varied, elders recalled that
the Zambesi provided an abundance. They relied on a variety of fishing tech-
niques. 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.42 Most fishermen used
locally produced weirs (mackonga), 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].43
In addition to fishing, hunting provided an integral part of the local diet.

The ebb and flow of the river created natural watering places that attracted large
herds of animals from the nearby forests. Impala, gazelle, elephants, buffalo, and
eland regularly came to the banks of the Zambesi and adjacent wetlands, where
they became easy prey for skilled hunters. As a relish accompanying the evening
porridge, meat provided an important source of protein. Peasants also consumed
game in larger amounts at important social occasions and at rituals propitiating
the ancestor spirits.
The construction of Cahora Bassa changed everything. The ancient flood

cycles became a phenomenon of the past. In sharp contrast to Portuguese
concerns about the financial and security dimensions of the dam, colonial officials
and state planners paid little attention to local systems of knowledge and agro-
nomic practices. The deleterious consequences of the hydroelectric scheme for
African peasants and their environment were not a consideration. They simply
41 P. Jackson and K. Rogers, "Cahora Bassa Fish Populations Before and After the First
Filling Stage," Zoologica Africana 11 (1976), 377.
42 Interview with Supia Sargent and Carlos Soda Churo; interview with Caetano Francisco
Figuerido et al.; interview with Antonio Dj£se, Beiro, 5 July 2000.
43 Interview with John Paul and Khumbidzi Pastor, Estima, 21 May 1998.

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214 ALLEN ISAACMAN
presumed that increased economic activity would have a trickle-down e

"subsistence" among African cultivators living in the Lower Zambes
Authorities expressed confidence that the riverine communities would
from new farming techniques, new markets for their commodities, ne
opportunities, and being regrouped into modern villages.44
Colonial authorities gave even less consideration to the ecological i

of the proposed dam. In 1973, the Missao de Ecologia Aplicada do
(Mission for the Applied Ecology of the Zambesi, or MEAZ) commis
pre-impoundment survey of water quality, vegetation, soils, and climat
following year a small team of researchers affiliated with the Univ
Lourenco Marques conducted a biophysical survey of the Lower Zambesi
Underfunded, poorly conceived, and often of shoddy quality, these inves
yielded few insights into the Zambesi's ecosystems.46 One scientist clos
ciated with the project decried:
the lack of ecological specialists with local knowledge who sho

dealing with the interdependence and interrelationships of the
Lower Zambesi as one integrated system. This danger is compound
authority in both land-use planning and decision-making is vested i
ecological experts.47
Strategic planners and civil engineers committed to completing the const

of the hydroelectric project without delay and reinforcing military ties
Africa simply ignored the research from scientists that ran counter to th
design.48 By early June of 1975, the dam was in full operation. Cahora
turned the Lower Zambesi into a regulated river, whose principal functio
provide cheap energy to South Africa. The waters of the middle Zambe
being channeled through the turbines of Cahora Bassa on a daily basis,
according to the power generation needs of the engineers of Hidroelect
Cahora Bassa (HCB), a joint Portuguese-Mozambican company charg
44 M. Vidigal, "Cahora Bassa: Historia Perspectivas. Justificac.ao. Aspectos Eco

Financeiros. Interesse National do Empreendimento," Electricidade [Lisbon] 14 (1970), 7
45 A. Hall, I. Maria, C. Valente, and B. Davies, "The Zambezi River in Mo9ambi

Physico-Chemical Status of the Middle and Lower Zambezi Prior to Closure of the Cah
Dam," Freshwater Biology 7 (1977), 187-206.
46 Bryan Davies, "Rehabilitation Programme for Cahora Bassa and the Lower Z
Report submitted to the International Crane Foundation and the Ford Foundation, 1996.
47 K. Tinley "Morromeu: Wrecked by the Big Dams," African Wildlife 29 (1975), 24
48 Davies, "Rehabilitation Programme."

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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 for the agricultural cycle was complete.49 The construction of the Cahora
Bassa set in motion long-term processes that brought devastating hydrological,
ecological, and social consequences for riparian communities living adjacent to
the flood plains.
Displaced People and the Dislocation of Peasant Communities
State planners promised much and delivered little. From the outset, they insisted
that the long-term economic and social benefits of the dam would far outweigh
any short-term inconveniences in the lives of the riverine communities. Despite
such assurances, Cahora Bassa had immediate, multiple, and far-reaching nega-
tive consequences, not the least of which was the forced relocation of thousands
of Africans from their historical homelands.
The first people removed were those who lived on the highland plains at
Songo adjacent to the proposed dam site. Peasants in the region considered the
plateau very desirable. It was cool, free of malaria, and had exceptionally fertile
soils. According to Pedro da Costa Xavier, before the construction began, "there
were many Africans who lived on the plains here in Songo. Here the land was
very good. People grew a lot. They cultivated maize, beans, and others prod-
ucts."50 The grasslands and shrubbery were excellent for grazing cattle and goats.
Once the government made its decision to build the dam, all inhabitants
were ordered to leave the highlands. The peasants received compensation for
neither their homes nor their land. A substantial number of Tonga and Tawara
peasants were evicted from sites where their ancestors had lived for generations.
They were forced to resettle in the hot, arid lowlands between Tete and Chioco,
where many of the displaced suffered from malaria.51
They were expelled from the highlands so that a European company town
could be built for the 750 European engineers, electricians, mechanics, labor
overseers, and managers of ZAMCO, as well as a bevy of government officials
working for the Gabinete do Piano Zambese (GPZ). To make life more bearable
49 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."
50 Interview with Pedro da Costa Xavier, Songo, 23 May 1988.

51 Ibid.

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216 ALLEN ISAACMAN
for the new inhabitants, the state obliterated the Songo landscape, tr
forests and fields into a segregated city of cement, complete with s
pools, supermarkets, and nightclubs. The highlands also became t
3,500 African workers, most of whom were forced to live in galvaniz
barracks without toilets, hot water, or other basic amenities and to
extremely harsh conditions.52
The displaced riverine communities whose homelands and fa

flooded to create the massive lake behind the dam suffered far grea
quences than their neighbors who were simply moved off the plateau
not simply evicted from their homes and ancestral lands by force: th
the added humiliation of being herded into strategic hamlets manned
clock by Portuguese soldiers and local militia. These aldeamentos wer
gral part of Lisbon's broader counterinsurgency program design
FRELIMO off from its rural base of support.53 A South African jour
was one of the few foreign reporters allowed into the war zone not
linkages FRELIMO had already forged with the peasantry. "It is axio
guerrillas cannot be beaten if the local people support them from fea
Strong local support is shown by how little information Africans h
Portuguese about FRELIMO."54
Thus the forced relocation of rural communities, required becaus

lands were to be inundated by the man-made reservoir, fit extremely we
counterinsurgency objectives of the colonial state. Claiming to protec
antry, Portuguese officials began to evict communities near the dam s
two years before the actual impoundment of the river. Under pressur
expanded war and from construction deadlines, local authorities did n
lip service to the notion of voluntary resettlement. With no warning,
simply ordered to evacuate their homes.55 To this day that traumatic
March 1973 remains etched in Basilio Chiridzisana's brain. "The
chefe de posto gathered all the people and told us that we must leave
lives from the rising water that would soon flood our lands. We we
angry and did not want to leave Chicoa Velha but we had no cho
52 Ibid.; Padre Claudio Gremi, 20 May 1998.
53 B. Jundanian, "Counterinsurgency in Mozambique," World Politics 6 (19

Borges Coelho, "Protected Villages."
54 Nussey, "The War in Tete," 1.
55 Interview with Pezulani Mafulanjala, Mauricio Alemao, and Bernardo Tapulet
56 Interview with Basilio Chiridzisana and Ragui Foa Magui, Chicao, Nova, 3 Aug

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whites forced us to leave," Chiridzisana's neighbor Paulino Nhamizonga

recounted. "They sent armed militia with trucks and took us to Chicoa Nova."57
The amount of intimidation accompanying the move seems to have varied consid-
erably from one area to another, but defiance was never tolerated. Portuguese
officials simply burned the homes and worldly goods of anyone who refused to
move.58 Those who remained intransigent were incarcerated.
The number of Africans forcibly displaced remains an open question.

Because the dam was considered a strategic military project located in a war zone,
colonial authorities barred local journalists, international observers, or researchers
who might have documented how many Africans were actually uprooted. Colo-
nial authorities initially claimed only 25,000 Africans would be displaced. By the
end of 1973, fragmentary evidence suggests the number had jumped to over
42,000.59 Both figures, however, are based on the number of resettled peasants
and fail to account for the significant number of men and smaller number of
women who fled to Rhodesia rather than be interned in the aldeamentos.60 As in
other parts of the world, the victims of large dam projects were often under-
counted and rendered invisible.61
Whatever uncertainty exists about the numbers of displaced peasants

enmeshed in this colonial project, there is no doubt that life in the camps was
harsh. They were effectively held captive under constant surveillance. Their
movements were controlled. Their only access to the outside world was through a
military checkpoint guarded by militia round the clock. Peasants described how
they were literally penned in. "We were forced to live in the aldeamento sur-
rounded by barbed wire," recalled Peter Size and Fedi Alfante. "Our movement
was always controlled and everywhere we went the militia accompanied us. They
57 Interview with Paulino Nhamizonga et al., Chipalapala, 12 July 2001.
58 Interview with Padre Claudio Gemi; Middlemas, Cabora Bassa, 218.
59Gabinete do Piano do Zambeze [GPZ], "Relatorio 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").
60 Joint interview with Bento Estima and Joseph Ndebvuchena, Estima, 19 May 1998; Joint
interview with John Paul and Khumbidzi Pastor. Since the beginning of the 20th century thousands
of peasants from Tete District clandestinely crossed the porous Mozambican-Zimbabwean
frontier. Allen Isaacman and Barbara Isaacman are currently completing the research for a book
on this subject.
61 See McCully, Silenced Rivers.

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218 ALLEN ISAACMAN
said that they were there to protect us."62 Anyone who tried to lea
permission or who returned from his or her field after the midday c
harshly interrogated and often beaten as a suspected FRELIMO agent.6
The original state planning document called for each aldeam

include all the features of a modern rural community, including a sch
clinic, water pumps, grist mill and warehouse for food reserves, a soc
even a football field. Since the project costs for these plans totaled m
million, the reality was far different.64 Except for a handful of mod
ments, "protected villages" had few of these amenities.65 In many i
displaced peasants were simply deposited on empty lands and told to
own residences. In other instances the government provided simple
wattle huts laid out in a grid enclosed by a barbed wire fence with
amenities A typical aldeamento contained between one thousand
hundred residents.
Because security considerations were paramount when state officials

selected the settlement sites, they paid little attention to the quality or carrying
capacity of the land. Most often the designated farming areas were rocky, hard to
work, and not terribly fertile. In many cases the fields were several kilometers
from the strategic hamlets. One state agronomist candidly acknowledged that
"none of the sites chosen [in the Chiuta region] have the minimum conditions for
agriculture."66 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."67 The arid conditions dramatically
reduced agricultural yields. Colonial policies limiting each household to one small
plot- typically less than a hectare in size- exacerbated their precarious situation.
Peasants were forbidden to farm two or three fields strategically located in differ-
ent ecological zones, as had been their practice. Government agronomists
discouraged intercropping on the grounds it created "messy" fields, further
compounding problems of productivity.
62 Interview with Peter Size and Fedi Alfante.
63 Interview with Pezulani Mafulanjala, Mauricio Alemao and Bernardo Tapuleta Potoroia.
64 GPZ, "Relatdrio de Actividade," (Lisbon, 1971), 46; GPZ, "Relatorio de Actividade,"

(Lisbon, 1972), 20.
65 Jundanian, "Counterinsurgency in Mozambique," 527.
66 Quoted in Borges Coelho, "Protected Villages," 289.
67 Interview with Jack Sobrinho and Wiseborn Benjamin, Estima, 20 May 1998.

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Predictably, the displaced communities experienced increased food short-

ages as a direct consequence of these coercive policies. Without rain, good lands,
and ample time to work the fields, they could not generate sufficient corn,
sorghum, or millet.68 Paulino Jaime Nhamizinga remembered that "by October
and November we did not have much to eat. We were constantly hungry."69 There
were also fewer opportunities to make up food deficits through hunting and fish-
ing. In spite of government plans to protect the herds that roamed in the river
valley and adjacent forests,70 large numbers of animals drowned when the
Zambesi was impounded, or dammed. Even in those areas where game survived,
Portuguese military authorities prevented peasants from carrying rifles and
severely restricted their movement.71
Members of uprooted communities, already short on food, were more

susceptible to sickness and many died. The very young and very old were
particularly vulnerable. It is important to stress that the evidence before and after
the completion of the dam 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.72 Nevertheless, the
empirical evidence suggests that inadequate rural diets, combined with problems
caused by poor sanitary conditions 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 illnesses such as schis-
tosomiasis and malaria posed new health threats.73 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, smallpox, and malaria. Many people died. No one knew why or how this
happened, just that many people were dying."74
68 Interview with Pezulani Mafalanjala, Mauricio Alemao, and Tapuleta Potoroia.
69 Interview with Paulino Jaime Nhamizinga, Estevao Mapranxene, and Romao Albano,
Chipalapala,12 July 2001.
70 For a discussion of this ill-fated plan see A.H.M., Governo Geral, Cota 864, "Piano Base
Para Salvamento e Transferencia da Fauna Brava da Albufeira de Cahora Bassa em Mozambique,"
K. L. Tinley (March 1973).
7* Interview with John Paul and Khumbidzi Pastor.
72 GPZ, "Relatorio de Actividade" (1974), 59-63.
73 Bolton, "The Regulation," 161-62.
74 Interview with Pezulani Malalanjala, Mauricio Alemao, and Bernardo Tapuleta Potoroia.

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220 ALLEN ISAACMAN
Many elders insist that the powerful Tawara royal ancestor spiri
doros)- angry that their shrine centers and burial sites had been inund
lake- were responsible for these epidemics. Vernacio Leone was ad
"People were responsible to the spirits. If they failed to meet these r
ties, there would be many diseases."75 This common explanation unde
sense of cultural obliteration and vulnerability experienced by the up
ants, an indication of the way Cahora Bassa tore the fabric of many ru
nities.
The barbed wire surrounding the strategic hamlets was taken do

independence in 1975, and the guards were removed. But life would n
same for the displaced communities. Since their original homes were u
most villagers had little alternative but to remain where they had b
They suffered a new shock two years later when Rhodesian- and Sou
can-backed guerrillas known as RENAMO initiated a reign of terror
the riverine zone. The displaced peasants were prey. Vernacio
survived the forced removal from his homelands and the harsh conditions in the
aldeamentos, described their vulnerability. "When RENAMO would come into a

village, they would call all the people together. Then they would go into the
houses and steal all that was inside. They ordered the people back into their
homes and set them on fire."76 Survival required extreme measures. "We were
forced to live in the mountains for four years. We slept there and only returned at
daybreak to cultivate our fields."77
Although most survived the RENAMO onslaught, today few, if any, of the
displaced peasants have fully recovered from the ordeal of being evicted from
their historic homelands and way of life. Today many live in impoverished vil-
lages and dream of a world left behind. Others relocated to shantytowns on the
edges of the regional capital Tete or sought to create a new life as migrant labor-
ers in nearby Zimbabwe.
Peasants whose lands were inundated by the man-made reservoir were not
the only victims of Cahora Bassa. One of the great ironies surrounding this
massive project is that rather than eliminating flooding, precipitous discharges
from the dam periodically unleashed torrential floods, forcing thousands of people
down river to abandon their homelands. In April 1975 the Portuguese operators,
concerned that they had miscalculated the storage capacity of the new dam,
75 Ibid; interview with Vernacio Leone.
76 Interview with Verndcio Leone.

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released a massive flow of water without any warning to the riparian communi-
ties. The results were catastrophic. Villages were flooded and thousands were left
homeless and could only watch as their livestock were swept away. Chief Antonio
Joao Chipuazo remembered that day when the torrential waters "destroyed the
houses and fields of all his followers who lived in the flood plains."78 Three years
later dam operators at Cahora Bassa opened all eight sluice gates and the emer-
gency spill gates in rapid succession to alleviate pressure on the dam walls. More
than 100,000 peasants were left homeless and 45 died. Elders named this catas-
trophe Cheia Madeya "the flood that swept away many people and forced them to
resettle in the upland areas."79 This death and destruction resulted primarily from
a serious lapse in communication regarding the release of floodwaters between
operators upriver at Kariba Dam and their counterparts at Cahora Bassa and
between Cahora Bassa managers and downstream officials. Similar tragedies
occurred in 1989. As in the case of the earlier discharge, down-river communities
were not warned in advance and the rapid flooding caused widespread damage to
riverine settlement, particularly in the delta region.
Displaced Energy and a Failure to Domesticate the White Elephant
That neither the people nor the natural habitat along the Zambesi River derived
any real benefits from the energy generated by the dam is one of the great para-
doxes of the postcolonial history of Cahora Bassa. Quite to the contrary, the
massive hydroelectric project effectively displaced energy in two significant
ways. Virtually all the electrical energy the dam produced was earmarked for
export to South Africa with the income going to Portugal. Less obvious, but of
equal importance, is the fact that the dam profoundly altered the natural work of
the river, disrupting the agricultural, fishing, and ecological systems that over
centuries had evolved along with the seasonal floods.
For the FRELIMO government, domesticating the "white elephant" has

proved to be a formidable task. Under the 1974 Lusaka Peace Accord, Lisbon
assumed responsibility for the $550 million debt incurred in building the dam. In
return the Portuguese hydroelectric company HCB received an 82 percent share
of ownership in the dam, with the Mozambican state receiving the remainder.80
Until the debt was repaid, Portugal (under the auspices of hydroelectric company
78 Interview with Regulo Antonio Joao Chipuazo.
79 Interview with Regulo Antonio Joao Chipuazo; interview with Marosse Ina*cio et. al;
interview with N'sai Antonio et al.
80 Engineering News [South Africa], "Cahora Bassa Power Flows, But Talks To Continue,"
http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/eng/news/today/a002).

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222 ALLEN ISAACMAN
HCB) rather than the Mozambican state retained effective control ov

Bassa. Because so little of Mozambique was connected to the powe
could utilize only about 10 percent of the energy generated by
FRELIMO encountered serious skepticism that Cahora Bassa could tra
countryside and improve peasant lives. Moreover, the cash-starved na
the capital to develop the agricultural and industrial sectors so that
make productive use of the expanded energy, as envisioned in the ori
ning documents for the dam.
Nevertheless, as part of its own socialist development narrative

form the countryside, the postcolonial state initiated several significan
projects. In 1978 it began building power stations to provide energy fr
to the provincial capital Tete and the nearby coal mines at Moatize, th
the country. Two years later, Cahora Bassa started supplying electrici
whose obsolete thermal power station burned up to 20,000 tons of coa
and to the colliery, which had relied on imported diesel for its generator
Even more significant, the state unveiled plans to build a secon

transmission lines and sub-stations at the dam site on the northern b
Zambesi.82 The new energy system would provide cheap electricity to
populated but energy-starved provinces of Zambezia and Nampula on
ern coast. Both were major agricultural zones that produced most of t
cotton, tea, and sugar for export as well as a significant amount of th
domestic consumption. These provinces also assumed strategic politic
tance because FRELIMO had mounted a very intense campaign in
pressure reluctant peasants to join communal villages.83 One of the inc
the state held out to the populace was the promise of Cahora Bassa elec
Before most of the projects were actually begun, South Africa i

its destabilization campaign and subverted these initiatives.85 The und
81 AIM, Information Bulletin 47 (1980), 18. At the same time, the Nati
Commission announced plans to use the water stored by the dam to help irriga
210,000 hectares of choice farmlands in the Lower Zambesi Valley. In the
Mozambique signed an agreement with India to process bauxite from that country a
plant using power from the dam.
82 See SWECO/Swed Power, "Cahora Bassa."
83 Christian Geffray, A Causa das Armas (Porto, 1991).
84 Allen Isaacman and Barbara Isaacman, Mozambique from Colonialism to

1900-1982 (Boulder, Colo., 1993), 155.
85 Gordon Winter, Inside BOSS: South Africa's Secret Police (Harmondsworth,

545.

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against Mozambique had begun even before independence, and the role of
RENAMO as South Africa's principal weapon in this war has been well docu-
mented.86
Cahora Bassa's 4,000 unguarded pylons were a particularly inviting target,

cutting across some 900 kilometers of remote countryside.87 In the first instance,
such a strategy might seem counter-intuitive 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 economic potential. Paralyzing the hydroelectric scheme under-
scored the country's vulnerability. Because Cahora Bassa power lines provided
only 8 percent of South Africa's energy, it meant that domestic consequences for
the apartheid regime were relatively minor.88
The attacks had immediate and far-reaching consequences. As early as

1981 RENAMO forces had dynamited pylons near Espungabera, reducing elec-
tricity exports by 50 percent. It took six months to repair the lines.89 This tactic
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 continued even after the South African government
promised that they would cease, as part of the 1984 Nkomati Peace Accord and in
subsequent bilateral negotiations.90 By 1988, 891 pylons had been destroyed and
that number doubled again over the next three years.91 The cost of repairing the
power lines was estimated at $500 million- almost three times the total value of
86 See William Finnegan, A Complicated War:The Harrowing of Mozambique (Berkeley,

1992); Margaret Hall and Tom Young, Confronting Leviathan: Mozambique since Independence
(London, 1997); Allen Isaacman, "Conflict in Southern Africa: The Case of Mozambique," in R.
Hunt Davis, ed., Apartheid Unravels (Gainesville, Fla, 1991), 183-212; and Alex Vines,
RENAMO: Terrorism in Africa (London, 1991).
87 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
(AIM, Information Bulletin 45 (1980), 27.
88 Vines, RENAMO, 27.
89 AIM, Information Bulletin 58 (1981), 13.
90 Vines, RENAMO, 28-30.
91 M. Gebhardt, "Switching to Cahora Bassa," Mail and Guardian, 19 December 1997.

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224 ALLEN ISAACMAN
Mozambican exports.92 In addition, RENAMO's military campaigns in Te

Zambezia provinces had effectively blocked plans to develop the Zambes
and electrify the northern part of the country. Even most communities livi
cent to the river still lacked electricity. Peasants in Mutatara put it blun
dam brought us tears but it did not bring electricity to Inhangoma, Char
Doa. As a result we do not have refrigerators, we do not have anything."93
South Africa's apartheid regime fell in 1994, marking the end

destabilization campaigns. Within three years all the pylons were repair
Cahora Bassa's five large generators were again producing energy.94 Des
ascent to power of the African National Congress and the reactivation of
Cahora Bassa remains a white elephant of little benefit to the struggling
bican economy.
Since the late 1990s, Mozambican authorities have initiated a comp

and at times contentious, set of negotiations with their Portuguese and Sou
can counterparts to remedy this situation. They have proposed several
reduce or erase the debt and gain control over Cahora Bassa's operations
transfer of ownership would theoretically provide Mozambique with new
tunities to sell the electricity and use a greater portion for domestic cons
in its industries, fields, and households. It would also eliminate concern
national sovereignty and national security.95 For a brief period, it appear
the socialist government of Prime Minister Guteres might be prepared t
write the sale of the dam for $500 million to a Mozambican-South African
consortium.96 Before any agreement was reached, however, the socialists lost the
92 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/
2001010804494htail (2001).
93 Interview with Caetano Francisco Figuerido et al., Inhangoma, 8 July 2000.
94 Gebhardt, "Switching to Cahora Bassa."
95 The East African Standard (Nairobi), August 7, 2002.
96 The funding would have come from a joint Mozambique-South African consortium with
Mozambique owning 51 percent of the dam.

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2002 election and the right-wing coalition that came to power has not been terri-
bly enthusiastic about pursuing such negotiations.97
Foiled in its diplomatic efforts, the Mozambican government decided to

explore the feasibility of building a new dam at Mphanda Nkuwa. If implemented,
this project would dramatically reduce the importance and value of Cahora
Bassa- thereby putting new pressure on Lisbon to reconsider the sale price.98
Two Maputo newspapers, Domingos and Zambeze, also raised the specter of the
state simply nationalizing the dam. The editor of the latter argued that such an act
is "a national imperative that all of Mozambican society should unconditionally
support."99
The conditions under which South Africa appropriates electricity from

Cahora Bassa has become an extremely controversial subject as well. Mozambi-
can critics contend that the current arrangements for the sale of electricity to
South Africa are an artifact of the colonial/apartheid alliance and must be abro-
gated or at least radically reworked. A 1988 agreement between the South African
parastatal utility company ESKOM and HCB, which updated the 1969 accord,
stipulated that South Africa would get a minimum of 1450 megawatts generated
from Cahora Bassa's single power station.100 This figure represents more then 70
percent of the dam's total energy capacity. To make matters worse, South Africa
was required to pay only a small fraction of the world price for this electricity.
The conflict reached a peak in October 2002 when HCB cut off the flow of
energy to ESKOM and South Africa.101
97 Later that year, Portuguese representatives lobbied the Mozambican government to

remove Castigo Langa, the controversial minister of energy and natural resources, from his post.
Langa has been a strong supporter of transferring management responsibilities for Cahora Bassa to
Mozambique. See Indian Ocean Newsletter, "Castigo Langa Under Pressure," http://
www.africaintelligence.com/ps/ AN/Arch/ION/ION_1010.asp [2002].
98 AIM, "Mozambique Might Nationalise the Dam," 24 July 2004.

99 Ibid.
100 However, from the time of the 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. See
Engineering News, "Cahora Bassa Power."
101 AIM, "Veiga Anjos attacks ESKOM," 7 October 2002.

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226 ALLEN ISAACMAN
While this crisis was temporarily resolved in November 2002 an

was adjusted upwards,102 as of early 2005 the dam's status remains
Although Portuguese officials have periodically signaled a willingne
negotiations, there have been few concrete advances to date.104 Lis
committed to retaining control of Cahora Bassa through HCB, at leas
is agreement on what fraction of the massive debt owed by Mozam
actually be paid. For its part, Pretoria is anxious to continue to buy
from Cahora Bassa to supplement ESKOM's largely coal-driven
supply, which is resold to numerous countries.105 Left out of this discu
political economy of the dam are the people of Mozambique and the
needs.106
102 HCB demanded, at a minimum, a doubling of the price and immediate neg
establishment of what they perceived would be an even higher rate, one that refl
market value, in the future. ESKOM countered that the cutting-off would have little e
had ample energy reserves from internal sources. Mozambique has been cr
position. Prime Minster Pascoal Mocumbi openly disagreed with the HCB deci
power to South Africa, arguing it was "not the most suitable method" for resolvin
AIM, "Mocumbi Reacts to Cahora Bassa Decision," 18 October 2002.
103 http://w ww.theafricanmonitor.com/news/europeandafrica/Y 1 6 December 200
104 In June 2004 the government in Lisbon under Prime Minister Jose M
Barroso reaffirmed that in principal it was willing to negotiate a new shareholder str
the management of the dam pass into Mozambican hands. [AIM, 25 June 200
produced after high level discussion between Mozambican President Joaquim
Portuguese Prime Minister Santana Lopes in October 2004 quickly dissipated whe
technical meetings proved fruitless.
105 AIM, "Veiga Anjos." ESKOM has recently put forth an ambitious schem
private regional electricity supply project that would more effectively link energ
transmission grid systems in the entire southern Africa region. While the implicatio
clear, Carlos Veiga Anjos, chair of the board of directors of HCB, criticized ESKO
as an effort "to possess everything and control everything" in the region.
106 At minimum Maputo, however, would like to receive more power from t
somehow gain greater control by increasing the government's share of the dam. S
up to now backed the Mozambican position, purportedly to guarantee the low
heretofore been paying for Cahora Bassa electricity. Still, Portugal's goals with re
over Cahora Bassa remain somewhat vague and contingent on the prevailing polit
Lisbon. In the meantime, HCB is suspicious of ESKOM and South Africa's intentio
to controlling the entire southern African system of energy production and
Confronted with South African plans to privatize all energy infrastructure in the re
of the board of directors of HCB recently told the attendees of a symposium on h
Africa that transmission lines in Southern Africa should be publicly mana
independent from private bodies managing electricity production (e.g., hydroele

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Another part of the energy equation rarely receives attention. The once-
powerful Zambesi River has been reconfigured. The essence of a large hydro-
electric project like Cahora Bassa is to capture and store water in a reservoir
behind the dam where it can be used to generate electricity. The river has been
harnessed and no longer flows freely, nor does it do its own work. This displace-
ment involves not only water, but also the great amounts of organic and inorganic
material carried by the river. Most important for riparian communities, the dam
traps rich sediments that would have flowed downstream and been deposited in
the river's floodplains. These life-sustaining nutrients provided energy that helped
to support human society and nature for centuries.
The Zambesi became an "organic machine,"107 converting a free resource,

the natural energy of the Zambesi River, into an export commodity geared to
South Africa's electricity needs. The process of harnessing the river and trans-
forming the river's annual cycle from a punctuated seasonal specific flow regime
with fairly regular patterns of flooding to one with unpredictable flows had far-
reaching consequences. Under the new energy export system, the magnitude,
timing, duration, and frequency of water channeled through the turbines varied
appreciably according to the power-generation needs of South Africa. Portuguese
and South African engineers were not concerned about the effect of large
discharges on farming in downstream communities. Erratic discharges from the
dam had profoundly harmful effects on agricultural output, fisheries, productivity,
wildlife, and the river's ecology.
The dam eliminated natural flooding and increased dry-season flow,

creating substantial hardships for hundreds of thousands of peasants whose
production depended on the ebb and flow of the river. In some districts the time-
honored practice of flood recession agriculture produced as much as 50 percent of
a community's food.108 Without predictable seasonal flooding, gardens located on
the river's edge were impossible to maintain and the production system collapsed.
Given the uncertainty of the discharges from the dam, farming on the flood plains
Under this logic, HCB could concentrate more resources on improving Cahora Bassa' s production
and worry less about the distribution system and associated expenses. Africa Energy Intelligence,
"Shadow Boxing over Dam," http://w ww.africaintelligence.com/ps/ AN/ Arch/ AEM/AEM_341. asp
(2003).
107 This concept is derived from the pioneering work of Richard White, The Organic
Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River (New York, 1995).
108 Lucia Scodanibbio and Gustavo Manez, "The World Commission on Dams: A
Fundamental Step towards Integrated Water Resource Management and Poverty Reduction? A
Pilot Case in the Lower Zambezi, Mozambique," unpublished paper (2005), 7.

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228 ALLEN ISAACMAN
was simply too risky. A significant number of peasants felt they had no
but to cease farming in gardens adjacent to the river and on riverin
(ntua). The water "destroyed our fields on the banks of the river," c
Caetano Francisco Figuerido and his fellow villagers who lived in
Inhagoma Island on the northern margins of the Zambesi.109 Cheia Am
echoed their concern, "Because of the uncertain floods we had to aban
fertile lands near the river."110 To the south at Mopeia, much of the land
used for a double crop of rice was also abandoned.111 A leading hydro
has spent significant time in the lower Zambesi Valley concluded that
flooding below Cahora Bassa has adversely affected the living standard
dreds of thousands of downstream households and decimated one of
productive wetland ecosystems in Africa."112
For most households two harvests per year became a phenomen

past. Because of the irregular flooding, they were forced to cultivate
upland soils far from the river. Farming was limited to the wet seaso
dependent on the rains. Agricultural production plummeted. In som
production of such key river-fed crops as sweet potato declined dram
Faced with the prospect of food shortages, some peasants at consider
continued to farm on the floodplains and islands in the dry season. A
discharges from Cahora Bassa washed away their crops, leaving
nothing to show for their labor. And when the harvests failed, many
forced to gather roots, tubers, and wild herbs and grains to survive. In
food security and sustainable livelihood of peasant communities was
mised in the hands of the HCB and held captive to South African energ
According to elders, the hydroelectric project has also reduced t

river fish population and further exacerbated food security. They str
opening of the dam sparked an appreciable decline in the number and
fish population. They also note that several species have disappeared,
1Q9 Interview with Caetano Francisco Figuerido et al., Inhangoma, 18 July 2000.
1 10 Interview with Ceia Amado, Caia, 20 July 2000.
111 Richard Beilfuss et al., "The Impact of Hydrological Changes on Subsistence

Systems and Socio-Cultural Values in the Lower Zambesi Valley," Working Paper
Wetland Conservation Program (2002), 8.
112 Richard Beilfuss, "Rethinking Cahora Bassa Could Make a Difference i

Battered Zambesi," International River Network, February 1999.
113 The only agricultural area in the floodplains that does not seem to have been a
the erratic discharges is the Zambesi Delta coastline which has a very high rainfall.
al., "The Impact," 8.

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they attribute to the absence of seasonal flooding.114 Before the river was
harnessed, the floods triggered the annual breeding cycle for many species. The
spillover also created warm, shallow ponds along the flood plains that were rich in
nutrients and ideal for breeding. The disappearance of these ponds halted the
breeding cycle, probably for good. Some elders maintain that the irregular flood
further inhibit fish reproduction because the eggs can be washed away at any
time.115 Finally, many fishermen contend that the turbines and gates at Cahora
Bassa prevent larger fish from passing through. As a result the lake behind th
dam is full of large fish whereas few can be found down river. That there has been
a sizeable reduction in the number of fishing and drying racks since the 1970s
would tend to confirm such claims.116 The decline in flood plain fisheries has
impoverished many riverine communities who relied on the catch both as a valu-
able source of energy- producing protein and to purchase foodstuffs and other
basic commodities. Fishermen are adamant that since the dam they have expende
more energy, having to work longer and harder for a smaller catch.
Impounding the Zambesi River has also contributed to the substantial

decline of the shrimp population in the delta region since the early 1980s. Appre
ciable decreases in the amount of water released, particularly during the onset of
the flood season when the shrimp normally migrate toward the ocean, hav
sharply reduced the shrimp population by impeding a critical stage in their life
cycle. For local fishermen as well as for the impoverished nations, this shortfall i
quite significant since shrimp fisheries have been one of Mozambique's mos
significant sources of foreign currency.117
There is also little doubt that the reduction in seasonal flooding has at least
indirectly affected the delta's once-large population of large mammals and birds.
Because the delta region had been a zone of massive flooding and silt, its abun-
dant supplies of fresh water and food attracted a wide array of zebras, elephants
waterbucks, hippopotami, and water buffalo. Earlier in the century the region
114 Interview with Inacio Tlonse Guta et al., Tsetsha, 21 July 2000; interview with Manuel
Tale et al., Tsetcha, 21 July 2000.
115 Ibid.
116 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 a
workshop on "Sobre o Uso Sustentavel da Barragem de Cahora Bassa e do Vale do Rio Zambese,"
Songo, Mozambique, 29 September - 2 October 1997.
117 T. Gammelsrod, "Improving Shrimp Production by Zambesi River Regulation," Ambio,

21, 2 (1992), 145^7; A. Hoguane, "Shrimp Abundance and River Runoff in Sofala Bank- The
Role of the Zambezi," paper presented at workshop "Sobre o Uso Sustentavel."

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230 ALLEN ISAACMAN
supported as many as 130,000 water buffalo. Reduced flooding crea

less hospitable region and threatened the long-term carrying capacity
These ecological changes also made the region more accessible
poachers, illegal commercial meat hunters, government troops, and
rebels. Areas once inundated (thus inaccessible to hunters) for nine m
year were now ripe targets for exploitation, accessible almost year-
wildlife population was decimated. The water buffalo population
under 4,000 by 1990. The numbers of waterbucks, zebra, and hippo w
by almost 95 percent. Other mammals and several bird species have e
similar decline.118
That the Zambesi no longer flows freely also has had other neg
difficult to measure, biophysical effects on the floodplain and delt
study documented the catastrophic impact of the regulated flow regi
stream wetlands where vegetative growth and animal populations dep
annual flooding that brought nutrients and sediments. By 1996, the
ogy of the Lower Zambesi itself- formerly a wide river system
mosaics of marsh, pond, oxbows, and shallow wetlands"- had been c
a system with "choked wetlands, trees, and bulrush encroachments al
and impoverished marshlands."119 And in the delta zone the mangro
critical feature of the estuarine system, have been particularly degr
absence of seasonal flooding. Because the region is much drier than
there has been a sharp reduction in wetlands and open waters areas
sponding increase of stagnant water and intrusion of salt water. The
is a less diverse and less productive riverine ecosystem.
Displaced Memories and the Debate over Mphanda Nkuwa
In the dominant state narrative Cahora Bassa is cast in the language o

economic progress, and social transformations,120 a narrative that
1 1 8 Beilfuss et al. , "The Impact," 11.
119 Bryan Davies, "Rehabilitation Programme for Cahora Bassa and the Low
Unpublished background document for the International Crane Foundation/F
(1996). See also R. Beilfuss and B. Davies, "Prescribed Flooding and Wetland Re
the Zambesi Delta, Mozambique," in William Streever, ed., An International P
Wetland Rehabilitation (Netherlands, 1999), 143-58.
120 This celebration of dams and silencing of the affected riverine commun
course, unique to Mozambique. In his provocative study Silenced Rivers Patrick Mc
us that "To many ... writers, leaders, engineers, bureaucrats, nationalists and rev
big dams have been potent symbols of both patriotic pride and the conquest of n

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experiences of the peasants whose daily lives and worlds had been torn asunder.
Their voices were rendered inaudible and their accounts displaced by official
adulation for the hydroelectric project.
That Portuguese authorities silenced any critical discussions around

Cahora Bassa is hardly surprising. The colonial regime was highly authoritarian
and stifled all dissent. And for all the slick brochures and public pronouncements
about the capacity of the dam to improve the lives of Africans, Cahora Bassa was
ultimately about cementing a security alliance between the Portuguese colonial
state and the South African apartheid regime. The dam was an integral part of an
anti-guerrilla military strategy and symbolized Portugal's commitment to remain
indefinitely in Africa. Debate was not tolerated even within government circles.
When a handful of planners and an external team of environmental scientists
raised questions about the likely devastating effects of the dam, their findings
were ignored or censored.121
More relevant for this study is the way the colonial state suppressed the
numerous local accounts of violence and the forced removal of thousands of peas-
ants that followed the building of the dam. The colonial narration of history is
organized around the premise that the Europeans were the guardians of progress,
civilization, and modernity.122 Chaos and disorder were relics of the precolonial
past, whereas the colonial state produced order. In such a master narrative there is
no place for state- sanctioned violence. To the extent that violence did occur and
was acknowledged by colonial authorities, it was cast as unintended, unfortunate,
but necessary consequences of progress. Thus Lisbon claimed that a relatively
small number of people were affected compared to other dam projects in Africa
and that the problems associated with relocation could be remedied by technical
ingenuity." Forgotten in the dominant discourse on water, development, and national security are
the devastating human and environmental consequences. See McCully, Silenced Rivers, 1 .
121 P. Bolton, "Mozambique's Cahora Bassa Project: An Environmental Assessment," in

Edward Goldsmith and Nicholas Hilyard, eds., The Social and Environmental Impacts of Large
Dams, 11: Case Studies (Cornwall, 1986); Bryan Davies, "They Pulled the Plug Out of the Lower
Zambezi," African Wildlife 29, 2 (1975), 26-28.
122 For an important discussion on the colonial narrative and historical memory see Pandey,
Memory, History, and the Question of Violence.

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232 ALLEN ISAACMAN
solutions.123 Colonial officials contended that the inconvenience was a sm

to pay for the large-scale benefits expected from the construction of the da
Since the state expressly prohibited scholars, journalists, and interna

observers from entering the region, peasants herded into strategic hamle
only share stories of suffering with each other.125 Similarly, the lived ex
of African workers who built the massive hydroelectric project remained
shadows of history. Portuguese accounts depicted the construction
harmonious multiracial workplace. Outside the construction site no one to
coercion, intimidation, grueling work schedule, industrial accidents, an
quate living conditions that were an integral part of their daily lives.126
Peter Size's story: "For the first year I had to work seven days a week.
worked very hard without rest, loading and unloading trucks. Our boss,
treated us very badly. He beat us for no reason, just because he was angry.
While these stories of forced internment and labor abuses have been
documented since independence, the postcolonial state has continued to
the image of Cahora Bassa as an icon of development and progress. At ind
ence in 1975, officials in FRELIMO expressed confidence that the da
play a pivotal role helping to transform the Zambesi Valley and spreadi
fruits of socialism. This dream was not realized. Moreover, FRELIMO's l
facing increasing military pressure from South Africa's campaign and st
to radically restructure Mozambique's economy, paid scant attention
concerns of the riverine communities. Their stories about the deleterious e
Cahora Bassa were lost in all the noise about socialist transformations and
African destabilization.
Faced with an escalating war, economic collapse, and growing pressure

from the West in 1987, the Mozambican government abandoned its socialist
agenda and agreed to implement the IMF- World Bank structural adjustment
program. At the heart of this neo-liberal program was a loosening of state control
123 Officials were quick to point out that the number of peasants affected was insignificant
compared to the 120,000 Nubians relocated to build the Aswan Dam and the 85,000 Ghanians
dislocated because of the Volta River project.
124 Arquivo Historico de Mocambique (AHM), Sec9ao Especial (SE)lll, a.p. 10, no. 237,
Governo do Distrito de Tete, Servicos Distritais de Administrac.ao Civil, Actas das Sessoes da
Reuniao dos Administradores e do Intendente com o Governo do Distrito, 27-28, December 1968.
125 The few reports about the harsh conditions in the aldeamentos that surfaced in the
Western press were dismissed by Lisbon as "FRELIMO propaganda."
126 See Isaacman and Sneddon, "Towards a Social and Environmental History."

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over the economy and expansion of the role of the private sector. Cahora Bassa
figures prominently in this new economic agenda. Mozambican engineers and
economists stressed the untapped potential of the dam as a source of hydroelec-
tricity. The government's sustained efforts to gain control of the dam are part of a
broader initiative to develop a national energy infrastructure that would encourage
new foreign investment and privatization and increase energy exports through the
region.
This focus on hydroelectricity effectively overwhelmed and erased many

of the pressing concerns of local communities and reinforced a pattern of histori-
cal amnesia on the part of the state. Once again the consequences of producing
power, almost all for external consumption, have been shunted aside. Conspicu-
ously absent from government calculations have been any mention of lost liveli-
hoods and compromised ecosystems. Official discourse on the potential of Cahora
Bassa does violence to the lived experiences of the local communities and the
stories they tell.
When peasants speak of the dam, they rarely desscribe Cahora Bassa as a
source of prosperity, much less as a symbol of modernity- they talk instead about
the loss of place, the disruption of community, and the devastating effects of
unpredictable discharges of water that flood their fields. They express concern
over the decline of fish and the alienation of ancestor spirits angry that sacred
burial sites have been inundated. They express frustration that the highly visible
power lines passing near their villages do not bring them electricity. And they are
angry that government planners seem oblivious to their long-term concerns and
that local administrators rarely warn them when water is about to be released from
the dam. For them the past has been silenced with ominous consequences.
Indeed, this amnesia helps to explain why in 2002 the Mozambican state
embraced the idea of building another massive hydroelectric project just 70 kilo-
meters south of Cahora Bassa at Mphanda Nkuwa. Selected as the most promising
site along the Zambesi, it is projected to generate 1300 MW at a total cost of
approximately $2 billion. The government's decision to promote Mphanda
Nkuwa assumes that within the next decade there will be an acute energy shortage
in the region and that Mozambique will be able to negotiate a favorable price with
ESKOM, which is likely to be the largest buyer. It is estimated South Africa alone
will probably require an additional 3000MW of energy within the next decade just
to recommission its mothballed thermal power plants.128 Moreover, within
Mozambique, several mega-projects in mineral extraction and processing are
128 ITC "jjjg Mphanda Nkuwa Dam Project."

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234 ALLEN ISAACMAN
planned as part of the country's quest for foreign investment and rapid
ment. These new initiatives include expansion of the large Mozal aluminu
in Maputo, an iron and steel factory in the capital, an aluminum factory
and titanium and heavy sand projects in Nacala and the Chibuto corridor
tively. They have a projected total demand of approximately 2000MW.1
funds necessary to build the gigantic dam and thus further exploit the powe
Zambesi River for industrialization and electricity sales must necess
secured from foreign investors.130 Conspicuously absent from the
Nkuwa feasibility plan is any indication that an appreciable amount of new
will be directed toward the rural poor. At present only 5 percent of Moz
households have electricity and almost 50 percent of those households r
the capital.131
The formal announcement of the project unleashed a wave of protes

environmentalists, scientists, and local NGOs. More than that, it has prec
the beginning of a national debate on the need for an integrated water
ment program. For the first time members of the affected Zambesi ri
communities have begun to speak out publicly, to make sure their conc
heard.
Opposition to the project surfaced almost immediately after a gover

meeting with potential donors in May 2002. Livanango, a Mozambican e
mental organization that had previously campaigned against the unsafe bu
toxic waste and obsolete pesticides, was among the first to speak out. Rep
tives of the NGO expressed concern about the prospective construction of
dam on the Zambesi River. They argued that the implementation of the
premature and called for greater investigation of the dam's downstream i
determine whether Mphanda Nkuwa will exacerbate the ecological a
destruction caused by Cahora Bassa. They stressed that in postcolonial M
129 Ibid., 15.
130 Towarci this end, the government organized an Investors' Conference for the Mphanda
Nkuwa Hydroelectric Project held 30 May 2002. The participants included more than 200
representatives of government officials, large energy companies, contracting companies,
equipment manufacturers, consultants, and investment banks. The meeting marked the official
launching of the project and was intended to persuade potential investors; government sources
hoped construction would begin in 2004 or 2005. Energy Minister Castigo Langa subsequently
headed a delegation of officials to Brussels, London, and Bonn in October 2002 to solicit interest
among investment bank and other finance organizations in Paris.
131 "The Mphanda Nkuwa Dam Project."

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bique the voices and views of the affected populations must be heard. Livaningo's
Anabela Lemos put it bluntly:
Our main concern on this project is that it has not included a study carried
out in accordance with the WCD [World Commission on Dams] guide-
lines, taking into account public opinion and needs, ascertaining whether
the power is needed, looking at the impacts, and offering a series of alter-
natives.. . . How can it be possible to think of another dam project, without
first finding the correct solution to minimize existing problems?132
Similar considerations have convinced a number of Mozambican and
foreign scientists to jump into the fray. No one has been a more forceful critic
than Brian Davis, a leading South African ecologist who has worked in the
Zambesi Valley for more than thirty years. Davis had been a consultant to the
Portuguese government, which suppressed his predictions of the dire conse-
quences of building Cahora Bassa. Fearing a new round of environmental
destruction, he wrote "I am appalled at the decision to go ahead with the dam....
[it is ] ill-advised, expensive, and ... probably politically motivated."133
A detailed report commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund, which

circulated widely in Mozambique in 2004, lends credence to these claims. The
document highlights four immediate problems were the current plan to build
Mphanda Nkuwa to be implemented.134 First, more than 1,400 peasants will be
displaced and their homelands inundated by the proposed 97-kilometer reser-
voir.135 This number appears small by comparison to the relocation associated
with Cahora Bassa. Indeed, engineers stress the favorable ratio of number of
people displaced per megawatt installed.136 For those forced to move, however,
the ordeal will be quite painful. Judging from past experience the economic,
cultural, and psychological consequences will be substantial and few of the
refugees will fully recover. Because the state has not formulated a well-developed
132 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.
133 Quoted in Frederico Katere, "Project Opens Flood Gates of Resentment," The East
African Standard (Nairobi), 7 August 2002.
134 "The Mphanda Nkuwa Dam Project," 7.
135 Republica de Mocambique, "Mepanda Uncua Hydropower Project, Mozambique:

Development Prospect," Ministerio dos Recursos Minerais e Energia, Maputo, 2002.
136 "The Mphanda Nkuwa Dam Project," 45-46.

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236 ALLEN ISAACMAN
compensation plan and the targeted population has little political clo
future prospects would be precarious. Second, the project calls for riv
be allowed to vary by 0.5 meters depending on the demand for e
discharges would have the affect of inundating many additional fiel
region. Third, high base river flows and low seasonal variations trigge
new dam would further reduce the shrimp population, aggravating the
ing economic situation of fisherman and costing Mozambique an esti
million a year in exports. Finally, in direct contravention of the reco
of the World Commission on Dams, the feasibility study was complet
sustained consultations with members of the riverine communities the
As a result their concerns, as well as their stories of dam-precipitat
phes, were shunted aside.
Thanks primarily to the work of such Mozambican NGOs as Liv

and its offshoot Justica Ambiente (JA),138 these peasants' voices are b
be heard. Over an eighteen-month period JA worked with 25 villages,
train more than 350 people in river management issues and learning
local communities about indigenous practices and local systems of kn
Within these communities they fostered intense public debates on the
Cahora Bassa and encouraged local peasants to express their conc
Mphanda Nkuwa.139 According to Gustavo Manez and Luica Sco
"People raised the problems of ... long-term losses in subsistence agric
fishing, the drying of the delta and the decline in prawn catches at
mouth."140
137 Although the feasibility study was conducted shortly before the publication of the World
Commission on Dams Report, the Commission had signaled on several occasions that
consultations with the affected communities would be one of their central recommendations. State
officials did conduct short surveys with a limited population in the 60-kilometer region between
the proposed dam site and the city of Tete. This zone represents only one-sixth of the area to be
affected by the new dam. Consultations with the remaining down river communities just never
happened.
138 In Portuguese, ja also means "already."
139 A team of Mozambican and foreign scientists and environmentalist had similar
conversations with villagers in the Zambesi Delta in 2001 and 2002 as well as with local
authorities as part of their efforts to develop an integrated management plan for the entire Zambesi
basin. These discussions are continuing to date. See Richard Beilfuss et al., "The Impact of
Hydrological Changes," 16.
140 Gustavo Manez and Lucia Scodanibbio, "Voices from the Zambezi: River Communities
Speak Out," unpublished paper (Maputo, 2005), 2.

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With the help of Justica Ambiente, representatives of the riverine commu-

nities organized a meeting with state officials. In October 2004 approximately 70
peasants, fishermen, and NGO members from four provinces in which the
Zambesi flows participated in a three-day workshop in the provincial capital of
Tete. They were joined by officials from the Zambesi Water Management
Authority and the Zambesi Development Authority. Here for the first time in a
formal public venue old and young men and women had a chance to tell their
stories bluntly and powerfully and, at times, to express their outrage at the pain
that they had suffered. Although some government officials were defensive and
tried to minimize the adverse impact of the dam by arguing that peasant agricul-
ture is not economically viable, the local representatives were not deterred.141
At the end of the conference the local representatives issued a 13-point

declaration entitled "Voices from the Zambezi" for all the world to hear. Moder-
ate in tone, it celebrates "the Zambezi River [as] the source of life for our
families" and at the same time acknowledges "the important role of Cahora Bassa
dam and its electricity as a means for economic development."142 Much of the
document highlights the adverse impact on agriculture due to erosion, flooding,
and the lack of enriching sediment, the drying up of the delta, and the destruction
of the mangroves and related prawn fisheries. The signatories advanced three sub-
stantive proposals. They requested a year-round calendar that would include
information on major discharges, the establishment of an early warning system on
dam releases, and the development and implementation of an environmental flow
regime that would roughly mimic the natural flow of the river. Although the latter
would not reduce the amount of sediment trapped behind the walls of the dam, it
would help to revitalize flood recession agriculture, eliminate most unplanned
flooding of riverine fields, sustain the rich delta area, and increase prawn catches.
Hydrologists have already simulated the impact of different flood releases on the
entire Zambesi catchment area.143 Their modeling suggests that it would be tech-
nically possible to introduce an equitable and practical plan for the management
of flow releases from the dam without a significant reduction in hydropower out-
put.144
141 Ibid.
142 "Voices from the Zambesi," Tete, 8 October 2004.
143 R. Beilfuss, "Modeling Water Availability for the Rehabilitation of the Lower Zambesi
River and Delta," unpublished paper.
144 Recent calculations anticipate a drop of about 8 percent in energy production with a
commercial value of $16 million. "The Mphanda Nkuwa Dam Project," 48.

146.231.185.229 on Sat, 17 Sep 2022 16:43:01 UTC
238 ALLEN ISAACMAN
The participants also indicated they "do not oppose the Mphan
project" as long as they receive certain guarantees. They insist on p
tation before the project is implemented, fair compensation for th
lose their lands and their livelihoods, and a share of the benefits from
to assist in long-term development. They also demand "that the dive
of the River such as sustaining social and natural activities are preser
the dam also integrates environmental flow releases."145
The declaration ended with an affirmation of their willingness t

with appropriate state institutions, "especially the recently crea
Regional Authority (ARA-Zambeze), to assist them and other users
more integrated management of the river."146 They vowed to form
association to make sure their voices are heard. While there are indications that
some state officials are taking notice of their concerns, only time will tell if their
efforts are successful.
Conclusion
Too often suppressed in the discourse on dams and development are the lived
experiences of riverine people whom large dams are purported to help. This arti-
cle has explored the socioeconomic and environmental changes brought about by
Cahora Bassa told through the voices and stories of the Zambesi communities. As
part of an alternative history of Cahora Bassa, it argues that the daily lives and
historical memories of peasants and fishermen must figure prominently, both in
any scholarly analysis of the effects of Cahora Bassa and in any new initiatives
such as Mphanda Nkuwa. To fail to do so, and to continue to insist that water is
simply a resource to be used most efficiently for development, does violence both
to the past and to the future.
145 "Voices from the Zambesi," Tete, 8 October 2004.

146 Ibid.

146.231.185.229 on Sat, 17 Sep 2022 16:43:01 UTC

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Displaced People, Displaced Energy, and Displaced Memories: The Case of Cahora Bassa,

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40034919

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DISPLACED PEOPLE, DISPLACED ENERGY,

The colonial development narrative was imbued with an ethical message

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small number of peasants whose homelands would be inundated by t

Anticolonial forces, led by the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique

FRELIMO vowed to sabotage Cahora Bassa. In 1968 they initiated a guer-

4 In 1969 Lisbon signed a $515 million agreement with ZAMCO- a South

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FRELIMO 's strategy benefited from a well-organized and highly visible

8 WCC, Cahora Bassa, 2.

^ United Nations, "Economic Conditions in Mozambique with Reference to Foreign

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Six months later, Mozambique gained its independence. Stuck with

We cannot irrigate without energy. The electrification of the centra

The centrality of Cahora Bassa in the postcolonial development strategy

11 Agenda de Informacao de Mocambique [AIM], Information Bulletin 38 (1979), 6.

13 M. Anne Pitcher, Transforming Mozambique: The Politics of Privatization, 1975-2000

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For the purpose of this paper I am employing the term "displace" in

^ My analysis is inspired by Gyandendra Pandey's important work Memory, History, and

17 For a discussion of the role of ZAMCO, see Middlemas, Cabora Bassa.

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In addition to people, energy and water were displaced as well. T

By storing water in a large reservoir behind the dam where it c

I am also employing the term "displace" to suggest the ways the

Both the colonial state and its postcolonial successor constructed

18 Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production

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Because this article is concerned with the livelihoods of riparian commu-

The Hydrology of the Zambesi and Pre-Dam Indigenous Agronomic Prac-

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Zambesi, inspiring fear in the hearts of Europeans and Africans alik

For proponents of Cahora Bassa, flood control was one of the mo

The torrential waters were descriptively named, in the ways of stor

23 Middlemas, Cabora Bassa, 17.

25 Cahora Bassa on the Move (Lisbon, n.d.), 21.

26 SWECO/Swed Power, "Cahora Bassa," 55. For an important analysis of the h

27 Silva Cunha, Cahora Bassa: Que sdo os Beneficidrios.

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Figure 2. Pre-impoundment Zambesi River floodplains based on the

31 In the down-river regions of Sena, Caia, and Mutara, these

32 Interview with Senteira Botao, Eliot Jumbo, Muatisember

33 Interview with Penzulani Mafalanjala, Mauricio Alemao, and Ber

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Peasants living on the floodplains down river derived similar benefits.

The capacity of the indigenous people to develop productive responses to

34 Interview with Luis Manuel, Regulado Sangoma, Sena, 20 July 2000.

35 Interview with Caetano Francisco Figuerido et al., Mutarara, 18 July 2000.

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I had three plots of land on each of which I mixed several differe

As we see in Chipuazo's and Churo's accounts, three important fe

40 Interview with Antonio Joao Chipuazo.

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The unregulated Zambesi provided sustenance to riverine communities in

We fished with mackonga in which we placed bits of massa [porridge].

In addition to fishing, hunting provided an integral part of the local diet.

The construction of Cahora Bassa changed everything. The ancient flood

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presumed that increased economic activity would have a trickle-down e

Colonial authorities gave even less consideration to the ecological i