By Estacio Valoi
Monday, September 24th, in the rearview mirror we left behind the city of Tete enveloped in a heat wave, a puff of hot air that numbed our throats as soon as we lowered the windows of the vehicle in which our team of three people was traveling to Mphanda Nkuwa, on the banks of the Zambezi River.
A journey of around 150 kilometers of road to the rhythm of several songs repeated countless times. We fought the tight road with trucks from the Lalgy company, true owners of the road, in their race to transport the coal from the Jindal de Marara Company to the dry port in city of Tete.
From the side of the road looking further inland, the land shows signs of not feeling the taste of rain for some time. The cattle are getting out of hand. There are more than three hundred and seventy thousand people from two districts in Tete province who are at risk of facing a food deficit, according to a local radio station.
As we continued, further ahead we could see the metal towers of a new Cahora Bassa power station. Tired of fighting the road with the trucks from the Lalgy company, we entered a dirt road with brown and red sand like rocks mixed together. An area of rocks, hills and forest.
From the top of the mountain our eyes look at the horizon. It gives the impression that the car is going to slide down the ravine. There are visible signs of trees being cut down by Chinese loggers.
We stopped in Chococoma where I met Neli Vicente who was showing us the roots of the region. On the other side of the mountain is the majestic Zambezi River.
Vicente shows us the rock that protects a cave where the spiritual lions were and some mines in the mountain where gold and copper were extracted, within a radius of one kilometer to eight hundred meters wide.
The Lion King was the guardian of those lands in the Zambezi of spiritual lions and whenever the community wanted rain, to prevent or cure epidemics “we would speak to that spirit that defended.” The Lion King died.
While intentions to build the Mphanda Nkuwa dam continue, communities do not want to see, much less hear about the “damn project”. And they ask the spirits for protection while they continue to wait for a new lion spirit king to defend and protect them. They no longer trust the authorities.
According to Vicente, walking at night is a little complicated with the risk of coming across ghosts or goblins along the way. There was a healer called Ximbango, he forbade people to walk at night, the stubborn ones ‘got beaten.’
There are communities of more than 1400 families whose source of survival is cattle raising, agriculture and they already have gold. “We didn’t know there was gold at the time.”
The Mozambique Government signed a partnership agreement for the construction of the Mphanda Nkuwa Hydroelectric Plant valued at 4.6 million euros and will have a capacity of up to 1,500 megawatts in its first phase. It will be the second largest dam after Cahora Bassa. https://pumps-africa.com/mphanda-nkuwa-dam-in-mozambique-set-for-construction/
Its construction was handed over in May 2023 to a consortium led by the company Électricité de France, which also includes the multinationals Total Energies and Sumitomo Corporation.
Residents of the region where the Mphanda Nkuwa dam will be built say they have been prevented from building private infrastructure for more than ten years.
The construction of this dam has been the target of allegations of human and socio-environmental rights violations. For more than 10 years, communities have continued to be deprived of building their private infrastructure.
Environmentalists also warn of the risk of displacement of entire communities, the destruction of the livelihoods of those living around the project and serious environmental impacts on the species of the Zambezi River.
Here, with or without the Lion spirit, the community doesn’t care about any dam construction, much less resettlement like the one carried out by the mining company Jindal. It’s enough for them: “we already have our neighbors and our brothers who are suffering.”
No benefit
The energy to be produced by the Mphanda Dam will not be for the benefit of these communities. Now, even though they are 60 kilometers from the Cahora Bassa dam, they have not had electricity for decades. They confess to us that they heard that an energy supply line, similar to Cahora Bassa, will cross their villages to South Africa and Zambia. ‘If they build the dam, it will interrupt the river’s course. This is from Espírito deLeão.’
While waiting for the protection of the Lion King, still in Chococoma, from the bottom, figures appeared covered in black feathers, brownish, shiny bodies, bathed in mud and with beads. They sang at every foot on the ground, my lens whirled and Soubesse Francisco whispered to me, ‘Saint Nyeue’ aka Gurewankoro, they dance in ceremonies and on festive days. In their ritual before dancing in the cemetery they evoke the spirits of the dead. Most children or young people did not go to school. They dedicate their adolescence and youth to being “Nyeue”. The school is for others.
We got in the car and continued. Behind was Chococoma. We leave the main road that goes to the Cahora Bassa Dam.
In the afternoon we entered again but from Cataxa, Chococoma, Chamimba and beyond the entrance to Nhamatua in the Cassoca resettlement made by the coal mining company Jindal. We took a route that passed along the banks of the Zambezi River, in Chiúta, Luzinga, Chirodzi – Mphanda Nkuwa in infernal heat, we arrived and it was here that we met the elderly woman, Dodina Matchesso.
The wave of extreme heat invited me to dive into the Zambezi River but I stayed on the bank. After all, the river is not only full of fish but also full of crocodiles! I dip my feet, I want to feel the water! The water was cool.
At night, lying on my back with my eyes on the sky, I look at the stars and hear the river singing. A deep peace washes over me. I was already asleep when I started to hear deafeningly: “The FRELIMO regime and its French friends from TOTAL want to take our land. They want to kill us but we won’t leave.”
Just like Dodina’s age, which must be around 80 years old, her wrinkles have also been saved by time. Sitting with her three grandchildren on the treadmill in Chirodzi, she says that at the time there was a school in the area. Therefore, he was unable to learn “Bêabá”. She was born, raised and married in that ‘pristine’ place to Francisco Morais, a cattle and goat breeder and land owner.
On the Zambezi river bank of green, sparkling water and also, of Gold, we continued to talk. The old woman is firm when the cattle try to enter her farm. With a stick in hand or with a few stones, she scares the cattle away from the farm.
Old Dodina says that she has always lived off the nature of Chirodzi, where she produces vegetables, legumes, onions, tomatoes, cabbage and other greens. As Dodina says, there’s everything there and they don’t want the dam. Nostalgically, she thinks about her late husband.
However, Dodina and other members of the communities believe that the spirits still reside in those lands and do not let their guard down. Peremptorily but calmly he says: ‘these lands are ours. We live in this nature.” She gains strehnghs , energizing when she remembers that her late husband, when alive, also sent away employees who intended to build the Cahora Bassa dam. When they arrived here Morais showed them his large lands, plantations and asked them how they were being asked to leave those lands of abundance to go and live in an unknown place! “I feel a lot of sadness, a lot of pain, I don’t want to, I’m not going to leave here, I’m firm just like my late husband was.”
Exactly at the same place where they once wanted to build the majestic Chora Bassa dam, but the spirits of the Lion King wouldn’t let them. They had to drop everything and flee. The Lion King and the spirits did not want to smell any fuel. According to our interlocutor, ‘the people who wanted to build the Cahora Bassa dam here, during the day they cleaned the area, cut down trees but at night they germinated. It was the spirits who sowed these trees from one day to the next to preserve this area of Mphanda Nkuwa.” Sad, remember that the Lion King who had the domain of spirits died.”
She is surprised when she hears that in the same area, once again they intend to build a dam. And she doesn’t know what will happen if the dam is built.
Almost everything is not good Chirodzi. A considerable number of young people left fishing to dedicate themselves to gold mining, which was abundant in those lands. Alexandre, a young man of five feet tall and around twenty-seven years old, is one of Dodina’s sons.
Like other young people, he also has a big smile. Gold brought smiles to this community. Alexandre has no teeth but he still smiles because gold brought smiles to this area. Euphoric and a little touched by Nipa, a traditional drink that is drunk in these areas, he laughed and said: “I sold gold for five million. Tomorrow I’ll go back to the gold and the fishing can wait.”
In this phase when rain is not felt, for these communities gold has become the main source of income. Dodina also benefits from gold.
We entered Chiúta-Luzsinga, which will also be affected if the dam is built. That’s where we found Rui Mário Galmoto, in his 60s. Father of 8 children and grandfather of 27 grandchildren. Heard about the dam construction plan from 2000 until today in 2024.
The narrative is the same “here the community doesn’t want to hear about the construction of the dam.”
While sitting, the meager shade of an Imbondeiro tree tried to hide the sun, another elderly woman, Paulina Passo, aged around 69, emphasizes that it will be a hardship and points to the resettlement carried out by JINDAL. ‘A catastrophe’ before the impassive gaze of the government and members of the Mozambican political nomenclature concerned with commissions and easy profits in exchange for human lives and companies do and undo as they please.
“JINDAL there, there’s a lot of gold, it’s not just coal. We don’t want the Mpanda Nkuwa dam, we want to stay here until our grandchildren, our granddaughters, until we die. We have a hunger crisis. But through gold, people are trying to survive. Here we are still eating in a good way and living in a good way.’
She is also a gold miner. At the same time, he invites me to go to the mining site close to his community on Sunday morning. “Just across the river.”
Lack of information and Misinformation
Both the government and its partners do not talk to the population and do not share information about what is happening. And when they do, the information is not accurate, which confuses communities who only see “strange movements”. There are people, boats and jet skis that pass by and go up towards Cahora Bassa. “Last week, leading up to the 25th of September, 4 motorbikes passed by, yesterday on the 24th, 2 passed by, the four that went up the river towards Cahora Bassa did not return”
According to Soubesse Francisco, a member of the community, “on the bank of the Zambezi River, we climbed a rock and among the baobab trees we saw GPS markers placed without the knowledge of the population by those who intend to build a dam.” Soubesse was surprised when he went to his farm. He just heard the sounds of a machine and didn’t know what it was. When he got there he realized that a drill was being used and the men who intended to build the dam were drilling into the rock to set up the GPS coordinates. He asked what they were doing, they didn’t explain anything except that ‘we will respond later’. However, no such response was ever given.
With these movements, communities wonder what is happening, no one has told them anything. Still in the Chamimba 2 area we find Steven Azevedo Fernando, a businessman, but he doesn’t know he’s a businessman. At the top of the hill, he has his house, two mills and a small generator. Watch movies and football championships through your white satellite dish mounted in your home. There are cattle and there is also gold in the area and he wonders where they will be resettled. “We have a lot of things here. Farms, cattle, vegetable gardens, water, wood, improved schools and other things”.
Around a thousand families live in this community. The government and its partners promised to build houses to resettle these people. They also promised electricity, but the community does not want to be resettled and calls for the aforementioned infrastructure to be built within their communities. “Build these houses here where we are and not in the resettlement. Cahora Bassa is close by, but we don’t have electricity.”
In 2012 they received passwords delivered by the Consultec group. At the meeting, they separate the group of women from the group of men “What meeting does this separate people from? They wanted to lie to us. They kept our contacts.”
Residents question whether they will be moved to resettlement areas with their livestock. “Over there, we will suffer. They want to take us closer to the road. What if the ox is hit by a car? Because we’ve seen things. For example, the Cassoca resettlement group is suffering due to lack of water.”
In Xirimba there were promises to build a high voltage station. ‘Solar panels here?” asks Silva, a local resident, who questions the reasons for opting for solar energy when the Cahora Bassa Dam exists.
‘It doesn’t make sense,” says Silva. The communities would have to contribute to the construction of the station. “Get money to buy cables to connect from the solar panels to our homes!” In 2012, after the aforementioned meeting, Consultec staff never returned!
Like in Moatize, land here is also scarce for resettlement. Our reporter learned that people from the Mozambican political nomenclature acquired large tracts of land to later negotiate with multinationals. In the resettlement carried out by JINDAL, when the mining company’s dry port has a lot of coal waiting to be exported, they stop production and the community is left without water for three or more days until they export the coal.
“Because they are not producing coal, they even shut off the water pipes that channel water to the resettlement center.” Thus, people’s livestock succumb, transforming into authentic carcasses. Cattle drink recycled toilet water and eat grass infected by the chemicals. “Nobody solves anything! We could end up going through the same thing as the communities resettled by Jindal.” Emphasized Silva Sadiel Domingos Semblano who added that around 45% of people abandoned the resettlement places and sold their houses, each at a price of 150 thousand meticais.
“Here are no conditions to live!”
The same narrative has, Itino Lucas Suague Ruquia, 27 years old and father of two children, a couple, a 5-year-old boy and a 2-year-old girl. According to him, while the rain does not fall, gold mining has become one of the main sources of subsistence. “I get gold and sell it to support my family.”
Until King Leo returns, the communities are fighting as best they can, but the truth is one: they don’t want a dam on those lands. Without knowing where they are going or what conditions exist, the communities are unanimous: “We are not going to abandon these lands.”
