Dams, Displacement, and the Delusion of Development. Allen F. Isaacman
de Moçambique (Centralized Services for Coordination of Information from Mozambique)
T/A Traditional Authority
UTIP Unidade Técnica de Implementação dos Projectos Hidroeléctricos
WCD World Commission on Dams
Archival Terms
caixa box
códice codex
fol. folio
maço packet
pasta folder
processo file
Unless otherwise indicated, all interviews have been conducted by the authors or by a research team of which one of the authors was a part.
Cahora Bassa Timeline
May 1956 The Salazar regime dispatches Professor Alberto Manzanares to conduct a preliminary survey of the Cahora Bassa gorge.
September 1969 Lisbon signs a $515 million agreement with Zamco for it to build the Cahora Bassa Dam.
September 7, 1974 Frelimo and Portugal sign the Lusaka peace accord, which set the terms for the eventual transfer of the Cahora Bassa Dam to Mozambique.
December 6, 1974 The dam’s gates close, blocking the Zambezi River from flowing freely downstream to the Indian Ocean.
April 1975 The reservoir at Cahora Bassa is filled, forming a 2,600-square-kilometer lake.
June 23, 1975 Portugal and Mozambique sign the agreement giving the HCB 82 percent ownership of the Cahora Bassa Dam.
June 25, 1975 Mozambique formally becomes independent.
January 1987 Mozambique implements the structural adjustment program known as the Program of Economic Rehabilitation (PRE).
October 4, 1992 The Mozambican government signs a peace accord with Renamo in Rome.
May 2002 The Mozambican government holds an investors’ conference, seeking bids for the construction of the Mphanda Nkuwa hydroelectric project.
November 27, 2007 Mozambique purchases majority ownership of Cahora Bassa from the HCB.
2014 It is anticipated that Mozambique will own 100 percent of the dam by then.
1 Introduction
Cahora Bassa in Broader Perspective
Dams have histories that are located in specific fields of power. Unlike the dams themselves, however, these histories are never fixed; whether celebrated or contested, they are always subject to reinvention by state and interstate actors, corporate interests, development experts, rural dwellers, and academics. Too often, though, the viewpoints of people displaced to make room for a dam are lost or silenced by the efforts of the powerful to construct its meaning in narrow terms of developmental or technical success. Yet, the voices of the displaced endure, carried by memories as powerful as the river itself. Such is the case of Cahora Bassa,1a grandiose dam project on the Zambezi River in Mozambique (see maps 1.1 and 1.2).
The Zambezi River is the fourth-largest waterway in Africa and the largest river system flowing into the Indian Ocean. Although the Cahora Bassa Dam and reservoir are entirely inside Mozambique, the vast bulk of its drainage basin lies outside the country. “Rising in Angola it has a catchment area of 1,570,000 [square kilometers], drains the southern borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and traverses Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Malawi and Moçambique.”2Because Mozambique is furthest downstream, it depends on its neighbors for access to the Zambezi’s waters.
Before the Zambezi or any of its tributaries were dammed by the Europeans in the twentieth century, the rate of the river’s flow varied considerably in the catchment area. In much of the basin, located on the Central African plateau (termed the upper Zambezi by hydrologists), the water moved slowly through low plains and swamps. The undulating topography changed radically at Victoria Falls, where the river plunged more than one hundred meters and became the middle Zambezi. It was on this stretch, downstream from Victoria Falls, that the British built Kariba Dam in 1958. Approximately one hundred kilometers further downstream, at the Cahora Bassa gorge, the river plunged once again, down a long succession of rapids and cascades, turning into a powerful and volatile force. The gorge marked the beginning of the lower Zambezi, which extended 650 kilometers to the Indian Ocean. Drawing from the British experience at Kariba, colonial planners decided that Cahora Bassa would be an ideal location for Portugal’s hydroelectric project.3
When built, in the early 1970s, during the final years of Portuguese colonial rule, Cahora Bassa attracted considerable international attention. Engineers and hydrologists praised its technical complexity and the skill required to construct what was then the world’s fifth-largest dam. For them, Cahora Bassa confirmed that nature could be conquered and biophysical systems transformed to serve the needs of humankind. Portuguese colonial officials recited a litany of benefits they expected from the $515 million megadam and the managed environment it would produce—expansion of irrigated farming, European settlement, and mineral output; improved communication and transportation throughout the Zambezi River valley; reduced flooding in this zone of unpredictable and sometimes excessive rainfall. In slick brochures and public pronouncements, they claimed that Cahora Bassa would “foster human progress through an improved standard of living for thousands of Africans who live and work there.”4Above all, Cahora Bassa would generate a substantial influx of hard currency, since 82 percent of its electricity would go to South Africa—making it the largest dam in the world producing energy mainly for export. As a follow-up to this technological triumph, Portuguese planners envisioned building a second dam, sixty kilometers south of Cahora Bassa, at Mphanda Nkuwa (see map 1.3).
In June 1975, six months after the dam’s completion, Mozambique gained its independence, ending a decade of warfare between the colonial regime and the guerrilla forces of Frelimo (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique). The newly installed Frelimo government—after years of claiming that Cahora Bassa, by providing cheap energy to apartheid South Africa, would perpetuate white rule throughout the region—radically changed its position. Hailing the dam’s liberating potential, it expressed confidence that Cahora Bassa would play a critical role in Mozambique’s socialist revolution and its quest for economic development and prosperity.
Even after Frelimo abandoned its socialist agenda, in 1987,5the dam remained central to Mozambique’s postcolonial development strategy. Serious economic problems, stemming in part from the ongoing military conflict with South African–backed Renamo forces6 and mounting pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, compelled the Mozambican government to introduce market-oriented reforms to lure foreign investment. What did not change was its continued celebration of the transformative potential of Cahora Bassa, whose provision of cheap electricity to new privately owned plants and factories would stimulate rapid industrial growth. Moreover, its announced intention, in the late 1990s, to implement the colonial plan to build a second dam at Mphanda Nkuwa underscored Frelimo’s belief that large energy-producing dams were essential for national economic development.
Thus, despite their very different economic agendas and ideological orientations, the Portuguese colonial regime, the postindependence socialist state, and its free-market successor all heralded the developmental promise of Cahora Bassa. Whether Portuguese or Africans held the reins of state power, the dam symbolized the ability of science and technology to master nature and ensure human progress.7Moreover, to the extent that official versions of Cahora Bassa’s history became the dominant reading of the past, they suppressed alternative voices that questioned the state’s interpretive authority.8
The African communities living along the Zambezi River, however, tell a markedly different story. When the three hundred Zambezi valley residents interviewed for this book speak of the dam, their accounts rarely evoke images of prosperity or progress. Instead, Cahora Bassa evokes memories of forcible