mines of the queen of Sheba,173they did encounter a thriving local mining industry. In the southern hinterland’s streams and rivulets, Africans panned for gold, which they sold to Muslim traders at the inland fairs. By the seventeenth century, Portuguese adventurers were also prospecting for gold, both there and on the northern bank. Through conquest or rental agreements with local land chiefs, they obtained control of gold-producing areas, where they established bares (permanent mining camps). Because bare owners failed to introduce modern mining technology, yields from shallow veins and rivulets were low, and only a trickle of gold reached the coast. In fact, in 1821 gold represented less than 2 percent of the total value of exports.174The reputed silver mines proved even more illusory, and exploitation of the rich coal deposits at Moatize, across the river from Tete, began only in the early twentieth century.175
Colonial efforts to promote agriculture were no more successful, despite the rich alluvial soils adjacent to the river. For centuries, Portuguese officials had presumed that plantation agriculture would anchor the prazo system. While periodically decreeing that prazeiros grow coffee, sugar, rice, tobacco, and other cash crops, they bemoaned the settlers’ failure to select appropriate soils and seeds or to irrigate fields adjacent to the Zambezi.176With the exception of a handful of prazos in the delta producing rice, sugar, and wheat, commercial agriculture was nonexistent. In 1806 only twenty thousand kilograms of food were exported from the entire region,177and by 1821 such exports had declined by 90 percent.178Little changed during the remainder of the century, due to the prazeiros’ ignorance of modern farming methods, their unwillingness to invest in technology, the lack of transport and accessible markets, and the much higher returns from trading in slaves and ivory.179
Portugal’s decision in the 1870s to open the region to international commerce and Europe’s soaring demand for vegetable oils for soap and candle making spurred an agricultural revolution based on peasant production.180Nevertheless, by the end of the century, Lisbon had reversed its policy and begun again promoting plantation agriculture181 through long-term grants to concessionary companies. These firms employed conscripted African labor, which worked the fields to satisfy their tax obligations. In 1899 promulgation of a native labor code, which codified the existing system of unfree African labor in Mozambique, known as chibalo,182assured the concessionary companies an ample supply of workers.183This secure labor supply, especially in the Zambezi delta, allowed sugar production to skyrocket from 605 tons in 1893 to almost thirty thousand tons two decades later and ensured the profitability of the copra and sisal plantations that sprang up along the coast.184
Upriver cash crop production, by contrast, was negligible. Writing in the 1920s, the governor of Tete complained that the “practical effects of development [projects] was zero.”185To stimulate additional agricultural and mineral production in this region, Portugal built the Trans-Zambézia Railway in 1922 and, in 1935, the railway bridge across the Zambezi at Sena, thereby effectively linking the region, with its large coal deposits at Moatize, to the port of Beira.186Even with these limited state initiatives, economic development outside the delta remained illusory.187
Despite the new railroad, upriver transport continued to be problematic. Most goods traveling between Tete and the Indian Ocean went on canoes of various sizes, barges, and flat-bottomed boats. These small craft were subject to the vagaries of the mighty river and could carry only limited quantities. A small number of steamboats also plied the river, but, even for them, Tete was the end of the journey. The gorge at Cahora Bassa blocked passage to the interior, which, Portuguese officials believed, prevented development of the region. After World War II, colonial planners concluded that other large projects were necessary to promote modernization in the Zambezi. Within a decade, constructing a dam at Cahora Bassa had become the panacea for economic takeoff.
Constructing a Colonial Narrative
From more than three centuries of contact with the Zambezi valley, Portuguese officials and European explorers constructed a comprehensive narrative of the river and its environs, which was framed by racial and cultural stereotyping and ideas about the degenerative nature of the tropics188 and further shaped by their local guides and translators. While constraints of space preclude in-depth exploration of these themes, we will highlight three interrelated tropes that structured this narrative.
According to the first trope, before the region’s vast resources could be extracted, it was necessary to tame the wild, malaria-infested river. Explorers and officials repeatedly documented the dangers posed by the powerful currents, jutting rocks, and menacing gorges, which jeopardized commerce and blunted passage inland. For commerce and Christianity to flourish, the river had to be domesticated and the natural barriers destroyed. Writing about the limitations imposed by the Cahora Bassa gorge, Livingstone noted, “if we can blast away the rocks which obstruct the passage, [i]t will be like opening wide the gates which barred the interior for ages.”189Colonial authorities also lamented the unpredictable floods, which washed over the banks and destroyed peasants’ fields and, more recently, company plantations. From the middle of the sixteenth century, they documented rainy-season floods, which seemed to recur every ten years or so.190Flood control, in fact, became one argument for constructing the Cahora Bassa Dam (see chapter 3).
That the degenerate settler community and the backward indigenous population had both failed to take advantage of the well-endowed Zambezi region was the second trope. According to Kirk, “there is not one white man or one who may call himself white, in the whole district . . . without venereal diseases. . . . The consequence is that all have skin diseases and when they have children, they are miserably syphilitic both in mind and body.”191A century later, a senior colonial official echoed this assessment—lamenting that the indolent and ignorant estate holders “do not go in for any physical exercise, nourish themselves on a heavy and excessive diet, and delight in the abuse of sexual pleasures.”192Portuguese authorities regularly complained that the debauchery of the estate holders subverted development.193According to Governor Sebastião Xavier Botelho, writing early in the nineteenth century, so did their ignorance: “The [prazeiros along the coast] plant the cane out of season and without any knowledge of the most appropriate and suitable lands for this endeavor; and the crop failure is then attributed to the quality of the land rather than the ignorance of the cultivator. If the production of sugarcane is poorly planned, it is no worse than the sugar cultivation on the Tete prazos in which they use inappropriate machinery, which conserves neither time nor manpower.”194
Others attributed the lack of productivity in the fertile river valley to the ignorance and laziness of the Africans. Consider how Livingstone wove together themes of the region’s divine-given fecundity with its unproductiveness: “The cultivated spots are mere dots compared to the broad fields of rich soil which is never either grazed or tilled. Pity that the plenty in store for all, from our Father’s bountiful hands, is not enjoyed by more.”195Colonial authorities shared his views, which became the ideological justification for forced labor. “It was imperative,” wrote Joaquim Mousinho de Albuquerque, a Portuguese high commissioner in 1899, “to instill a work ethic among the indigenous population and eliminate the indolent habits of the savages.”196Twenty-five years later, the governor of Tete echoed these sentiments, characterizing many of the “tribes” under his jurisdiction as “ill-disposed to work,” “docile,” and “thieves.”197To compensate for the slothful Africans, development required that more Portuguese migrate to the Zambezi valley.198
The ability of technology and science to overcome the obstacles of the river and permit exploitation of the region’s resources was the third trope. The time and dedication explorers and government officials devoted to cartographical, geological, and agronomic notations of the Zambezi were just one indication of their faith in scientific knowledge. Carl Peters, a German explorer, predicted that “European science would easily succeed in revolutionizing the country.”199Portuguese officials saw the growth of modern plantations, construction of new railways, and development of the river as keys to unlocking the region’s wealth and ensuring progress under the Portuguese flag.200In 1912, for example, the governor of the district of Quelimane argued passionately that “the salvation of the Zambezi and its transformation into a major agricultural zone”
