decades.63Their extremely important studies of wetland and wildlife conservation, particularly in the Zambezi delta, have provided invaluable information on the long-term ecological effects of Cahora Bassa. Our debt to all these scholars, but particularly to Beilfuss and his colleagues, is evident in the frequency with which we cite their work.
The present study makes three contributions to the literature on Cahora Bassa and the broader scholarship on the impact of large hydroelectric projects in Africa and the global South. Most writings on large dams have a strong presentist bias. Investigators typically begin their analyses either just before a dam’s construction or shortly thereafter. By contrast, we treat Cahora Bassa as part of a much longer history, dating back to the sixteenth century, of Portuguese attempts to colonize the Zambezi valley and domesticate one of Africa’s mightiest rivers. In summarizing that history, we also explore how European travelers and Portuguese functionaries forged a master narrative of the river as wild and dangerous—one that stands in stark contrast to indigenous representations of the Zambezi as a source of life and prosperity, which could be dangerous if not respected. Additionally, we look ahead—examining how the dam’s history may affect Mozambique’s decision to build a second dam at Mphanda Nkuwa, sixty kilometers downriver.
Just as we have extended the temporal parameters of our study beyond the relatively short history of the Cahora Bassa Dam, so too have we broadened its spatial dimensions by extending our gaze downriver from the dam site and reservoir to the Zambezi delta and estuary. Most studies of large dams tend to explore the social and ecological consequences either around the dam site or in the river delta, rather than examining the entire river system. As part of this expanded geographic perspective, we also include material on the Kariba Dam, located approximately eight hundred kilometers upriver on the Zimbabwe-Zambia border, since the amount of water it discharged has had a significant impact on Cahora Bassa and the area downriver. To understand the changing fields of power in which Cahora Bassa’s history is embedded, it is necessary to consider the wider regional, transnational, and global forces operating during this period. Cold war geopolitics, the apartheid regime’s aggressive efforts at bolstering its hegemonic position in the region, Lisbon’s efforts to maintain a significant presence in postcolonial Mozambique, and pressure from the World Bank and the IMF have all figured prominently in the history of the dam.
Finally, we have shifted our principal angle of vision from a state-centric developmental approach to one that explores the linkages between power inequities and environmental change—particularly the difficulties of securing water for the Zambezi valley’s rural poor and ecosystems. We focus on the interconnection between livelihood vulnerability and environmental changes provoked by the dam, and, because our emphasis is on the daily lives of affected rural communities, peasants’ stories, rather than the official modernizing discourse of the colonial regime or the postcolonial state, are at the center of our analysis.
In adopting this strategy, we do not dismiss the role of the colonial state or its successor. Nor do we ignore the possibility of dissenting voices within the Portuguese and Frelimo administrations. To the contrary, we examine whatever critical debates and divergent views about the dam periodically surfaced. Although some documentation from the colonial period exists, because Mozambique’s postcolonial archives remain closed, and producing cheap hydroelectric power continues to be a high priority of the Frelimo government, high-level disagreements about Cahora Bassa and the proposed dam at Mphanda Nkuwa generally remain shrouded in secrecy.64
Thanks to the work of such authors as Timothy Mitchell, James Scott, and James Ferguson, we know a great deal about “the rule of experts,” what it means to see like a state, and the totalitarian aspects of modernist state planning.65Using these concepts, we have sought to write a social history of a development project in which the rural poor are not simply objects of state planning but play a significant role as actors in the story. This shift in the angle of vision helps us to understand how top-down developmentalism affected the organization of agriculture, the utilization of labor, the exploitation of microecological systems, the development of innovative fishing techniques, and the general resiliency of affected populations.
Displacement for Development
In the name of development, state-planned and -executed large dam projects have disrupted the lives and livelihoods of millions of people throughout the global South. “Development-induced displacement,” to borrow the language of Peter Vandergeest, most often affects the poorest and most marginalized communities.66It also can have calamitous consequences for the physical and cultural worlds in which poor communities reside. Displacement for development certainly happened at Cahora Bassa, and the history of that destructive process is the narrative core of this study.
In the chapters that follow, we employ the term displace in two slightly different ways.67In its most conventional usage, as described in the next several paragraphs, displace means to remove or shift someone or something from its customary physical location. We use displace in this sense to capture the lived experiences of riverine communities that were violently dislodged and relocated to so-called protected villages when Lake Cahora Bassa inundated their historic homelands. Displace also refers to the forced removal of African villages located on the salubrious Songo highlands when those lands were taken over by Zamco, the multinational corporation that constructed the dam.68The term displacement also captures the experience of peasants living downriver who had to abandon fertile alluvial plains and island gardens when unpredictable discharges from the dam flooded these highly valued cultivated spaces.
In addition to people, Cahora Bassa literally displaced animals, plants, and soils. A few examples will illustrate this point. Herds of elephant, wildebeest, and kudu, among other wildlife that roamed the savannas and forests in the region adjacent to the river, either drowned or fled when the dam reservoir was filled. By sharply reducing the volume of river flow in the lower Zambezi, the dam increased salinization in the biologically diverse delta wetlands, leading over time to the replacement of freshwater grasses with more salt-tolerant species, able to thrive in the brackish water. And, because Cahora Bassa dramatically impeded the silt from traveling downriver, the mineral-starved water below the dam recaptured sediment loads by eating away at the riverbanks. This caused erosion that displaced large quantities of precious alluvial soil.
By converting the natural power of the Zambezi River into electricity for South Africa, the dam also displaced energy from Mozambique. Its primary function was to produce electricity, but not for local consumption. Instead, Cahora Bassa transported up to 1,450 megawatts over a 1,800-kilometer network of pylons stretching from Songo to the power grids of South Africa. This energy was, and continues to be, used to power South African mines, farms, and cities, while the vast majority of Mozambicans who live in the lower Zambezi valley remain without access to electricity and the economic activities it makes possible. In short, the dam converted one of Mozambique’s most vital natural resources into an export commodity, principally for the economic benefit of its powerful neighbor.
The dam robbed energy from the region in another, less obvious way. By harnessing the once powerful Zambezi so that it no longer flowed freely, the dam prevented the river from accomplishing all its previous essential work. In addition to blocking the flow of water and silt, the dam walls trapped substantial amounts of organic and inorganic material that had previously fertilized the alluvial soils of the floodplains, creating optimal conditions for agriculture in an environment where erratic rainfall and poor soils made farming a precarious enterprise. As a result, riparian human communities as well as other forms of plant and animal life permanently lost essential energy-supplying nutrients.
We employ the term displace in a second, very different way to connote a less tangible process of dislodging and replacing. Here we have in mind the ways in which dominant colonial and postcolonial narratives of Cahora Bassa’s history have rendered inaudible the stories and experiences of the Zambezi valley’s riverine peoples. This silencing is due, of course, to the asymmetrical power relations surrounding the production and dissemination of knowledge about state-sponsored development projects. The Portuguese colonial state and its postcolonial successors all
