Mining companies must be punished

The Mozambican Bar Association (OAM) has demanded that coal mining companies in the western province of Tete be held responsible for their failure to resettle people affected by their activities.The companies in question are the Brazilian mining giant Vale, which operates an open-cast mine in Moatize district, and the Indian comp any Jindal, which is working in Marara district.According to a statement published on Thursday, the OAM has already requested the Administrative Tribunal to order the Ministry of Land, Environment and Rural Development to collect fines from the two mining companies for their failure to comply with the approved resettlement plan.The fines would be enormous, at 10 per cent of the total value of the Vale and Jindal undertakings. The OAM says such a fine is covered by the August 2012 regulations on resettlement arising from economic activities.The OAM has been monitoring the situation of communities affected by the foreign investment mega-projects, and it found that the resettlement of households affected by Jindal’s mining activities has not happened at all. These households, the OAM statement points out, “are still living within the mining concession area granted to Jindal, in an environment of pollution which endangers their lives”.

The Tete Provincial Administrative Tribunal in 2017, and the national Administrative Tribunal, in June this year, both ordered Jindal to resettle the households affected, but to date it has not done so.Vale did resettle some of the communities affected by its Moatize mine, but that resettlement has always been vigorously contested as shoddy and unjust. The OAM points out that negotiations are continuing with the affected communities to ensure the payment of fair compensation.The cases of these two companies, the OAM argues, “represent the paradigm of unjust resettlement, marked by illegalities and violations of the fundamental rights of the households affected, particularly the right to land, decent housing, food security and sources of livelihood”.

The OAM says such cases are clearly covered by the 2012 regulations on resettlement issued by the government, and it is up to the government to penalise the companies that defy those regulations.But to date the government has declined to use its authority. The OAM accuses the Ministry of Land, Environment and Rural Development of “choosing to nourish the impunity of Vale and Jindal”, which perpetuates “the precarious living conditions of the communities affected”.In Moatize, a community that has not been resettled took matters into its own hands and shut down part of the Vale mine, known as “Moatize-2”, on 4 October because of the noise and dust pollution it was causing.People living in the Moatize neighbourhoods of Bagamoyo and Nhantchere invaded the mine to force a stop to the explosions there. The demonstrators succeeded in halting the machines that were working at the time, in one case by hurling a rock through the windscreen.The protesters want the mine to be closed definitively. Alternatively, the households affected could be resettled far away from the coal dust which threatens them with lung diseases. In addition to the dust, they say that the explosions in the mine cause vibrations which are damaging their homes, causing cracks to appear in the walls.The standoff continued this week when the protesters refused to allow the company to carry out experiments with machinery that would supposedly reduce the impact of the vibrations.According to a report in the Moatize online paper “Malacha”, the machines were moved in without first informing the community. In vain did Vale representatives tell the protesters that they were not restarting mining operations, but merely testing new equipment, in the presence of specialists.The community, which had banned the movement of any machinery the previous week, refused to change its position, and gave the company half an hour to stop the machines.

Threatens to break off talks

The interim coordinator of the Political Commission of Mozambique’s main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, Ossufo Momade, on Thursday again threatened to end Renamo’s talks with the government unless “electoral truth” is restored.This is the second time that Momade has threatened to end the negotiations, which are centred on disarming and demobilising Renamo’s militia and integrating its members into the armed forces and the police or back into civilian life.He first made the threat on 13 October, just three days after the municipal elections. Renamo is alleging fraud in five municipalities, but accepts the results in the other 48 cities and towns.The fraudulent results were announced, Renamo says, in the southern city of Matola, and in the towns of Marromeu, Moatize, Alto Molocue and Monapo, in Sofala, Tete, Zambezia and Nampula provinces respectively.Speaking to a Maputo press conference by telephone from his military base in the central district of Gorongosa, Momade made two completely new demands. He called for a commission of inquiry to look into the frauds and to establish “the electoral truth”, and he demanded the direct involvement of President Filipe Nyusi.

“I want here and now to invite the Head of State to clear up the problem, otherwise we shall leave the negotiations”, he said.This hard line from Momade is completely at odds with the position of the Renamo election agent, Andre Magibire. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, after the National Elections Commission (CNE) had announced the results, Magibire said Renamo was taking its complaints to the Constitutional Council, the highest body in matters of constitutional and electoral law, and he was confident that the Council would rule in Renamo’s favour.

Magibire made no threats, and gave no hint that Renamo would break off talks with the government. Indeed, Magibire seemed delighted with the results overall and declared that Renamo was the real winner of the elections.Renamo had gone into the elections with just one municipality (the northern city of Nampula, which it won in a by-election in March) and now it has eight, he said, plus hopes of recovering the five where it alleges fraud.

Momade’s two demands have no support in the electoral legislation, which was passed unanimously by the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, including by the Renamo deputies. There is no role at all for the President of the Republic in election disputes, and no provision for setting up commissions of inquiry.The avenues of appeal are through the district and city courts, and through the Constitutional Council, both of which Renamo is using.Momade also called on the international contact group, which is mediating the talks between Renamo and the government to contribute “towards restoring electoral truth so as to safeguard the effective peace and well being of the Mozambican people”.(In the photo president of the National Commission of Elections of Mozambique (CNE), Abdul Carimo)

In at least four of the municipalities where Renamo alleges fraud, there were certainly massive irregularities. Those members of the CNE appointed by Renamo had hoped that the CNE would act on those irregularities.However, the CNE members appointed by Frelimo made the novel argument that the CNE can do nothing to alter the results because the matter is sub judice, having gone before the district courts, and now being appealed to the Constitutional Council. No such argument was ever made in previous elections, and until now it was generally believed that the CNE does have the power to change the results when fraud or irregularities are detected.The CNE voted on whether to accept the results from the five disputed municipalities, and the Frelimo position won by eight votes to five, with three abstentions.

Mpanda Nkuwa hydro dam approved in 2007

Mozambique’s huge new Mpanda Nkuwa hydroelectric dam is to take at least a decade to be built and start operating, the country’s deputy minister for energy and mineral resources, Augusto de Sousa, told Lusa in an interview.

“Quite frankly, Mpanda Nkuwan will go on until 2028 or 2029,” he said. “Before that it isn’t going to happen.”De Sousa’s comments came after Mozambique’s president, Filipe Nyusi, revealed in August that two state enterprises, Electricidade de Moçambique (EDM) and Hidroeléctrica de Cahora Bassa (HCB), were in charge of reviving the dam project.The minister also said that HCB “could go to the market and obtain financing to implement the project” but that there was still work to carry out beforehand.He said the country was studying “all past documentation” to verify that there is nothing “that penalises the government” since the construction plan was approved in September 2007. “We are going through all the past documentation,” he said, verifying that “there is nothing that penalises the government”, since the construction plan was approved in September 2007 and has passed through the hands of several partnerships from then, without being implemented.After that, there are several other deadlines to take into account, the deputy minister said: five years to build the dam, the power plant, two years for structuring the project (which includes transport lines or energy sales agreements), plus a few more to solve any pending issues.Put together, these will take the implementation schedule all the way to 2028 or 2029.

“I do not see [the project] happening sooner than that,” de Sousa said. Indeed, the dam will be ready just as Mozambique begins extracting natural gas from the large offshore reserves in the north of the country, part of which will be used to produce electricity. But even so, De Sousa says, the construction of Mpanda Nkuwa is justified.The Electricity Infrastructure Development Master Plan foresees electricity demand increasing eight-fold over the next 25 years to 8,000 megawatts. More than half that will be produced from natural gas, but the dam will help “respond to demand” and will contribute to “the diversification of energy sources.”

“Until five years ago, Mozambique was 100% hydro” with respect to electricity sourcing. Today it has 30% natural gas (from the Sasol project in Inhambane) and 70% hydro, “a large part of which originates from the Cahora Bassa dam”.

Limitations on energy production at Cahora Bassa due to drought last year were a warning sign of the need to diversify the range of energy sources, the deputy minister concluded.