Reflections on the First Congress of Resettled and Affected Communities in Mozambique
Maputo city, 13th February 2019, I was in a room full of villagers, civil society and representatives of extractive companies. That was the First Congress of Resettled and Affected Communities. My expectations were high. We have extensively critiqued the lack of space for villagers to voice their concerns. The assumption is: if we take a bottom-up approach, it can be transformative, as if the bottom has not been much embedded with the top. I was eager to hear stories from different villagers coming from different parts of Mozambique, who faced similar predicaments: the capital penetrated their villages, pushed them out of their villages, with little or no compensation, and with the involvement of or apathy of the state.
The meeting started with the representatives of the Attorney General of the Republic, Order of the Lawyers, CIP, CNDH among others, their talk was focused on the institutional and legal framework of Mozambique and its capability to cater for the rights of Mozambican citizens. There was the expected narrative of the state officials stating that the state is doing all it can to safeguard the human dignity and rights of the citizens. There were then the expected accusations from the civil society organizations for the lack of political will to effect change and ensure that the state caters for the human dignity and rights of the citizens. The involvement of some state members in the extractive business was also mentioned. The lawyers stated that they have filed many cases against corporations like Vale and Jindal. In the case of Jindal, the court found the company guilty of the charges presented, however, there has not been any actions for effective reparations. The General Attorney office stayed at “we have not received any cases of villagers filing complaints against corporations for violating their rights”.
In Mozambique, the struggle over land has been framed as a human right and dignity issue. Not much talk is given to nature and how the actions being carried out today are beyond the present, and extend beyond times and scales even science is not yet able to fully grasp. The general conclusion of the talks was that corporations were doing much harm to villagers with little to no state intervention to safeguard the villagers’ rights and dignity. The general solution was to train all actors from civil society, state officials, and villagers on the legislation in Mozambique – which has given rise to the industry of capacity building. So far nothing new.
Then, the panel comprised of villagers took the stage and boy could the subaltern speak? They sure could. The hideous violations, lack of reparations, broken promises, broken homes, literally speaking, were spelled out vividly, at times with a pinch of humor, that helped lighten up the mood. It was encouraging to see how much these villagers could voice their concerns, own the opportunity to call out the violations they have been enduring for so long. It was good to see them all together in one room, mingling with other villagers who suffer the same violence of the capital. It was, however, off-putting to see how much some villagers were claiming to have the worst situation than others. But in general, all the interventions went towards saying that the corporations came into our villages, promised jobs, and development, their enterprises took off, we were kicked out of our villagers, given inadequate life conditions or even lost family members.
Nothing new here too, rather than their all being together in the same space in Maputo.
One member of a corporation asked seemingly concerned about how much a company can do to improve the villagers' conditions of life, in these terms: how can we know the villagers are satisfied? In other words, how much can the company expend on villagers? One of the villagers replied that there is a framework that is used to assess the index of satisfaction of the villagers.
Now, from these interventions it seemed clear that the issue was how to compensate the villagers. The discussions went towards how the villagers could better negotiate their resettlement, which seemed necessary and inevitable. Until, one participant of the congress burst out and called out the organizers for first cutting off a local leader when he was intervening, because he did not follow the protocol of the organizers, then the participant went on asking why we are not radicalizing these debates? Why are we talking about compensations instead of talking about no exploitation of natural resources, including villagers? Why can’t we start to think about alternative models of development in Mozambique that do away with extractivism and corporativism? These questions were not new either, but they did bring a fresh air into the room, so much that there were claps.
It is these questions that I believe require proper attention, and the answers should bear in mind what elsewhere I called deep present, in which legacies of the past intersect in messy ways with predicaments of the present and work as the base for envisioning futures (alternative). We cannot wish away these present life conditions. The first thing is the fact that we have been colonized via the force of capital to feed Europe. Until the present, Africa is considered a continent full of natural resources – this includes the people who are portrayed as an obstacle to development (I mean enrichment of the capitalists), in the best-case scenario they are cheap labor. This view is shared by the White capitalists and the African leaders as they go abroad shaking hands to attract direct foreign investment. Until, the present the African black Man has to fight not just for his dignity, but for his humanity, for the corporations do not see them as humans, but cheap labour or obstacles – are we surprised about the killings of humans by Gemfields in Cabo Delgado? Nothing new here.
Second, in the present corporations run states and businesses. They have outgrown the states. The Mozambican laws state that land and all its resources are state property and are to be used for the benefit of its people; elsewhere these laws have been critiqued as nationalistic, however, the complaints presented by the villagers today show that these laws are easily overridden. “You are shitting on wealth”, a villager told me that they were told this by the minions of capitalism. No novelty here either.
Third, the leadership of African countries has continuously become introvert. The liberators are today called out by their citizens accomplices of corporate interests. These in turn creates ambiguities in the institutions and legislation in which corporations and their networks thrive. Archi-minions of capitalism, you hear them claiming “in Mozambique we have so much land which is not being explored”, as they shake hands with their new masters, with diplomatic smiles. They mobilize the repressive state apparatus to ensure that the lands are effectively empty and cleaned up for the masters. It was not only private forces that killed, tortured, and humiliated villagers in Cabo Delgado, Tete, and other parts of the countries. Nothing new!
Forth, civil society, and donors from all over the world have adjusted to the corporations. It has become about how to humanize the violence that corporations inflict upon villagers and nature. The countries that are the biggest funders of environmentalism, which are usually the same, are not exempt from interests and connections to corporations. Nothing new!
Fifth, villagers, specifically some local leaders fight for power in the villages where promises of development have been made. They betray the communities to which they belong. This is also nothing new.
Sixth, there are of course state officials, civil society, donors, and local leaders that are really concerned with the predicaments of villagers. This means that there has always to be space to make alliances and grow a movement nationally and globally that will allow villagers to not just be compensated fairly but say NO to extractivism, without this being a sentence to a life of misery or death. At the end of the day, in my understanding, this should be about well-being for all (my only understanding of decolonization), however, the villagers define it. Someone once said that the world has all it needs to live a good life. Then why only a few are eligible to this life? Nothing new here, but if that is the case why are we still having these conversations?
