presents:
SIX STORIES FROM MOZAMBIQUE
© 1998 RADIO BRIDGE OVERSEAS TRUST

Cahora Bassa
One of the largest man-made lakes in Africa

The name Cahora Bassa (called "Cabora Bassa " in colonial times) is apparently derived from the Chewa term "Kebrabassa", which means "the end of work".
Traders and travellers on the Zambezi, during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, were paddled and pulled up the river by locally "recruited" slaves as far as a point around 100 km upstream from the town of Tete. At this point powerful rapids and short waterfalls effectively prevented further progress upstream and thus boats could only drift back downstream and the toil of slaves came to an end at Kebrabassa.
By 1960 the Portuguese government, then ruling over Mozambique, had firmly identified Cabora Bassa as a site for a formidable hydro-electric scheme.
The participation of South Africa's Electricity Supply Commission (ESKOM) was crucial from the outset, as South Africa with its extensive mining and industrial sectors would be, at that time, the only significant market for the power generated by harnessing the Zambezi at Cabora Bassa.
An agreement was signed in Lisbon in 1969. Despite attacks on supply routes by the FRELIMO liberation movement, work forged ahead. The transmission lines were completed and the lake began to fill in 1974.

Ironically the power supply to South Africa was cut in 1986 when the RENAMO resistance movement, a creation of the then Rhodesian and South African secret services, sabotaged hundreds of pylons in response to South Africa's terminating its support of RENAMO, in terms of the Nkomati Accord.

CAHORA BASSA POWER TO FLOW AFTER 16 YEARS

(Image: EOSAT)

The red area outlining the lake is dense vegetation growing along the shore.
The west end of the lake is deeper and carries less sediment than the eastern end, therefore the west end is darker blue.

Listen / STORY 5 - / 05'49"

"Once the Escudo rolls - The enclave of Cabora Bassa"

Songo was built to house the people who built Cahora Bassa dam and is now occupied by the staff needed to keep the generators well oiled. The small town is 5 km away from the lake and, although roads do lead down to the water, getting permission to camp or to launch a boat is likely to be a slow and laborious process. As the dam wall is regarded as a security risk (encircling mine fields are still there), prospective visitors are screened at a police checkpoint just before the town of Songo and are required to present written permission from one of the H.C.B. (Hydroeléctrica Cahora Bassa) offices.Songo and the whole Cahora Bassa enclave represents a little state within the state where the Portuguese still have the say; they own 82 % of the enterprise, only 18 % belongs to Mozambique.

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THE RBO PRODUCTION TEAM:


Research & Interviews in Mozambique:
Victor Desajado, Emmanuel Camillo, Fortune Ncube, Klaus Juergen Schmidt
Scripts:
Victor Desajado, Fortune Ncube, Klaus Juergen Schmidt
RBO-Interns attached to research at Cahora Bassa:
Holger Bock, Olaf Krems, Morris Nyakudya
Presenter:
Victor Desajado, Fortune Ncube, Dadirayi Chigoya, Shorai Kariwa
Translation in Mozambique:
Victor Desajado, Emmanuel Camillo, Lucia Rodriguez, Christina Maria Patricio
Technical Supervision at RBO studio:
Norbert Irmer & Nenad Kuzmic
Administration & Logistics:
Jennifer Chiriga & Dadiray Chigoya
Managing Editor & Director:
Klaus Juergen Schmidt