Paul Fauvet
8 February 2008
Maputo — Mozambican President Armando Guebuza said on Friday he is convinced that, if the Kariba dam does indeed open one of its floodgates next Tuesday, "it will be because it has no alternative".
Guebuza was speaking to journalists at the central Mozambican town of Caia, after a visit to the flooded Zambezi Valley.
The Zambezi River Authority, which operates the Kariba dam, on the Zambia/Zimbabwe border, has served notice that it will open one of the four Kariba floodgates on 11 February. This will send another surge of water down the Zambezi and into Mozambique, and it is not yet clear how much of this water can be stored in the lake behind the Cahora Bassa dam.
Guebuza recalled that last week heads of state of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) met in Addis Ababa, where they were attending the African Union summit, to discuss the floods crisis.
"Everybody recognized that the waters from landlocked SADC countries all pour into Mozambique", he said.
The heads of state, he added, agreed that "there should be greater coordination and exchange of information between our countries".
He was thus convinced that the ZRA would "certainly do its utmost to cause as little flooding as possible in Mozambique".
Guebuza was convinced that the problem of floods on the Zambezi will only be solved by the construction of more dams.
He acknowledged that some environmentalists opposed building new dams on the river - but he was convinced that the projected dam at Mpanda Nkuwa, some 60 kilometres downstream from Cahora Bassa, as well as a second power station at Cahora Bassa, "will not put the environment into any danger".
He agreed that the environmental impact of new projects should be properly studied, but stressed that in order for the Mozambican population to improve their living standards, they need electricity, which in turn implies building more power stations and more dams.
As for the perennial question of whether Mozambique should appeal for more international aid to cope with the crisis, Guebuza pointed out that the international community is already supporting Mozambique's own contingency plan.
"Are we in a situation in which we have lost control ?", he asked. "I don't think so. Unfortunately, there are some currents of thought in Mozambique who say "no, no, the foreigners do it much better"
Donors are currently backing plans drawn up well in advance by the Mozambican relief agency, the National Disasters Management Institute (INGC). A UN agency source told AIM, that to date the United Nations has committed 20 million dollars to flood relief.
Commenting on the six resettlement areas he visited on Thursday and Friday, Guebuza was sure that the people who have been evacuated "are much better off than they would have been if they had stayed on the flood plain".
The resettlement areas were a starting point for a better life, "but it's less than we could do", he said. "We could build more and better houses. We could persuade more people that they shouldn't try to return to their old homes, and we should ensure that they all have work".
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