Beira — Fifty-five year old Alfredo Mambo watched his entire life washed away this week when a wall of floodwater first stripped the fertile topsoil from his small farm, before submerging the ruined fields.
Mambo is one of an estimated 81 000 Mozambicans who have been forced from their homes by rising floodwaters that have claimed 62 lives in the country's north-western provinces of Tete, Manica, Sofala and Zambezia over the past two weeks.
Thousands of other peasant farmers living along the Zambezi River are refusing to leave their subsistence farms or abandon their livestock and possessions despite warnings that new, larger surges of waters will hit the area within two to three days after officials were forced to open floodgates upstream at the Cahora Bassa Dam.
"They keep refusing. They keep running away. They keep saying they have been here forever and there is no water. But at the end of the day, they need to be evacuated. At the end of the day, it will be the government that is blamed," Mozambique's Disasters Management Institute director Silvano Langa told local journalists.
Langa said most of the villagers were so poor they had no radios or newspapers and were oblivious to the risk. Mozambique's central government ran out of patience on Thursday, however, and ordered its army, navy and other civil defence teams to evacuate the defiant peasants by force if necessary, arresting anyone who resisted orders to leave immediately.
Refugees are only allowed to take one change of clothes and minimal amounts of food with them because, Langa added, evacuation teams only had access to small boats.
"At least another 80 000 people in Sofala and Zambezia provinces still need to be evacuated, and we may also be forced to move about 2 000 people in Tete," said Langa.
The disaster has wiped out up to 90 percent of crops in regions such as Caia, but World Food Programme spokeswomen Inyene Udoyen said damaged was not as widespread as initially feared floodwaters have already begun receding in some areas.
Sofala province Governor Felicio Pedro Zacarias added that official evacuation estimates were extremely low and told public radio on Thursday that at least 170 000 people in his province alone needed to be evacuated ahead of the rising floodwaters.
Zacarias warned that his quick helicopter tour of the affected regions on Wednesday had spotted villagers already stranded on tiny islands alongside the Zambezi River. Few of the people appeared to have food, he said.
But it isn't only Mozambique's subsistence farmers who have been affected by the floods. Schooling for 37 000 pupils is Sofala and Tete has all but stopped after 18 000 pupils in Caia, Dondo, Nhamatanda, Buzi and Cheringoma fled rising floodwaters in Sofala, and an additional 19 000 pupils abandoned their submerged classrooms in Mutarara, Magoe, and Zumbo in Tete.
Tete City itself is partially submerged by the Zambezi River, which is currently 5-metres above its 'critical' levels and is expected to rise further. Tete's Mozambican Red Cross warehouses and other food storage centres are amongst the building that are already submerged.
Public Works and Housing minister Roberto White meanwhile told AENS from Maputo that government was trying to delay opening floodgates at Cahora Bassa for as long as possible, but was powerless to hold back any longer after Zambian authorities authorised discharges of up to nearly 7 000 cubic meters per second further upstream at the Kariba Dam.
Four floodgates were opened at Cahora Bassa on Monday because of water pressure caused by the build-up in the dam's basin, but may be forced to open more after heavy rains in Zambia and Zimbabwe swelled the lake behind the Kariba Dam, one of the biggest in Africa. Kariba officials warned on Wednesday that mounting pressure might crack the dam supports or even collapse its wall.
Mozambique is still recovering from devastating floods last year that killed more than 700 people, destroyed houses, bridges, roads networks and crops across southern and central parts of the country.
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While the current flooding is not expected to cause as much damage, it could rival the floods of 1978 that caused damage worth an estimated US$60-million and crippled some of the country's most fertile farmland.
Mozambique this week appealed for US$30-million in emergency flood aid, but the country's private sector is already bracing for damage estimated in the billions.
The country's largest sugar estate, Sena Sugar, is one of the victims of flooding in Marromeu district, 300km northeast of the port city of Beira, barely one year after a Mauritian consortium committed US$70 million to rehabilitate it.
The National Disaster Management Institute's Joao Zamissa said on Thursday afternoon that Mutarara remained the worst hit region with an estimated 55 000 people directly affected. An estimated 400 000 have been affected nationwide by the floods. - African Eye News Service
