By Mario de Queiroz
LISBON, Oct 31 2006 (IPS)

With the handover of control of the Cahora Bassa dam to Mozambique Tuesday, the governments of that southeast African nation and Portugal brought more than 30 years of negotiations to a close and guaranteed the energy independence of one of Africa’s poorest countries.

Mozambique’s stake in the dam – the largest in southern Africa – rose from 18 to 85 percent, which means the country will control a significant share of the regional electricity market. The agreement has thus provided it with a vital source of foreign revenue.

Upon signing the pact with Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates, the visibly moved Mozambican President Armando Guebuza declared: “Mozambicans, Cahora is ours.” He described the agreement as “historic,” and said it was “extremely important in order for Mozambique to take off” economically.

The two governments underscored the “excellent state” of relations between Portugal and its former colony of 22 million people, which it colonised starting in 1498, when Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama landed on its shores. He named it “Terras da Boa Gente” (Land of the Good People) because the locals were so friendly.

The pact “honours the history of friendship between our people, projects us into the future, closes a chapter and strengthens a future of mutual confidence and development of cooperation between Portugal and Mozambique,” said Socrates. Portugal’s share in the dam, its biggest-ever investment abroad, has now been reduced from 82 to 15 percent.

The dam, which produces some 2000 MW a year, also supplies South Africa, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

Cahora Bassa began to be built, on the Zambezi River, before Mozambique gained independence from Portugal in 1975. However, it did not start to operate until 1977. Then in 1979, the civil war closed it down, and it only began to produce energy again in 1998, after the reconstruction of the main power line.

Maputo will pay 950 million dollars to Portugal to compensate it for the cost of construction and maintenance of the dam, while Lisbon agreed to write off the rest of a 2.5 billion dollar debt contracted 28 years ago.

Mozambique also has the option to purchase from Portugal an additional five percent share at market rate.

Portuguese Finance Minister Fernando Teixeira dos Santos acknowledged to journalists that Portugal will not recover everything it invested in the dam. But he said the debt cancellation was the most important aspect of the arrangement, because “it eliminates a burden, a heavy financial cost, from the past, but one that was justified by historical circumstances.”

Prior to the ceremony in which the agreement was signed, Socrates laid a wreath at the Mausoleum of the Heroes, in front of the tomb of Samora Machel, the guerrilla leader who fought the Portuguese colonial army and became the first president of independent Mozambique, a post he held from 1975 until his death in 1986.

Relations between the two countries were not always good. Portugal was the first European colonial power to take root in Africa, and it only left after 500 years.

And Mozambique’s bloody war of independence lasted from 1961 to 1974, when a leftist military coup in Portugal put an end to nearly 50 years of dictatorship in that country.

Relations between Portugal and its former colonies in Africa were also marked by the stigma of slavery. Portugal dominated the African slave trade from the 16th to the 18th centuries, importing their human cargo to the country’s biggest colony, Brazil, and selling slaves to England, Spain, France and the Netherlands for their colonies in the Americas and the rest of the world.

Although Portugal became the first European monarchy to abolish slavery, in the late 18th century, Portuguese slave traders were actually among the last to pull out of the trade.

But today, pragmatism reigns in the political, economic and commercial ties between the two nations, which refer to each other as “sister countries” with a “common history and language,” thus leaving the traumatic past behind them.

Excerpt: