O avesso das expectativas: exploração dos recursos naturais e exclusão em Moatize, Província de Tete, Moçambique (2000 a 2015)

Abstract

The advancement of modern capitalism imposes new ways of facing the global and competitive Market, resulting from the growth of the industry, which demands raw material incessantly to feed this industry in a continuous line of progress. On the path of this unbridled race for the acquisition of raw material, the African continent becomes once again, the stage on which the games of capitalism interests take place, usually accompanied by a noisy silence and the apathy that has characterized African government, from the point of view of supervision and lag of collective interests, Africa has been the preferred place. In this context, Mozambique did not escape the rule, because of the existing coal deposits in the coal basin of Moatize; there is a growing flow of large companies interested in the exploitation of mineral coal. Faced with this meeting between two completely different realities, on the one hand the multinationals with extensive experience in the exploitation of resources and, on the other a technical and, a State, whose institutions are weak and without a technical capacity necessary to supervise enterprises of such magnitude, allied to a population without experience in these situation, resulting in a clash of very different realities. The companies taking advantage of the weaknesses presented, exempt themselves from corporate social responsibility, on the other hand, the new rich equip the State for personal or group benefits, installing a permanent conflict between the local populations claiming their legitimate rights and the extractive companies eager for profits, applying for the effect “Machiavellian” principles, in which the ends justify the means. This process results in exclusion in its various typologies, from environmental exclusion, social and economic exclusion. The marked level of social exclusion refers to the thought that the project may not be socially fair or environmentally sustainable, because the Mozambican political economy is essentially extractive and generating exclusion.