Abstract: This paper examines the history of Mozambique's Cahora Bassa dam, and analyzes the factors that made the project into a continued focal point of regional conflict. The dam's conception and construction were deeply linked to the Portuguese colonial state's concerns over security and military operations against revolutionary forces. In the post-independence period, the dam and its transmission lines became important targets for apartheid South Africa's campaign to destabilize the FRELIMO regime. FRELIMO, in turn, sought to domesticate the "white elephant" of Cahora Bassa for its own developmental purposes. Most recently, Cahora Bassa has become the center of a geopolitical struggle among Mozambique, Portugal and South Africa, over control of the dam's hydroelectricity. The Mozambican government's desire to construct a new dam on the Zambezi River, Mphanda Nkuwa, represents a startling example of post-colonial amnesia. Despite the history of Cahora Bassa, the Mozambican state's efforts to derive economic benefits from the Zambezi, above all other social and ecological goals, appears to be pushing towards the construction of what could very well become another "white elephant".

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