22. January 2016

The Resettled

At least three of Europe's biggest steel companies are buying coking coal from mining companies in the Tete province in Mozambique where the government and mining companies in 2010 resettled 736 families to the areas Cateme and Mualadzi. Browse the photos and read the stories about the people that now live without adequate access to food, water and jobs.


Emília Fato, a 58 years old widow, has been resettled to the Mualadzi area in the Tete province with her two sons and grandson, because the area, Capanga at the Revuboe River, they used to live in was expropriated for coal mining. In the deserted area they only get one bucket of clean water a day, and they have trouble growing any crops for in the dry soil. The river used to give them water and fertile soil.

Josefina Torres, 37, and her family has been resettled to the Mualdazi area, because the area they used to live in was expropriated for coal mining. But the house they were given as compensation was too small. Her children, husband and a friend of the family have begun to make their own bricks to build an addition to the house.

The house that Josefina Torres and her family was given. It is too small to hold the family and lacks solidity.

Women washing clothes and bathing in the Revuboe River.

Lurdes Pedro spends her days at the market place of the Mualadzi resettlement , an empty site build to facilitate a local economy, which is not present. Together with a small group of women she tends to one stand offering a few tomatoes, dried fish, soap and few other commodities.

Before the resettlement to the Mualadzi area, Tito Fernando used to make bricks and sell them by the roadside, but the remote location of Mualadzi and an insufficient water supply makes it impossible for him to continue his trade. Instead, he and his wife takes turns in travelling to Moatize town to sell some crops at the market. But it is a long journey with little outcome.

The houses people was resettled to in Cateme, Tete Province, lacks solidity.

The farmer Delvino Xadreque, 37, was compensated with building materials for a barn, chickens and some feed by the Brazilian mining company Vale, when he, his four children, aunt and nephew were resettled, because the area they used to live in was expropriated for coal mining. But the chicken business has turned out with no profit. Before he had land, now he doesn’t even though he was promised compensation for that as well.

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