Chronicle EditorMAPUTO. — Sasol has been milking cash from its gas project in Mozambique with little benefit to that country or the people living close by, writes Sizwe Sama Yende. In Mangungumete village, there is a communal borehole where women and children take turns pumping it to fill up their water containers and carry them home on their heads.
A few steps from the borehole stands a towering tree. Its shade provides a cool place for those villagers from the town of Maxixe, in the coastal province of Inhambane, who come to this spot whenever they are summoned from their straw huts to thrash out grave issues. Laura Mahanyele (48) vividly remembers the time, about 17 years ago, when a delegation from South African multinational Sasol visited the community to talk about extracting natural gas from their land.
The meeting took place under the gigantic tree. Hopes were high, Mahanyele said, when the petrochemical company’s emissaries explained how the $1.2 billion (R17 billion) investment would uplift the subsistence farming community. The villagers’ excitement was understandable as they were in dire need of jobs.
Little did they know that their government, fresh from a calamitous civil war, had signed a raw deal. “The delegation was asking for permission to extract gas. The people could not say much because they knew that Sasol had already consulted people in high places before coming to us,” Mahanyele said. Where are the jobs? The jobs promised that day are today nowhere to be seen, while Sasol draws the fossil fuel and ferries it all the way to its operations.
Sasol has constructed schools and clinics, but that is too little, the villagers say. The groundswell of dissatisfaction against Sasol triggered a one-off mass protest in 2013, but locals will only tell you that it was like pouring water on a duck’s back. Since then, the community, Sasol and government have held one meeting, but no solution has been found.
Meanwhile, the villagers’ problems are piling up and threatening their agrarian livelihoods and food security. They say their soil is becoming sterile and their water comes out of boreholes blended with oil.
“The trees are no longer green the way they used to be,” said Mahanyele, who has been living in Mangungumete since 1986.
“The seeds are no longer growing and the water is oil … These problems started after the gas project,” she said. She added that the villagers desperately needed water. The villagers say their soil is becoming sterile and their water comes out of boreholes blended with oil. (Photo: Sizwe Sama Yende, City Press). — Fin24.
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