Criação, paralisação e recriação do GPZ: uma abordagem da sua implantação no Vale do Zambeze, 1970 à actualidade

Abstract

The present dissertation has as its object of study, the analysis of the process of implantation of the GPZ in the Zambezi Valley, from 1970 to the present. In 1970, the colonial government created the Zambezi Region Development Plan Office (GPZ). Theoretically, this Cabinet should promote, stimulate and guide the economic and social development of the Zambezi region. In this context, its immediate tasks were: to ensure the supervision of the construction works of the Cahora Bassa hydroelectric dam and to continue the activities previously assigned to MFPZ and GTZ, in terms of studies and planning with a view to achieving this purpose. The Cahora Bassa hydroelectric dam would be the main energy project through which the development of the entire Zambezi region in Mozambican territory would be catalyzed. In practice, the form of action on the ground has distanced itself from its purposes. Its activity was conditioned by the political-military context of the country, during the first phase of implantation in the Zambezi Valley (1970-1975), above all, in the context of population reorganization. The Cabinet was used as an instrument of the colonial government to serve its interests in the Zambezi region, in two ways; first, to ensure the successful completion of the Cahora Bassa enterprise and second, to organize the populations in villages in order to hinder the actions of the nationalist movement. The results of this activity are illustrative. More than half of the villages built by the GPZ were hundreds of kilometers from the filling perimeter of the Cahora Bassa reservoir and only about % of the resettled population lived in this area. The repercussions of the coup that took place in Portugal, in April 1974, and the independence of Mozambique changed the political scenario, causing the consequent paralysis of the institution.

In the post-independence period there were attempts to implement some of the projects that were under the GPZ's control, but these attempts were not successful due to the destabilization war that devastated the country for about 16 years. With the end of the war and the relaunch of the Zambezi Valley development plan, in 1995, the GPZ was recreated. The political and economic objectives changed, but the structure and direction of the plan remained. After its re-creation, the implantation process on the ground only started in 2001, before the Cabinet operated only in the country's capital. Operating in the field for about two years, the institution is currently located in places considered strategic for the development of the Valley, and from there, it gradually seeks to establish itself effectively throughout the Zambezi Valley(TRADUÇÃO NOSSA)