The Cahora Bassa Dam,mozambique

The Cahora Bassa Dam is located in Mozambique. It is one of the three major dams on the Zambezi river system, the others being the Kariba and the Itezhi-Tezhi, the latter on the Kafue River, a tributary of the Zambezi. The dam was finished in December 1974 after much political debate.
The dam, located about 80 miles (125 km) northwest of Tete, is 560 feet (171 m) high and 994 feet (303 m) wide at the crest. It has a volume of 667,000,000 cubic yards (510,000,000 cubic m).
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this dam has utterly destroyed the entire ancient aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems in and around the Zambezi River.

But to blame all of it on the Portuguese would be disingenuous because when the colony of mozambique was turned over to Frelimo "freedomfighters" the oppression of the local populations and the raping of the river did not end, the dam which had been built for the express purpose of providing electricity to South Africa for profit maintained the exact same purpose, which was a trend that could be observed in nearly all post colonial states in africa, the new regimes were not actually different, the politicians just looked different

in truth the local native elites during colonial rule were essentially unchanged, and their self indulgent policies remained the same, the only difference being that where some colonial powers at least had to bare in mind their popularity at home during a time when anti colonial sentiment was high (partially for the more visible atrocities in papers and magazines and early tv, partly because of high taxes to fund colonial infrastructure and governance) they tended to ban excesses (not the portuguese however, they remained under an autocratic regime themselves at the time) the new governments whether they had won or been granted independence and power over the former colonies tended to have no issues with using violence as a political tool.


the river is now a shadow of it's former self, it's watervolume is a fraction of what it was and it's branches have withered, it's fauna has dissapeared and it's alluvial processes have ceased, no longer is silt being deposited on it's shoreline, and any chance for life to addapt is disturbed by the unpredictable releases of massive amounts of water from the reservoir, powerwashing the riverbed and shoreline and anything that lives or grows there

waterbirds are gone, ducks and geese that used to eat small fish, waterlilly bulbs and the leftover produce from aluvial agriculture have dissapeared, without food or shelter there is little use in stopping there now,

the dried up tributaries have become salinated,

the reservoir furthermore poses a direct risk to the entire area around it, even "controlled" releases during heavy rain have a tendency to wipe out anything that is to close to the former river and if the dam ever breaks hundreds of thousands may well die

the reservoir is also catching all the silt and debris coming downstream that had not been caught by the Karriba and other upstream reservoirs which means that it may well end up getting clogged up.

sadly there is no way to repair the river without a cost that not even western countries could bare to spend, the riverine ecosystem is dead, the only chance is for the damm to be altered significantly and in fact all the upstream dams to be or for all of them to be removed outright
but this is not all, cause asside from that the sediment from each reservoir must be redistributed actively with trucks and boats over the rivers run, gravel and rocks wil have to be deposited to allow for egg laying and plant roots to sprout, the native aquatic species can not be brought back but there is hope to bring in similar species from other rivers around


if all of this is not possible all that can be done is to try and build estuaries and place new hardier invasives in the river, such as the hardy arapaima, smaller reservoir fish and crayfish, this is not adviced due to the simple fact that bringing in invasives tends to do more harm than good but for a river that is essentially devoid of allmost all it's pre dam life and without any intentions to even alter the dam to partially restore the conditions that would make a limited degree of natural native life possible stillwater freshwater fish that can breath air may be the only real way to deal with it