Blog: Moatize – the mining city and its legacies

We still see these bicycles distributed to the community residents by Vale. Photo by Hiroyuki Tsuji

I was watching the quarter-final World Cup game in a local bar in Moatize. It was Croatia – Brazil. I naturally expected that people (most of them were from Moatize) would support Brazil because of the cultural and historical connections that the two countries have. Still, I realised there were certain people, and not a small number, supporting Croatia, which seemed strange to me. After the match, I asked my friend about this, and he told me, “Those who work in Vale (some people still call Vale, the former owner of Moatize Mine. Now Vulcan owns it) feel sympathy with Brazil, but for the locals, Vale left ‘legacies’.”.

Historically, the Moatize Village (Nowadays Moatize City) was developed through underground coal mining and related railway development since the colonial period. After the independence in 1975, Carbomoc, a state coal company, took over the assets. After Carbomoc went bankrupt, the Brazilian Vale gained the mining concession of Moatize Mine in 2004. The resurgence of the coal industry, but this time much larger scale and open-pit mining, took Moatize and its citizens to an entirely new stage.

Moatize City is literary surrounded by Moatize Mine. Source: Tsuji and Otsuki (2022)

Similar to what happened to Tete City, following the arrival of the mining giants, many companies started to build their offices, workshops, and condominiums by negotiating lands directly with the locals.  Regarding the legacy, in the beginning, many locals were employed as the industry needed a temporary workforce to set up the mining-related infrastructures. However, many lost their jobs when the mining projects moved into operation. Today, there are indeed locals who work in the industry, but the majority stay out of the mining-related opportunities.

The Municipal Market of Moatize is always busy with shoppers. Photo by Hiroyuki Tsuji

What is particular about Moatize is that whether the person is in or out of the industry, those who reside in Moatize are inevitably impacted by air pollution due to the proximity to the Moatize Mine, one of the largest coal mines in the world. I lived in an uphill area of the city. After feeling the vibrations when they used explosives inside the mine, I often saw the black clouds in the sky. If you leave a piece of white paper outside for an hour, you can easily see the black dust on the surface.

A black cloud appears in the sky after hearing the explosion. Photo by Hiroyuki Tsuji

Vale officially left Moatize in April 2022 by selling all the assets to Indian Vulcan. However, Vale handed over not only the project itself but also the legacies around the project. Now Vulcan is at the forefront of the project, but Vale’s memories stay alive in Moatize.