NO MONEY, NO POWER
British colonial authorities evicted more than 57,000 Gwembe Tonga people in the 1950s to make way for
the Kariba Reservoir, one of the world’s largest. Eight villagers were shot and at least 32 wounded by
police during the poorly conceived and trauma-ridden effort to clear the Tonga from their lands.
Half a century after the dam was built, the Tonga remain mired in extreme poverty. Today, their remote
resettlement sites are marred by low and erratic rainfall, poor soils and tsetse fly infestations. Tonga
organizations are now pushing the Zimbabwean and Zambian governments and the World Bank to provide
reparations for decades of suffering.
The Kariba Dam, largely funded by the World Bank, was built mainly to provide electricity to copper mines
in present-day Zambia, and the growing industrial belt around the Zimbabwean capital, Harare. By contrast
the Gwembe Tonga, whose ancestors have been living along the Zambezi for at least several thousand years,
receive neither electricity from the dam’s huge hydropower plants nor water from the massive reservoir.
Text: Patrick McKully
Photography: Karin Retief
