“The monster hare of Boer Bridge: Maputo-KaTembe”

Paulo Vilanculo "

The Maputo-KaTembe Bridge, with its monumental nature and celebrated as a work of modernity, has become a symbol of social and economic exclusion. Clearly, since its inauguration in 2018, the bridge has failed to boost the local economy or improve the lives of the region's historic inhabitants. The project thus reveals itself to be a "cat sold in a poke," adorned with promises of progress, but concretely exclusionary and detrimental to the dignity of the natives. It has displaced communities, extinguished traditional ways of life, such as mapapaia, the artisanal river crossing, and created economic barriers with the imposition of more expensive road transport and unfair tolls, which restrict access to the city and essential services. Why did the government decide to invest so many millions of dollars in a monumental bridge, as opposed to a simple rehabilitation of the colonial national road from Rovuma to Maputo, which could perhaps have a much more direct and far-reaching economic impact? Why did the Mozambican government opt for a high debt burden with dubious returns? Does the bridge serve the population or merely the interests of a small group of government officials and businesspeople tied to power?

Heralded as a symbol of modernity and progress, the Maputo-KaTembe Bridge opened in 2018 with promises of integrating the southern capital, promoting investment, generating jobs, and revitalizing the lives of the KaTembe region's inhabitants. A few years later, the region's natives now face displacement, real estate speculation, social exclusion, and a lack of access to the benefits they were promised. Instead of integrating the natives, the project opened the door to intense real estate speculation, where land traditionally occupied by peasant families was subject to expropriation, often without fair compensation.

During construction, a traditional artisanal economy was forced to disappear before the bridge was built. Hundreds of young people and families survived on small artisanal boats, the famous "mapapaia," which made daily crossings, transporting people, goods, and fish between the city of Maputo and KaTembe. With the loss of territorial and cultural identity, the riverside way of life, of artisanal fishing, river crossings, and local markets, was dismantled with the construction of the bridge, leaving no alternative, no integration, and replaced by a promise of modernity that fails to connect with local social realities.

The "hare monster"illustrates the pattern of many "national projects" of monumental works, financed by foreign debt, planned without community consultation, and executed in favor of political and corporate interests. In this context, for the natives, the bridge is a "monster sold as a hare" that, instead of integration, led to exclusion; instead of progress, they were left with promises. Local residents were not involved in any decision-making process regarding the bridge's construction or the installation of tolls, which violates basic principles of social justice and inclusive development. What we witnessed was the imposition of a "vertical development" model, exclusionary and rootless, which sacrificed traditional economies and community identities in the name of a monumental project that favors, above all, political and corporate elites and external interests. A governance model oriented toward vested interests, disconnected from national priorities, a field of elitist exploitation rather than a home for a sovereign people.

The bridge was built through loans, with millions of dollars of Chinese financing, without public opinion as the link to drive "endogenous development." This led to a debt policy that serves creditors, not peasants, and whose repayment is guaranteed at the expense of the people. This erodes and compromises the budget for more urgent sectors such as health, education, and the rehabilitation of national roads. In other words, the people will pay a debt for a project they didn't request, from which they don't benefit, and which excludes them. The reference to the "Boer Bridge" or "white people's bridge" reflects a development model designed to benefit elites and investors, to the detriment of the peasants and fishermen native to KaTembe. By comparing the bridge to Boer colonial logic, the argument denounces an internal neocolonialism, where the State and foreign capital join forces to reconfigure the territory based on profit, silencing the legitimate heirs of the land, a symbolic and physical occupation by elites who act as new internal colonists, oblivious to the local community dynamics in the native territory. 

Again, tolls on the Bridge were implementedlack of social sensitivity, which also represents further exclusion in a bridge project already marked by inequality that deeply harms the natives economically. The native inhabitants, dispossessed of their traditional means of survival, are now forced to pay to travel within their own territory. This constitutes a form of institutionalized economic violence, where those who lost continue to lose. Only those with reasonable financial means can live in KaTembe and travel regularly. The toll increases the cost of transporting goods and people between peasants, fishermen, and local traders, resulting in reduced profit margins on the sale of agricultural and fishing products; reduced access to urban markets; and economic isolation for small producers. In addition to the loss of territory, the natives continue to lack access to basic infrastructure such as decent hospitals, secondary schools, and reliable public transportation. Most public services are still concentrated in Maputo. With the bridge and tolls, students, workers, and patients who depend on the daily crossing are financially penalized.

A colossal, visible work, praised at international conferences, and highly exploitable in election campaigns and "progress" reports. The bridge represents a symbol of monumental exclusion; it was conceived not as a social solution but as a political trophy. All of this demonstrates that the bridge was not built for the people, but rather for the sake of international propaganda, power contracts, and profits. The bridge and toll gate bring vehicles, tourists, and businessmen's mansions, but they do not bring human and social development to the natives who have lived there for generations. They do not represent an effective contribution to either the national economy or the local economy of peasants and fishermen; they have only contributed to the gentrification of the territory. The bridge and toll gate are unfair obstacles in a project that should enable integration and prosperity, but which has become an instrument of exclusion, exploitation, and marginalization of the true natives of the land. In this sense, it is a physical structure of concrete and iron, but also a metaphor for a country where construction is for display, not for service.

2025/12/3