JA4change

Karpowership, a highly controversial company, is planning to develop power-generation operations off the coast of Maputo. Karpowerships will be only a few kilometres from the shore, and will have a detrimental impact on the city’s people with heavy air pollution and safety risks. Even worse, much of this energy will not even go to Mozambicans, but to South Africa.

The company is a subsidiary of Turkish company Karadeniz, which is embroiled in scandals in several countries, and has been exposed for major corruption, threatening civil society and submitting faulty impact assessments.

Karpowerships are offshore vessels, floating power plants that use gas to produce power. Karpowership has partnered up with EDM (Electricidade de Mozambique), and much of the power generated from the ship in Maputo will go to South Africa, most likely Eskom, the state power electricity provider, which is currently facing a massive corruption disaster and crisis, with rolling blackouts for South Africans. It is also unclear where this gas will be supplied from.

The Constitution of Mozambique recognises that all citizens have the right to a healthy and balanced environment under Article 90, and establishes an obligation on the Government to protect the environment and the human quality of life. The Constitution also obliges the Government, within the framework of the right to a healthy and balanced environment, to ensure a rational use of resources safeguarding the environment capacity to regenerate, ecological stability and rights of the future generations.

The Karpowership will be terrible for the environment of Mozambique, which is already suffering because of the extractive and fossil fuels industries around the country. It runs on the massively-toxic heavy fuel oil (HFO), which is the dirtiest fuel left behind from the process of refining crude oil. HFO is not meant to be used near urban areas, and has been banned by the United Nations because of the high amount of toxic fumes of sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxide and other heavy metals, as well as cancer-causing chemicals it emits into the atmosphere. This will be emitted into the air that is directly breathed by the populations of Maputo and Matola. The Karpowership will also be dumping high amounts of hot water into the Maputo Bay, raising the temperatures to a point that drives away fish and sealife, in turn lowering catches for fishermen and destroying wildlife marine reserves like Inhaca Island which brings international tourists and scientists to Mozambique. Karpowership is already supplying electricity to Mozambique from a ship in Nacala, which has been running on HFO since they began operating in 2018, and will likely do so for the rest of the 10 year period.

A number of civil society organisations in Mozambique are challenging Karpowership’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for the project. Karpowership opened a period for public consultation in November 2022, when they presented an EIA that was inadequate and with many deficiencies. They claimed, incorrectly, that their project was part of Category A activities which made its EIA requirements more lenient and with less procedures, when in fact, the proposed activity involved stockage and transformation of fossil fuels that make it are part of a Category A+, which in turn requires their EIA to be submitted for an independent peer review. As a Category A+ project, it would be subjected to a stricter control by the authorities as well as by the public.

Karpowership has been trying to operate in neighbouring South Africa for years but has been facing resistance from civil society, while also flouting regulations. Perhaps now, realising that South Africa might be too difficult, they have decided to try Mozambique, where regulations are more soft and institutions are not as independent as in South Africa.

South African civil society stood up to oppose the first round of EIAs. On 31 March 2021, organisation groundWork made a submission to Triplo4, the consultant for Karpowership SA. The submission detailed all the issues with the project, and shared them with the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) and the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR), which included that:

Contrary to the government’s statements, the cost of Karpowerships is not the cheapest, and the vessels are actually meant for short-term supply, while the 20-year contract will create a lock-in leading to higher tariffs and less affordable and accessible energy

The EIA Scoping and Environmental Feasibility did not refer properly to a Climate Change Impact Assessment, as required by South African and also by Mozambique EIA regulations. They did not consider basic information such as emissions from gas production, gathering, processing, initial transport, and HFO liquefication. These omissions are a major problem, considering that they would show how gas will have an equivalent, or even worse, impact on the climate as coal.

They also used figures from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report from 2007, when the most recent one at the time gave updated figures showing that methane had between 28-36 times the global warming impact of C02 over a 100-year period. The 2007 report says that this number is much lower, at 21. Furthermore, the mitigation measures for the impacts of GHG emissions from the ships are entirely undeveloped and inadequate

Regarding air quality, Karpowerships are not supposed to be near urban areas, but the location of these vessels so close to the coastline mean that coastal communities would be exposed to the pollution from the vessels anytime the onshore wind is blowing.

The atmospheric impact report section of the EIA was highly flawed – it does not measure toxic emissions from natural gas combustion and natural gas leaks. It also does not consider the serious risk of an explosion which will be totally disastrous for the air and people living nearby.

Half of the jobs of the project will be short-term construction while the long term positions are skilled job that will likely be filled by Turkish crew. Several communities, including different types of fishing communities may be harmed and their livelihoods affected, but the EIA does not consider this.

Public participation was totally inadequate – neither fishing communities for tribal communities were recognised and important persons or even notified about the proposed development and consultation. Many communities who were notified did not receive sufficient information, or could not afford technology to access this information online. In the case of Mozambique, the Prosecuting Authority has the mandate to defend and protect collective and environmental interest and surprisingly did not participate in the consultation.

Furthermore, in South Africa, one of the reasons the government had put out a bid was because of the need for ‘emergency energy’, and planned to sign a 20 -year contract with Karpowership SA. However, groundWork says that this so-called emergency was due to poor decision-making skewed in favour of fossil fuel development, and that “dig a yet deeper hole and put a just transition to a low carbon economy further out of reach.” They added that “Signing a 20-year contract to procure power from Karpowerships is effectively locking in gas for that time, crowding out space for ever-cheaper and more reliable clean energy, and exacerbating the climate crisis”.

These, and other issues in the comments from civil society led to the DFFE refusing Karpowerships SA’s environmental authorisation.. After they amended their EIA based on the government’s refusal, it still was not good enough. In December 2022, more comments were submitted by groundWork, the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA) and the Green Connection supported by legal organisations Centre for Environmental Rights, Biodiversity Law Centre and Natural Justice.

Karpowership SA’s second EIA again failed on all three sites and in 2023, the DFFE suspended a secondary EIA for yet another powership at the port of Ngqura. .

While all of this is going on, a simultaneous process was being undertaken to stop the Karpowership license from another angle. The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) launched a legal challenge to review South Africa’s National Energy Regulator (NERSA)’s decision to grant Karpowership SA three Independent Power Producer (IPP) generation licences. NERSA had awarded these licenses to Karpowership SA even though the projects had not get been given environmental authorisation by the DFFE, there were no port authority permits or gas pipeline permits, and Karpowership SA had not yet reached financial close despite this being a condition of the Department of Minerals and Resources’ award of Karpowership SA as the preferred bidder in its emergency procurement. This process is still ongoing.

At the end of 2022, CER published a report about the financiers of Karpower – Standard Chartered (United Kingdom), Investec Group (South Africa), Isbank (Turkey) and MCB Group (Mauritius) – who provided Karpowership with a US$ 140 million loan. Following this report, Karpowership tried to intimidate activists by sending them a lawyer’s letter, claiming they had made ‘defamatory statements’, but their claims were unfounded.

As shown above, South Africa is perfect example of Karpowership’s corruption and how they tried to undermine the processes of a country. In an interview in February with Andre de Ruyter, the former CEO of Eskom, he said Karpower had “an extensive legacy of alleged corruption, breaches of contract and abuse”, and that “There is absolutely no justification for concluding a 20-year agreement with a company that can raise the anchor, literally, and sail away with the asset the country has paid for.” Eskom is currently in a major crisis, with the government calling the ‘loadshedding’ a state of disaster.

Now, in Mozambique, The Scoping and Environmental Feasibility Report did not consider the impacts on marine ecology, like the waste discharge and leakage, and dismissed the impact that the vessel will have on the marine environment, as well as the risk of a gas spill. Sao Sebastiao estuary, where the Karpowership will be located, is also surrounded by mangroves. Mangroves have an exceptional ability to capture carbon and serve an additional role in mitigating severe storms, and serve as a habitat for fish and crustaceans. Karpowership and Electricidade de Moçambique (EDM) claimed that the impacts on mangroves will be temporary and due to power transport lines. The EIA regulations in Mozambique do not distinguish between temporary and non-temporary impacts on mangroves and require that all activities with impacts on mangroves to A+ category which requires an independent peer review.

The Scoping and Environmental Feasibility Report also has gaps regarding the qualitative noise impact on megafauna, including the dolphin and mangrove habitats, important birds and communities living around the area and cumulative impacts as the area is closest to a coal terminal port, and many other industries, including a cement factory. In South Africa DFFE’s refusal bore socio-economic and environmental considerations including the EIA’s gaps on qualitative noise impact assessment.

Mozambique has no regulations or standards on noise quality, and this fact makes Mozambique favourable to opportunistic investors, as environmental licence does not take into consideration noise impacts. Although the EIA regulations imposed an assessment of cumulative impacts and air and water quality standards, the absence of an environmental load capacity allowed more and more projects without any consideration of the impacts on the environment and quality of life as a whole. Karpower completely ignored the impacts of one more activity in an environment already under pressure.

Bit this is not the first time that Karpowership parent company, Karadeniz Holdings, which is registered in tax-haven Malta, is embroiled in major corruption controversy. In Lebanon, in 2021, the state’s financial prosecutor ordered two Karpowerships to be impounded following slapping it with a $25 million fine for corruption, after which Karpowership punished the government by shutting down energy supply to the country, leading to power blackouts.

In Mozambique the agreement signed between Karpower and EDM and the information about the financiers are not available to the public. financiers.

In Brazil, in 2022, the courts demanded a suspension of the installation and operations of the four Karpowership plants, due to this failure to submit an EIA, and the damage it would cause to the sensitive ecological Sepetida Bay and fishing communities, as well as fined the company for not meeting deadlines.

Karpowership has behaved badly in so many other countries, and with the lax regulations in Mozambique, it will be even easier for them to create irreversible implications here, for the environment, climate and health of people. Karpowership must be stopped before they can start with this destruction!

Digital surveillance and cyber attacks are part of the modern day reality for civil society, and one that most of us in the south do not have resources or skills to manage adequately. Even though JA staff had benefitted from some basic training and we made several decisions in order to improve security and decrease virus attacks (such as changing to linux based operating system more than 15 years ago), the cyber world moves at a fast pace, making training, software and systems outdated quickly.

This weakness was recently exposed at JA in early January when we were hacked. Our web page was taken over and passwords changed, so we lost access to it. A ransom was demanded under the threat of deleting all the information. We first wondered if it was just a scam or bluff, but even if not, we do not entertain the option of ransom and do not reply or even attempt interacting with such threats. So we started the process of regaining access to our page. Unfortunately, while we were focused on recovering our web page, we hadn’t realize that the administrator’s laptop and JA’s main backup drive had also been hacked, only realizing this when the laptop stopped working and the backup drive deleted. This attack exceeded previous hacks or virus attacks, and exposed the effect of the smaller and regular cyber attacks in decreasing our alertness and urgency around the issue.

Luckily, we had a recent recovery drive for the laptop and we had received training on recovering deleted drives in the past. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to even get our linux based systems to identify the backup hard drive. After trying to recover the backup hard drive with other systems we gave up and had to take our backup drive to a specialist company that does data recovery at a high cost.

It took 3 weeks before we received the first batch of recovered data (almost 4TB), but the remaining data has been more complicated and we are still waiting for it, as well as the technical report from the company. However, we have been warned that the second batch of data has a lot of damaged files and is not organized in our original file system, it consists of thousands of files in dated folders that we will need to go through and reorganize.

The IT specialist also gave us some helpful information based on his findings. There was a common virus in the startup files and a concerning backdoor, similar to a well known old windows-based backdoor called “Banito”, but one that works on Linux systems. We also learnt that hackers had gained access to our accounts without needing to use passwords through the use of something called ‘session tokens’, that help you log in and out of your accounts without having to write the password. These tokens are stored on your computer cache and can be easily hacked through a redline stealer malware kit, in our case through a .scr screen saver file.

There were a few other odd/concerning threats found that were more complicated to understand, especially for us with our low IT IQ. Besides, the focus of the IT specialist was data recovery, they had not done a thorough analysis. Unfortunately, the cost to do a forensic analysis was too high and the most important part to analyse would be the hacked laptop, but by then we had already reformatted the laptop (with cycles of full hard drive rewrite and delete), and we could not hand it over for a forensic analysis due to it being in urgent use by the administrator.

Amidst such eventful weeks – with Cyclone Freddy, the flooding, the death of Mozambican rapper Azagaia and then the police violence at the march to honor him – we ended up delaying the publication of this post. Coincidentally, before we were about to post this, we found out that our Say No to Gas campaign site was also attacked by hackers, but given that the site was developed last year using more up to date software, and the developer was still doing the maintenance, he managed to block the attack.

We fear that these types of events may become more regular both from criminals and our governments, that have drastically increased investments in digital surveillance. Some countries, like Israel, have expanded their military oppression to digital surveillance and this has become a major business, with programs like Pegasus being exported to other regions such as Africa. This has contributed to African governments’ increased control and monitoring of civil society and oppression of critical voices. Digital surveillance has become central to these plans. Countries like Rwanda have shown the path forward for other African countries on how oppressive governments can control and suppress dissent, while not only getting a pat on the back from developed northern countries, but even turning their military and security sector into an economically productive sector servicing the northern countries dirty work. Digital surveillance and cyber attacks have become central to this model of oppression and human rights violations.

Never has the shutdown of democracy in Mozambique been more evident than last March 18^th, particularly in the cities of Maputo, Beira, Nampula, and Xai-Xai. It is a reality that we urgently need to resist and fight against. Since 2008 freedom of expression, demonstration, and association have been repressed, but it was in 2020 that the government and its international partners used Covid19 as an almost plausible pretext to restrict citizens’ freedoms, with the announcement of a set of measures that gave rise to restrictions on the mobility of people and goods, restrictions on public and private meetings, and limitations of the right to protest – a right that is constitutionally conferred to us through Article 51 of the Constitution of the Republic.

The last few years have been marked with threats against freedom of speech and association. Activists, journalists and community leaders that stand up against inequality, government abuse or megaprojects have been intimidated, persecuted and some are missing until this day¹.

Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world, while at the same time owning vast natural resources. Coal, gas and oil have been exploited by transnationals, bringing riches to a few economic and political elites. Rural and peasant communities have been displaced, a violent insurgency has been ravaging the North of the country, and the government is focusing on a military strategy to deal with it. People from Cabo Delgado are being sexually assaulted, threatened and murdered by both insurgents and government military forces. On top of this, the government has been openly attacking civil society organisations accusing them of being ‘anti-government’ or ‘anti-development’, and drafting new laws aiming to restrict the freedom of association².

On the 18^th of March 2023, the Mozambican people – mostly youth – with or without party or institutional affiliation, people linked to civil society organizations or not, decided to march to celebrate the life and work of our musician and social activist, Edson da Luz, better known as Azagaia, who had passed away nine days earlier, on the 9^th of March of 2023. The official announcement from his family said he died of an epilepsy attack, a disease he had long suffered from. Azagaia was a Mozambican rapper that spoke and sang boldly about what is going on in our country, sang about putting the people in power, and was fiercely attacked and intimidated by the regime in many occasions. He was boycotted by the main public media channels, but still became the hero and the voice of thousands of disempowered youth who desired change.

Saturday, the 18th of March, is a date that will go down in our country’s history as a day when our police forces, armed with armored cars, dogs, and tear gas weapons, used unprecedented police brutality to prevent a peaceful march. What we witnessed in the streets of Maputo revolted all of us.

All legal procedures were followed to ensure that the march in honor of Azagaia’s life and his legacy would run smoothly. According to Mozambican law, marches do not need authorization, but a letter must be submitted to the relevant authorities to inform them. This was done, and most of the municipalities gave the green light to the marches, with a well-defined itinerary. In Maputo, the starting point would be the Eduardo Mondlane statue, and we would march to Independence square, next to the Samora Machel statue – two symbols of popular power and freedom in our country.

Early that morning, messages started circulating noting the number of armored cars and heavily armed police agents positioned at various points around the city. We thought that maybe it was to ensure our safety. Naive and innocent thinking, typical of those who believe that one can still live in a democracy in Mozambique.

Dozens of police vehicles and agents were surrounding the statue of Eduardo Mondlane, the place where the march would start, and preventing groups of young people from getting there. According to ‘superior orders’, we were not allowed to gather in groups, even though we had permission to gather and march together. Suddenly, and without any warning, the police started firing tear gas everywhere. We all started running, but the desire to exercise our right to march and to pay tribute to Azagaia was strong. We needed to have this last tribute to one of the few voices, if not the only one in recent times, that represented us, that sang our pains, anguishes and revolts without fear of reprisals. The desire to march made us hide in street corners near the square, in smaller groups with our T-shirts stamped with the face of our young hero of the people, who fought for our freedom only armed with pen and paper. Our fists remained up in the air, but our screams for “people in power” were quickly swallowed up by the aggression that raged against us all.

All over the world tear gas has been used as a control mechanism and to disperse protests, but even so, its use is regulated and it cannot be thrown directly at people. However, on March 18^th, the PRM (Police of the Republic of Mozambique) repeatedly fired tear gas bullets directly at the participants. A member of JA! team was grazed in the back as he dodged a gas capsule that was aimed directly at his body, a young woman next to us was hit in both ankles. There was also the case of young Inocêncio who lost his left eye after being hit by one of these bullets – that supposedly do not kill. One of the capsules set a car on fire. One of the organizers of the march in Nampula said he was tortured for hours, and videos of young people being beaten up and tortured by the police as they were being detained around Maputo were circulating. At the Madgermanes Park, a place in the city that symbolizes the struggle of former workers from the defunct German Democratic Republic (GDR) who have been protesting for their rights for more than 30 years. Several young people gathered there singing Azagaia’s song that gave the march its name: “People in Power”. The young people simply crowded around chanting some of their idol Azagaia’s greatest hits peacefully, but once again the police attacks came and this time with even more brutality. A smoke screen of tear gas descended on the park and everyone fled towards Independence Square. Not even the young people who took refuge inside the Maputo Cathedral escaped the fury of the PRM agents.

The street is the only place we can go to protest when our power is taken away from us and our rights are violated, and the police responds by poisoning the air?

In addition to the brutality and violence of the police, counterintelligence and surveillance actions were carried out by some non-uniformed officers. They took pictures of people who were on the march, registered license plates and even followed some people to their homes, in a real action of intimidation that we can no longer tolerate.

Azagaia said it well in his song A Marcha (The March):

“Now that we’re together,

I’ll tell you a secret

They can’t handle us

They’re the ones afraid now

And in our just cause

they can’t infiltrate…”

In the midst of all this, we are even more surprised by the PRM press release, where they tried – in a machiavellian way – to justify their brutal action against defenseless citizens in a peaceful demonstration. The PRM claimed to have used proportionality of force against ‘protesters who were throwing blunt objects’, in an ‘attempted coup’. A complete absurdity, a gross lie, and an insult to those who were there on the day. The countless images and reports of the events prove over and over again that the PRM acted outside the law and with tremendous brutality. It is a criminal and condemnable stance at all levels, both from the agents who carried out the repressive actions in the streets of our country, and above all from the superiors who gave the orders, who should be tried and convicted.

To the police and UIR officers (Rapid Intervention Unit) who repressed and massacred citizens on the 18th – no superior order justifies your actions, because the Constitution of the Republic enshrines the right to resist illegal orders. Do your part and march also for your right to resist, for your obligation to protect the people.

As to the international community, the big donors and development partners, the supposed benchmarks of human rights and democracy, they will mumble in the corridors and look away, because it is not convenient to criticize the government on which they depend to continue exploiting our gas, heavy sands, coal or rubies.

It is important that we stand together, strong and firm in the cause of the people. This will be the real tribute to Azagaia, the man who fought to decolonize our minds.

We will continue to march and sing for freedom and justice! We need to unite and stop the repression and the attacks on Mozambicans who believe in a better country! People in power!

Povo no Poder!

1https://ja4change.org/2021/09/07/where-is-ibrahimo/

2https://www.civicus.org/index.php/media-resources/news/interviews/6268-mozambique-the-new-ngo-law-will-be-the-death-of-the-civic-movement