What is a house without its traditions?

“I will not leave. They can kill me, but I will not leave this land,” says Zoria Macajo, leader of the Capanga village, situated near the
main water source of the region that is the Zambezi River (Daily news). The issue at hand is regarding the so-called “Benga” and
“Moatize” coal mines, owned and operated by the mining corporations Rio Tinto and Vale respectively in the Tete region of
Mozambique. The hilltop of Capanga is not famous only for its beauty (Daily News), but also for the vast riches of natural resources
lying beneath the earth (Human Right Watch: 28). As the Corporation Rio Tinto consulted with the Mozambican government and
representatives of the communities regarding the gaining of access the land and started the plans for resettlement of the village of
Capanga, the local community remained oblivious to this fact (Kambemba & Nhancale, 2012). They had not been part of the
resettlement discussions at all and were excluded. This thus led to an dispute that on one hand revolved around the relocating of the
villagers and Rio Tinto’s right to access the coal resources, and on the other hand it spurred a vast array of regulatory-, socio
economical-, political-, ecological- and ethical problems regarding the event. The effects of globalization in this incident and vice
versa will hereby be explored as we discuss some of the underlying forces that were in play here in the region of Tete (Kambemba
& Nhancale, 2012).

A Vocal Glocal Focal situation

If we now indulge in the situation at hand and explore the processes of our increasingly globalizing world, I will first demonstrate
three instances that clearly depict and solidify the effects of such processes. The first is regarding the Eriksen´s “Acceleration”,
which involves the exponential advancement of communication, production, digital development and overall increasing of speed of
our world (2007: 35). Rio Tinto, an Anglo-Australian corporation situated in London, is conducting mining operations in a South
African country, while selling the product internationally (Rio Tinto, 2009). This fact alone can constitute as a clear actuality of the
acceleration process. To be able to communicate with speed, strategize and conduct business with essential stakeholders at this level
of intricacy requires technology, information channels and cross-cultural understanding that far exceeds one specific actor’s
capabilities. This escalation of acceleration is a result of the development of our contemporary societies 37). Therefore to quickly
summarize, the accelerated world of today is “bringing disparate parts of the world closer to each other” while the world is moving
faster and faster (2007: 34). If we now continue with the second instance, it is regarding the resettling of the Capanga village to the
Mwaladzi area, 40 kilometers away. These villagers were to be moved from their homeland, to unfinished housings of Mwaladzi
(Human Rights Watch). The removal of people from their homes, bound in generations by tradition, experience migration as
unsettling (Eriksen, 2007: 93). The tribal removal and disintegrating of the local boundaries of the previous micro society and
pressures from outside forces shows the effects of Eriksen’s Movement process (2007: 92). Even though Eriksen discusses this in
the context of transnational movement of people it is becoming a more frequent occurrence, where the local or indigenous people
are resettled for various political or economic reasons (Human Rights Watch). Last but not least are the effects of the vulnerability
process, as Eriksen implies that “Globalization makes people more vulnerable because the conditions for their existence are no
longer locally produced and cannot be controlled.”(2007: 124). If we consider the Capanga village situation before and after the Rio
Tinto operations began, the farmers were self-sufficient and managing themselves (Human Rights Watch: 57). After the resettlement
plans and new land distribution, they now where forced to labor in order to receive basic utilities to survive. The acceleration and
movement processes of globalization increased the villager’s vulnerability to a state of dependency (Human Rights watch: 24).

Perspectives on the Corporation

Now that we have established a basic foundation regarding some of the underlying forces of globalization, we can now further
observe the different aspects of the corporation’s perspective when managing governmental and local interests. The first point of
inquiry is regarding the perspective of responsibility and moralization that is expressed by Rio Tinto’s Code of business conducts
(“The way we work”). In the document it is not explicitly stated what the effects of their social responsibility actions are or how an
employee should view these issues as they occur in the work environment (“The way we work”: 7). Although there is a section
dedicated to this subject, the document does not clarify Rio Tinto’s standpoint regarding the implications of their CSR, only the
legal aspects that protect the company. Viewing this together with Jensen’s sixth demoralizing process (2010), where the
technological and instrumental aspect of the workers actions result in a substitution of the moral responsibility, we can see that the
employees become more absent or distant from their aspect of moral responsibility (Jensen: 2010). By following this document the
workers are more focused on behaving according to the code of conduct, than of reflecting how this creates a distance from what
they are morally doing, namely resettling a whole village as in our case (SARW: 2012). To bind the behavior of the corporation to a
specific event and to show the importance of dialogue and co-operation with the locals we can actually view the whole case in a
bird’s eye view: The company entered the Capanga village, and from the communities view ”there was no consultation and no
agreement on the aspects of the relocation” (SARW 7). This situation created a stalemate in management between the corporation
and the community stakeholders, which is similar to the case of Shintech Inc. and their arrival to the so-called area of Cancer valley
described in Jensen & Sandström (2012: 476). Shintech entered the area with full legal rights but failed to consider the co-operation
with the local community as a crucial element of the process. This led to a precarious situation where the community rebelled
against the organization as Shintech was not “able to define, understand and relate to this complex activist community” (2012: 477).
This dilemma showed that even though Rio Tinto had the intentions of helping the villagers, the link of communication was not
completely secured, hence leading to the dilemma: community versus corporation (Human Rights Watch: 30). One last unit of
comparison is the corporation’s usage and influence of communication to the surrounding world: While being careful with the direct
spoken word, Rio Tinto created a centralized response to the criticizing reports against Rio Tinto’s activities (Rio Tinto: 2012).
Instead of holding an open dialogue, the company sent a statement in response to the SARW investigation, assuring that they were
following all of their corporate guidelines (Rio Tinto: 2012). This method of controlling and informing the stakeholders of the
situation and reassuring their political dominance, is described by Jensen & Sandström as a megaphone strategy (2013). Here it is a
one-way street, without an open forum for discussion (2013: 214).

Titans, Tourists and Vagabonds

All of these concepts and themes have been introduced for the same implied reason: to illustrate the complexity of this situation, to
demonstrate the multi-dimensioned and problematic circumstances in determining what global forces invoke what changes, and to
assert that blame is not easy to assign to any one actor. The case depicts a very relevant and present occurrence of our time: Multi-
national corporations, the Titans of the business world, move with incredible speed across our planetoid sphere, exploring and
exploiting natural resources and riches of lands, while dissolving local communities within these areas simultaneously (The way we
work: 2009). Regarding the issue of blame and responsibility, it can viewed as a reversed chain of causality: As the corporations are
supported by legislations implemented by governments, which in essence are supported by its people, it thus makes the citizens the
perpetrators of our drama. But these citizens, and especially the affluent consumer society outside of these exploited countries, are
not mentioned as responsible actors (Bauman: 80). These people whom move by their hearts desire, to explore sensations of mind
and soul by free will, the so-called tourists in Bauman’s definition, are very much one of the main actors of this dilemma (1998:
92). The opposite actors, the weak, vulnerable and locally bounded people of the village of Capanga are therefore depicted as the
vagabonds. They are spiritually uprooted, without the choice of freedom and in constant dedication to the service of the tourists
(1998: 92). This concoction thus creates a vagabondization of the third world (1998: 93), where local communities are pushed to
resettling, leaving their homes and forcing them to deconstruct their micro-societies and rebuild them at remote designated areas
(SARW: 2012). And after they have been resettled, as in our example, the villagers must then labor in order to receive basic
commodities, as they now slowly mutate into a dependent consumer society, from the self-sufficient community they once were
(Human Rights watch: 24). This finishing quote of Bauman encapsulates the essence of the criticism, present in this case: “Robbing
whole nations of their resources is called ‘promotion of free trade’; robbing whole families and communities of their livelihood is
called ‘downsizing’ or just ‘rationalization’. Neither of the two has been ever listed among criminal and punishable deeds.”(1998:
123).
References
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Bauman, Z. 1998. Globalization: The Human Consequences. Cambridge: Cambridge Polity
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Eriksen, T. 2007. Globalization: The Key Concepts. uppl 1. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Helin, S., Jensen, T., Sandström, J. (2013). “Like a Battalion of Tanks”: A Critical Analysis of Stakeholder Management,
Scandinavian Journal of Management 29 (3): 209-218
(2013), “What is a House without Food?” Mozambique’s Coal Mining Boom and Resettlements
Jensen, T. (2010): Beyond Good and Evil: The Adiaphoric Company. Journal of Business Ethics. Nr 96, p 425-434.
Jensen, T. and Sandström, J. (2011): Stakeholder Theory and Globalization: The Challenges of Power and Responsibility.
Kambemba, C. & Nhancale, C. (2012), “Coal versus communities: Exposing poor practices by Vale and Rio Tinto in Mozambique”,
pp. 1 – 7 Rio Tinto (2012), “Rio Tinto Response to SARW report on Tete” Rio Tinto (2009), “The way we work”, Our global code
of business conduct
Internet Sources:
Daily News, Mozambique’s coal wars (March 8, 2013), Reuters http://www.iol.co.za/dailynews/news/mozambique-s-coal-wars-
1.1482927#.VFLXHfmG8bR
[Accessed 2014-10-30]