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This thesis explores the dynamics and everyday practices of resistance in response to a large-scale coal mining project in Mozambiqueʼs Moatize District. The district underwent a significant territorial transformation after the Mozambican government granted the first coal mining concession to the Brazilian multinational mining company Vale in 2007. This concession encompassed vast areas of land traditionally used by local communities, who were subsequently displaced to make way for coal mining.

The thesis is based on twelve months of anthropological fieldwork conducted in Moatize District. In this area, the mining company’s operations significantly affected local residents’ daily lives and means of subsistence. Most interlocutors were subsistence farmers and brickmakers who had been resettled by Vale in the 25 de Setembro neighbourhood within the Municipality of Moatize, as well as in the localities of Benga, Cateme and Mualádzi. The research also focused on traditional chiefs, traditional healers, state officials, informal traders, members of civil society organisations, and former CARBOMOC and CCM employees.

Drawing on James Scott’s theoretical framework of everyday resistance, this thesis demonstrates how residents of Moatize adopted discreet, infrapolitical tactics to resist Vale’s mining practices and repression by state authorities. Using the limited resources at their disposal, they confronted a powerful corporation backed by the state. To expose the harmful effects of coal mining, residents shared images of mine explosions near their homes on social media, while protecting the identity of those who captured them. They also accessed forested areas on Vale’s land to gather resources essential for their livelihoods. In some cases, acts of resistance included invoking ancestral spirits through traditional healers to halt the tractors extracting coal from the mines. Overall, the thesis demonstrates that, despite seemingly powerless, the residents of Moatize asserted their agency by resisting the mining practices of the powerful multinational company Vale, which was backed by the central state.