The first general election since 1960
Congo’s abandoned miners
The Democratic Republic of Congo will hold its first general election since 1960 at the end of this month, a sign that peace may be returning after civil and regional wars that killed three million people between 1997 and 2003. The European Union’s willingness to send troops to oversee the election is an indication of the value the world sets on the DRC’s mineral resources, which it previously looted.
By Colette Braeckman
An angry crowd of men and children surrounds each new delegation as it arrives at the Ruashi mine in the southeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The miners are thin and their faces white with dust, but their voices are strong as they sing: “This land belonged to our ancestors, its copper belongs to us”.
Mwambe Kataki, Remy Ilunga and Pierre Kalume used to work for the powerful Gecamines mining company; now they dig for themselves and speak for all the miners when they insist that they will not be moved. They want to keep out the big companies which, after years of war, are returning to Katanga (Shaba) encouraged by the privatisation programme of Joseph Kabila’s government.
It is the same further north in Kivu, where former workers from the Kamituga mine are threatening to prevent the Canadian company Banro from restarting production, and in Ituri, where trouble has flared at the Kilo Moto mine. The big companies are taking on only a few skilled workers and their investments are protected by new conditions absolving them from any social obligations. The state lacks the resources to retrain those made redundant.
At Ruashi, just outside Lubumbashi, the South African company Ruashi Mining has yet to rebuild; there are no guards or barbed wire. The opencast mine still resembles the surface of the moon, riddled with holes and craters. Children worm their way into tunnels hacked out by men armed only with pickaxes. Some dig, others separate out the ore and bag it. Nearby, articulated lorries load up before making for the Zambian border. Small companies use improvised on-site furnaces to extract copper and cobalt; after initial refining, these are trucked to South Africa or to the port of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, where Chinese cargo ships wait.
The mayor of Lubumbashi, Floribert Kaseba, is proud of the fact that there are no beggars or street children, unlike in the capital, Kinshasa. But although everyone has work, conditions are difficult. Most of the 70,000 miners in Katanga earn less than a dollar a day. They have set up a mutual society, the Entreprise minière artisanale du Katanga (Emak), but that serves only to guarantee their funeral expenses (cave-ins are frequent). Mining provides 74% of the DRC’s exports. Of almost a million workers employed, only 35,000 are registered.
The DRC’s miners have every reason to be suspicious. Under the paternalistic colonial system which was inherited by Joseph Mobutu when he seized power in 1965, major state-owned enterprises such as Gecamines and Minière de Bakwanga au Kasaï (Miba), which generated most of the country’s earnings, had to provide their workers and their families with housing and free healthcare, benefits
That reinforced the feeling of being part of the company. Privatisation threw all the cards in the air: the major state-owned companies were dismantled and their successors then sought to break with the past and with the previous social obligations.
Conditions for workers did not improve during the mining bonanza. Towards the end of the Mobutu regime in the 1990s, the World Bank persuaded prime minister Kengo wa Dondo that a privatisation programme, especially for mining companies, would replenish the state’s treasury and enable it to pay its debts.
In May 1995, as Gecamines was dismembered and other state companies privatised, big foreign mining corporations lined up: Lundin, Banro and Mindev from Canada; the Belgo-Canadian Barrick Gold; Australia’s Anvil Mining; and Benscor and Iscor from South Africa.
Given the country’s instability, the big companies preferred to operate by proxy. When fighting broke out in 1996 (leading to the fall of the Mobutu regime seven months later), junior companies were set up on the ground to deal with the rebel factions. Their stock could always be bought up later.
American Mineral Fields, the Australian company Russel Resources and Zimbabwe’s Ridgepointe Overseas funded Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s military campaign, and later the DRC’s political and administrative reconstruction. In return they obtained agreements for three Gecamines sites, to mining resources at Mongbwalu (1) in the northeastern province of Ituri, and to the diamond concessions in Kisangani.
Cash and carry
All good things come to an end. Shortly after Kabila came to power in May 1997, he turned his back on his predatory Ugandan and Rwandan allies and announced that renegotiated mining contracts would make the new employers responsible, like their predecessors, for the social welfare of their workers. Such ungrateful and radical behaviour, together with security considerations, precipitated the second Congo war in 1998. When Uganda and Rwanda, with western approval, tried to expel their former ally, the population resisted and, more seriously, Angola and Zimbabwe sent troops to Kabila’s defence.
Congo fragmented into four autonomous territories, administered by the government and three rebel groups, the most important being the Rwandan-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD-Goma) and the Congo Liberation Movement (MLC), created with the support of the Ugandan army. The central government and the rebels had to fund both their own military operations and those of their allies. The four regions, now separate, were transformed into vast cash-and-carry markets where criminal organisations could shop for gold, copper, colombo tantalite (coltan, which is used in the manufacture of mobile phones), timber and diamonds (2).
These predators paid the warlords who held actual power in cash and, if necessary, weapons. The resulting human (3.5 million civilian victims) and political catastrophe (3) was of no great interest to the outside world. It was also an economic disaster. Since 2000, although demand for coltan has begun to fall and diamonds are gradually becoming more traceable, worldwide demand for copper, cobalt and uranium has increased, with Chinese economic growth and Indian demand driving up prices. The exploitation of these minerals requires major long-term investment, which presupposes a relatively stable political environment. The freebooters’ days are over, and South Africa’s mining industry, with its many new black capitalists, regards central Africa, especially Katanga’s copper belt, as its natural zone of expansion.
Congo’s warring parties and their allies finally responded to international pressure and met in the South African resort of Sun City where, in 2003, they signed an agreement for the departure of foreign troops, the reunification of the country and a two-year period of transition eventually extended to this year.
The main goal of the closely-involved international community (the major western powers and South Africa) is to legitimise and stabilise the current regime in order to revive the economy and rebuild the country. The Congolese population can look forward to their first genuinely free elections for 46 years, and to the end of a system run by a self-perpetuating elite.
Although legislative elections and the first round of the presidential election are scheduled for this summer, the reality of the transition is becoming clear. Reports from international organisations have demonstrated the extent to which the pillaging of resources continued after the official ceasefire in 2003 (4). Such revelations miss the point. Although the Sun City agreement laid down certain principles, it was never designed to democratise the management of the DRC’s resources, but only to end the war, encourage foreign troops to leave Congolese territory and replace short term mafia operations with more stable, although not necessarily less greedy, economic players.
The warlords favoured
In its determination not to confuse politics with morality, the Sun City agreement favoured warlords over civilians and the former political class. People were disgusted by the “one plus four” formula that seemed to often amnesties with impunity: under the formula, Joseph Kabila, who had become president after his father’s murder in January 2001, agreed to share power with four vice presidents, drawn from the rebel factions, the political opposition and civil society.
One of them, Jean-Pierre Bemba, a former businessman accused by United Nations experts of having pillaged the equatorial region’s banks and coffee crops, became president of the economic and financial commission. Another former rebel, Azarias Ruberwa, whose troops, with Rwandan forces, were responsible for serious massacres in the east of the country, took over the policy, defence and security commission.
The speed of reunification is an indication of the strength of national solidarity and the extent to which the fighting was driven by outside influences. But it failed to go below the surface. All the parties kept their most powerful forces in reserve and the troops of the new national army, rarely or badly paid because funds are siphoned off, often live at the expense of the population. In an attempt to control the situation, the UN requested and approved a European force of 2,000 (see “EU intervention in the Congo”) to reinforce 17,500 UN troops already deployed.
Since reunification, the restored state has been responsible for guaranteeing the basic physical and legal security of investors in the mining sector. The government, just emerging from a war and riven by contradictions, remains weak: during the transitional period it is hardly in a position to contest the one-sided contracts that have been imposed by the companies. The selling of natural resources did not stop with the end of hostilities: it has changed its nature. The unelected members of the national assembly were required to draw up mining and forestry codes whose liberal terms were dictated by the World Bank, which allow private interests to operate unencumbered by obligations.
The World Bank has pushed through the restructuring of Gecamines. Before the company was sold off piecemeal, 10,500 workers received redundancy payments of $1,900-$30,000. These sums went to repay debts or meet immediate expenses. The workers, who have been deprived of any social support, are now working in the informal economy. The companies replace them with machines, taking on as few skilled personnel as possible.
The government has granted significant tax breaks, from 15 to 30 years, to several partly state-owned companies. In 2004 most of these paid only $400,000 in taxes. In the diamond sector, MIBA has lost 45% of its assets to the Congolese-Zimbabwean company Sengamines. And although the approval of the new constitution last November by 85% of electors was a major achievement in a country lacking roads or the means of communication, it was also a victory for those who seek to limit state prerogatives. It divides the country into 26 provinces and splits its resources, 60% for the central administration and 40% to the provincial authorities. Its aim is to decentralise resources, but the autonomy conceded to provincial governments risks increasing local corruption.
The new government may have legitimacy and support, but will it have the courage to rid itself of its more dubious supporters and ignore the hardly disinterested advice of the “international community”. Will it dare suggest renegotiating the mining agreements?
http://mondediplo.com/2006/07/06congo
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