The South African government cannot be seen to take sides, but it must still protect domestic business interests, reports Stefaans Brmmer
SOUTH AFRICA faces a dilemma in its role as peace mediator in Zaire: as “honest broker” the government cannot be seen to take sides, yet South African companies – chiefly mining interests -stand to lose on lucrative concessions if links are not created with the rebels of Laurent Kabila.
Deputy President Thabo Mbeki this week urged American and South African companies, including Anglo American, not to make deals with Kabila’s Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (ADFL), but to await the establishment of a negotiated transitional authority.
Mbeki said he feared the scramble by outside mining interests could trigger dormant secessionist tendencies. Much of Zaire’s vast mineral wealth is concentrated in Shaba province, which has a history of secession attempts. The ADFL now controls about half of Zaire, including Shaba.
Mbeki’s comments followed claims last week in the Mail & Guardian by Kabila’s finance minister, Mawampanga Mwana Nanga, that Anglo’s associate company, De Beers, had agreed in talks with the ADFL to sever ties with ailing President Mobutu Sese Seko’s regime in Kinshasa – a claim De Beers refused to confirm or deny. This week, a team of Anglo and De Beers executives resumed talks with the ADFL in Lubumbashi, capital of Shaba.
Meanwhile, South Africa’s Department of Foreign Affairs has to walk the tightrope of not appearing to compromise its role as disinterested peace facilitator, but still to give South African companies – which feel threatened by the rapid rapprochement between the rebels and the Canadian-based company, America Mineral Fields – the necessary back-up to secure their interests.
The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aziz Pahad, co-chair of the peace initiative, this week said through representative Pieter Swanepoel: “We act as facilitator and cannot be partial in the matter. But if we receive requests from South African businesspeople to talk to Kabila’s people, we pass them on.”
Swanepoel said there was a clear distinction between the South African involvement in the peace talks, which centred around a United Nations peace plan, and “normal bilateral relations” with Zaire – which, in this case, also included contact with the ADFL. Foreign Affairs had, for example, helped set up a meeting earlier this month between South African business-people and an ADFL delegation, headed by Bizima Karaha, Kabila’s foreign minister. Karaha was in South Africa for the first direct talks between the rebels and representatives of Mobutu.
The scramble for Zaire’s mineral wealth gained momentum last week when the ADFL awarded a US$1-billion tender for the Kolwezi copper and cobalt reclamation project near Lubumbashi, the construction of a new zinc plant and further prospecting to America Mineral Fields. South Africa’s Anglo, JCI and Gencor had all tendered for the Kolwezi project.
Anglo representative Charmaine Russel, stopping short of condemning the tender award as invalid, this week said Anglo wanted “clarity”. But several mining analysts said the legality of a rebel movement awarding such a contract was questionable. Both Mobutu’s government and the state mining company Gecamines – or at least the part of Gecamines that still answers to Kinshasa – have dismissed it as illegal.
The stampede by mining companies to Kabila’s door poses the danger of an escalation in the war. America Mineral has made no secret of the jet plane it has provided to transport ADFL officials and the “favour” it had done the rebels by outbidding De Beers in rebel-controlled diamond auctions.
A mining analyst with extensive experience in the region this week said it appeared America Mineral’s bid for Kolwezi had included a larger cash element than competing tenders. This may have suited the ADFL: when the $1-billion deal was announced, rebel finance minister Mawampanga said initial cash injections would help fund the war effort.
The analyst, who requested anonymity, said Kabila’s new war talk – after he had told President Nelson Mandela last week he was ready for face-to-face negotiations with Mobutu – might not be a coincidence if greater mining revenues were becoming available to him.
It is widely thought that Kabila’s backers – alleged to include neighbouring Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda, and according to some speculation also the United States – intended Kabila to take no more than a swathe of land in eastern Zaire, and were surprised by his rapid advance towards Kinshasa. Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has already said he does not think Kabila is a “suitable” future ruler.
It appears Kabila’s funding started drying up before the ADFL reached Lubumbashi earlier this month, but that his control or impending control of the mineral fields opened new sources of funding. Said the analyst: “Suddenly the ADFL moved again, and there must have been new sources of funding. The only real source would have been from the mines.”
He said America Mineral’s principal shareholder, Jean-Raymond Boulle, a former De Beers Zaire diamond buyer, gambled on Kabila when companies like De Beers and Anglo could not be seen to be dealing with a rebel movement. This, in turn, raised the stakes for the South African companies.
Boulle was quoted last week as saying he had sided with the rebels as they were the “de facto” government. “It was a risk – but to us it was the logical one,” he said.
If Anglo and De Beers are in a precarious position, JCI – now controlled by Mzi Khumalo’s African Mining Group – appears to be in even more of a dilemma. Khumalo, because of his close ties to the African National Congress and Mbeki, may be under greater pressure not to upset the peace talks through early deals with Kabila.
After it lost out on the Kolwezi project – if indeed America Minerals will hang on to it – JCI is staking much on its tender for the Ruashi-Etoile copper and cobalt mine, also in Shaba. JCI, which already has engineering contracts with Gecamines, this week sent a task team to Shaba. But the company said the team was not meeting with “any political representatives”.
JCI’s corporate affairs manager, Marc Gonsalves, refused to say whether future contact with Kabila was envisaged. “The situation there is extremely fluid, but other than that we are not prepared to comment,” he said.