Links to Executive Outcomes may have made an Angolan mining company a target for attack, writes Chris Gordon
DiamondWorks, whose Yetwene mine in north- eastern Angola was attacked last week, may have been a target because of the links of its parent company, British-based Branch Energy, to the South African mercenary company, Executive Outcomes.
Branch Energy head Tony Buckingham – holder of 25% of DiamondWorks shares and a director of the company until last month – is well known as the man who brokered Executive Outcomes’s introduction into Sierra Leone, Angola and Papua New Guinea. Branch Energy in each case proposed the development of mines in these resource-rich regions.
Executive Outcomes played a major role in the defeat of Unita in 1994, which led to the now-collapsed Lusaka peace accords. A South African military analyst also placed an offshoot of Executive Outcomes in Angola at the beginning of this year and there have been persistent reports – denied by Executive Outcomes – of stepped-up support for the government in Luanda since the peace accords collapsed and the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo erupted.
Executive Outcomes’s sister company, Strategic Resources Group, was responsible for the downing of planes carrying Unita supplies, and carried out intelligence work and intercept flights for the Angolan government. The DC4, which was carrying building and mining materials from Lanseria airport to Unita, was forced down by a MiG-23 fighter belonging to Executive Outcomes.
Last Sunday, about 50 men led a two-hour gun battle on Yetwene mine, which left at least 21 dead, including three foreigners. Four people, including South African technician Douglas Larsen, were taken hostage
Many of the attackers wore Unita uniforms. Although Unita has not denied its involvement, a senior aid to Jonas Savimbi has said Unita is “investigating the attack”.
DiamondWorks director Michael Grundberg told the Mail & Guardian “our priority is to get our people back”. The company is activating its political linkages in an attempt to recover the hostages. It has direct links to Angola President Jos, Eduardo dos Santos and contacts with the elite through Angolan partners, Zizania Holdings.
However, AFP reported this week that at least 10 technicians and other employees who went missing after the raid had been found in the eastern Moxico province capital, Lwena.
DiamondWorks was set up in 1996 to provide financing for developing Branch Energy’s diamond mines in Angola and Sierra Leone, and to give credibility to the mining operations. With the appointment of a new CEO last year, DiamondWorks was distanced from its more controversial partners, though it remains a company specialising in high-risk zones.
Last month, on resigning as director, Buckingham lent DiamondWorks $2-million (R10-million). This loan was secured on the now-damaged Yetwene mine.
Unsurprisingly, DiamondWorks is the most security-minded of all Angola’s mining companies. Grundberg described DiamondWorks as having a philosophy of integrating security into all aspects of its work, a factor that might have attracted the attack, in order to test its capacity.
Grundberg, also of Branch Energy, was also involved in the negotiations to bring Executive Outcomes into the failed Papua New Guinea operation.
DiamondWorks’s security is provided by Teleservices, a Luanda-based joint venture company part-owned by South African Grays Security – a company with no known links to Executive Outcomes – and an Angolan company, Mboji.
Although controversial, DiamondWorks has also attracted high-calibre mining professionals in a bid to become a major presence in high-value diamond projects in Africa.
Yetwene mine, north of Lukapa, was DiamondWorks’s latest venture and its flagship mine. The company was expecting to produce 14 000 carats a month by the end of the year, worth about $2-million a month. It had become one of Angola’s more successful diamond mining operations.
The question now being asked is whether the attack was ordered by Unita headquarters, as a new move in Angola’s low-intensity war that has seen the creation of nearly half- a-million refugees in three months, and largely unrecorded fighting across the provinces of Uige, Malange and Lunda Norte.
The attack may be aimed at discouraging foreign investors in Angola; it may have been a simple attempt at robbery. Whatever the motivation, it is clear that diamond mining companies are having to increase their security, and the cost is considerable. One company forks out $500 000 a month for security, with additional air transport costs of $600 000.
The attack on Yetwene is the first direct attack on a foreign-run installation in Angola. The nearest approach to a major project was an attack on a road convey carrying mining equipment in August.
Many more illicit miners in the bush have been killed, either in fighting beween the Angolan government’s army and Unita or as a result of attack.
The attack on Yetwene made it clear that deployment of the Angolan army around mining projects is inadequate in outlying areas, although security has been beefed up in recent months as military conditions deteriorated across the country.
Most of the elite Angolan units are tied up in Congo, and the Angolan army has received little training in the past few years.
There is a real war here, but it is a bush war, hardly reported in the capital, across the provinces of Uige; Malange, where the government controls only the provincial capital; the Lundas; and Kwanza Sul. A great deal of the fighting is also taking place on the Congo border, where Unita and Laurent Kabila’s army are blocking each other from crossing the border.
When one or the other side makes it back, the war will escalate, but this attack seems like a reversion to the guerrilla tactics that Unita used in the 1980s to try to shut down Angola’s diamond industry. Unita had a history of kidnapping expatriate miners.
The Department of Foreign Affairs has asked the South African embassy in Luanda to approach the United Nations Observer Mission to Angola and the Angolan government in a bid to secure the early release of the hostages.
“The department is also in close contact with the senior management of DiamondWorks, who are also seeking to secure their early release,” a department statement read.