When the elephants fight, tusk to tusk, it is the grass — the ordinary people — that gets trampled. But where did the elephants get their tusks?
In Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the elephants now sup at the same table. Since July a government of national unity, agreed during talks at Sun City, reigns over an uneasy, fractional peace.
It has been an expensive, if under-acknowledged, war: more than three million dead in eastern DRC since hostilities restarted in 1998 .And the mortality figure, high as it is, does not even begin to describe the displacement, the destruction of infrastructure, the loss of livelihood and the memories of systematic rape and torture that haunt countless more survivors in Congo.
The grass may take generations to heal. The elephants sit in Kinshasa feeding off their loot. But where did they get their tusks?
Much blame for the war must go to the foreign aggressors and meddlers who quickly turned the DRC conflict into Africa’s own “world war”.
On the side of the rebel movements staking claims in the east and north, there was primarily Rwanda and Uganda. On the side of President Laurent Kabila, later succeeded by his son, Joseph, there was Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia.
International bodies — rights NGOs and the United Nations — have highlighted DRC as a case study of how conflict tends to be encouraged by competition over material resources. The insight itself is not new, but in the case of DRC it is blatantly obvious. It was a war for diamonds, coltan, gold — even harvests, cattle, cash.
Between 2000 and last year an expert panel appointed at the behest of the United Nations Security Council studied the relationship between what it termed “the illegal exploitation of natural resources and other forms of wealth” and the “continuation of the conflict” in DRC.
In October 2002 the panel reported: “The initial motivation of foreign countries or armies to intervene in the Democratic Republic of Congo was primarily political and security related in nature; over a period of time it has become the primary motive extracting the maximum commercial and material benefits.”
A final panel report, last October, spoke of a vicious cycle of arms flows, the exploitation of natural resources and continued conflict. “Each of those three elements thrives on the other two. Without the wealth generated by the illegal exploitation of natural resources, arms cannot be bought … Without arms, the ability to continue the conflict, thereby creating the conditions for illegal exploitation of resources, cannot be sustained.”
Where did the elephants get their tusks — or, more to the point, their AK47s, their mortars and bombs, their uniforms, their rations, their trucks and their choppers?
The traders, the arms dealers and the foreign armies that supplied the combatants — that is one answer. But how were they compensated? Through the wholesale appropriation of the country’s natural resources.
Mining concessions and other commercial or fiscal opportunities that were meant to benefit the state and the people were grabbed on an unprecedented scale by rebels and by the elite in the Kabila regime; by the foreign military backers of both; and by business people, often foreign, who were willing to facilitate this looting spree and profit from it.
The purpose of the pillage was to pay for the war effort and to self-enrich. And soon the purpose of the war was to pillage. The country paid for the war that destroyed it.
This week President Thabo Mbeki paid a state visit to the DRC to assess progress made in the peace accord negotiated at Sun City. The accord was a victory for South African diplomacy and is a solid foundation for the second purpose of Mbeki’s visit: to “consolidate” political and economic relations.
With him, Mbeki had a large business delegation interested in investment opportunities. Their capital and expertise may help reconstruct the DRC.
If South African enterprise can play a positive role in the DRC, it has not always been that way. On these pages the Mail & Guardian presents a gallery of South African businesses and business people who have traded in the Great Lakes regions, or at least considered doing so, in ways that may have perpetuated the DRC conflict.
They did not necessarily break laws and some may not have foreseen the consequences of their actions. But the grass has been trampled. Perhaps a higher level of care is in order when business is done in a region at war.
Renaissance trader
In December 1998 the offensive of the Rassemblement Congolais pour la DÃ