A ragged gold miner dives into a chocolate-coloured pool of sludge, resurfacing minutes later with a handful of stones containing slivers of gold ore.
He and others like him earn about $150 (about R925) a month selling the gold dust that they get by smashing the rocks to middlemen in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The precious metal is then guarded by militiamen and ferried across Lake Edward to merchants in Uganda, according to gold traders in Bunia — the capital of Ituri province, where Mongbwalu is situated.
In a report issued last year, the New York-based NGO Human Rights Watch noted that Uganda exports $60-million-worth of gold annually, even though the country only produces about $25Â 000-worth of the metal and records no legal imports. The balance of Uganda’s exports, according to The Curse of Gold, is mined by impoverished Congolese villagers.
“We know that our country’s gold goes to Uganda, but why should we care? Our government does not care about us,” says Floriment Lonema (33), in Mongbwalu.
Pressing concern
The illegal exploitation of the DRC’s gold resources is of pressing concern on the political front, however, as it jeopardises efforts to bring lasting peace to the eastern DRC and Great Lakes region. Various groups here are loathe to give up control of and access to the rich Congolese mineral deposits that were fought over during a five-year civil war in the eastern DRC that ended in 2002, although the area remains unstable.
United Nations officials first sought to highlight this matter several years ago, accusing various states (including Uganda and neighbouring Rwanda) of widespread looting of the DRC’s mineral wealth.
In addition to deploying troops in the DRC during its five-year conflict, Uganda and Rwanda also backed various ethnic, Congolese factions. Both countries used security concerns to justify their actions in the DRC — Rwanda saying its stability was threatened by the presence of genocide suspects in the eastern DRC.
A number of Hutu militants who helped carry out Rwanda’s 1994 genocide fled to the then Zaire as Tutsi rebels took control of Rwanda in that year. This laid the ground for Rwanda’s first invasion of the DRC in 1996, which led to the downfall of Zairean leader Mobutu Sese Seko.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and his Rwandan counterpart, Paul Kagame, were “on the verge of becoming godfathers of illegal exploitation of natural resources”, observed a report by a UN panel of experts in 2001.
‘Gold is a curse’
As 2006 gets under way, the illicit trade in gold, tin, timber, diamonds and other resources continues, fuelled by demand from European and South-East Asian firms that import the resources from Uganda and Rwanda.
“Our gold is a curse. I lost my family when militias fought for it,” says Pascal Kalabo (36), a miner who dives into 18m deep holes to fish out gold ore. “And now I have to dig it up so I can live.”
An Indian gold trader in Mongbwalu, David Dhal, says gold supply chains in Ituri are highly organised, and controlled by wealthy businessmen abroad who make use of local agents.
The 2001 UN report listed more than 30 companies and individuals in Europe and Asia that imported the DRC’s minerals via Rwanda — and the world body again pointed the finger at these firms and persons in a later report, issued 2003. The accused entities swiftly denied the UN’s allegations, however.
“Though you will not find a single company working in Ituri, there are hundreds of independent agents on the ground working for a single patron,” says Dhal, adding that pay-offs to customs and border officials facilitate the illegal export of gold.
Dhal claims that foreign mineral firms prefer to commission agents in DRC than bring costly mining equipment to a country where ethnic tensions are always on the verge of exploding into violence. This is despite the fact that the current way of doing business is said to feed regional instability (about four million people are believed to have died in the 1998-2002 war).
“Nobody is willing to invest in such an unstable country,” he says. “Using agents is a business model that has worked.”
Steps against Rwanda, Uganda
The 2001 UN report recommended a temporary embargo on exports of minerals from Rwanda and Uganda and suspending international aid to the two countries.
But, governments in the developed world appear reluctant to take any such action against the two countries. Despite their alleged conduct in the DRC, Museveni and Kagame have been hailed as forming part of a new generation of African leaders who are helping the continent make a break with its unhappy past.
The 2001 UN report alleged that mineral exploitation in the DRC had enriched Ugandan army officers and close relatives of Museveni. In Rwanda, the mineral exports financed the army, the document said.
Last year’s study by Human Rights Watch claimed that neither Uganda nor Rwanda had taken steps to ensure the legality of their mineral imports, even after the UN allegations.
According to certain observers in the DRC, there will be little pressure on the international community to cease importing the country’s illegally mined resources until the DRC’s own politicians — some of whom are also accused of profiting from illicit resource exploitation — take action.
The DRC is currently governed by a transitional administration under the leadership of Joseph Kabila. Elections — the country’s first in 45 years — are due before June.
On a more optimistic note, however, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled towards the end of last year that Uganda’s invasion of the DRC had been unlawful, and ordered Kampala to pay reparations for illegally exploiting the DRC’s mineral wealth and killing thousands of civilians. A similar case against Rwanda’s invasions of the DRC is still pending.
Twenty-nine year old Pascal Busha also sees a brighter future than some of his fellow miners at Mongbwalu.
“We are exploited, but Congo is a rich country,” he says, squatting beside a red bucket, full of rocks waiting to be smashed. “The rebels have gone and the elections are coming. This country belongs to the people now.” — IPS