There is little to break the silence at Kolwezi, once the economic powerhouse of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), now a landscape of industrial desolation.
Potholed roads lead to ruined, rusted factories. Trucks and bulldozers are lined up neatly, as if ready to roll, but the wheels are missing and the engines have cobwebs. Offices are mausoleums of empty corridors and dusty folders.
It evokes Stalingrad in the sun, but there was no fighting here. The mines of Kolwezi, on one of the world’s richest deposits of copper and cobalt, were destroyed by mismanagement and corruption. the DRC’s rulers sucked out the wealth in the 1970s and 1980s without reinvesting, a plunder which eroded infrastructure and resulted in pits collapsing and flooding. Production had virtually stopped by the time war engulfed what was then Zaire in 1997.
But the silence at Kolwezi and other mining areas in Katanga province will soon be broken. ”The mining companies are on the diving board. They are coming back,” said Raf Costermans, an analyst with Groupe One, a Belgian advocacy group.
An international scramble for this central African treasure trove is under way, prompted by the end of the war and an imminent election. With copper prices at record highs, fuelled by demand in India and China, companies are competing to rehabilitate derelict sites. Kolwezi could again produce 500 000 tonnes a year of copper and cobalt, metal used in making steel.
Billions of dollars will be made. The question is whether the boom will benefit the citizens of the DRC. Their need is ravenous. Decades of misrule and conflict have left millions poor, malnourished and sick. More than 1 000 people die needlessly every day, according to the United Nations. Katanga’s bounty could help to rebuild a shattered state.
But if history is a guide the boom will benefit only the political elite and its cronies. Belgium’s King Leopold enslaved and plundered his African colony in the 19th century. Mobutu Sese Seko, the post-independence dictator, presided over three decades of kleptocracy. After he fell invaders and warlords, abetted by foreign companies, looted raw materials during the 1997-2002 war.
Now there is an opportunity to break the cycle. Unrest simmers in the east but most of the country is at peace. The legislative and presidential election scheduled for July 30, backed by the UN and foreign donors, could yield democratic accountability. A World Bank-sponsored mining charter prescribes transparency between investors and the government.
The companies talk of responsible capitalism. ”In this era it’s far more difficult not to play by international standards,” said Paul Fortin, head of Gecamines, a state-owned mining company.
René Nolevaux, an executive with Katanga Mining, a Canadian enterprise, said strict rules and international scrutiny would avert pillage. ”Competition will force the bad guys to become good.”
His company is investing $450-million in Kamoto, one of Kolwezi’s richest mines. Within weeks workers will start repairing roads, installing equipment and refurbishing offices. There will be jobs for 2 500 Congolese labourers and technicians, a free clinic and school for locals and ample taxes for Kinshasa, said Nolevaux. Rather than exported in raw form the ore will be processed on site, maximising the value to Congo. ”It’s a good project for us and a good project for the people,” he said.
Kisula Ngoy, Katanga’s governor, said foreign capital and expertise were vital. ”There is no alternative. The solution is to re-industrialise.”
His welcome was echoed by some of those who currently occupy the sites, clawing with bare hands for nuggets of copper, backbreaking labour which on a good day earns $3. ”We have been waiting for them to come to give us proper work and better conditions” said Cedric Muteba (30), his eyes red from dust, his chest covered in mud and sweat. ”We need the white men here.”
But already there are ominous signs that it will be like the old days: fat profits for the political elite and foreign companies, at most crumbs for ordinary Congolese. In some cases not even that; Claude Jibidar of the World Food Programme said the UN was struggling to deliver food because mining companies had snapped up all the available trucks. ”It’s a major problem. People are dying.”
In the restaurants of Katanga’s provincial capital, Lubumbashi, government delegations of men with suits and sunglasses openly haggle with mining executives. ”Just watch,” said Jean Pierre Muteba, a trade union leader. ”The money will disappear.”
Two watchdogs, Global Witness and Fatal Transactions, say that companies have obtained suspiciously generous terms, including some implicated in a UN exposé of firms which cooperated with warlords to extract minerals during the war.
Foreign governments and institutions have played down corruption for the sake of short-term stability, said Carina Tertsakian of Global Witness. ”They’re saying wait till after the election and then turn the screws on accountability. But the pattern is becoming ever more entrenched and after the election the donors will have less leverage.”
It is a view shared by the International Crisis Group. ”If embezzlement is not tackled head on now, the Congolese state will likely never be able to put together a viable Budget, let alone spend it effectively.”
The most immediate dilemma is the fate of the 150 000 families in Katanga who survive by scavenging copper and cobalt from sites that mining companies are taking over with government assistance. The eviction of children who toil in pits should be good news, but without alternative work, affordable schooling or social welfare, it could sentence them to worse destitution.
”My mother is dead so it’s up to me to provide for my brother and sister,” said Michel Chacha (10) lowering a rope to a colleague down a hole at Ruashi, a mine outside Lubumbashi.
The site’s owner, a South African company called Metorex, says it is treating its hundreds of unwanted guests gently. ”You have to co-exist with them, initially anyway,” said Grant Dempsey, the project manager.
Natural riches
- The Democratic Republic of Congo has 18 major natural resources: bauxite/aluminium, cadmium, cassiterite, coal, cobalt, copper, coltan, diamonds, gas, gold, iron ore, lead, manganese, oil, silver, timber, uranium and zinc
- The DRC’s soil is reputed to contain every mineral listed in the periodic table
- The DRC is thought to hold one-third of the world’s cobalt reserves and two-thirds of its coltan, an ore of tantalum, widely used in cellphones
- It also produces 23 000-27 000 barrels of oil per day.
- Towards the end of the 1980s, Congo was the world’s fifth largest producer of copper, the top producer of cobalt and the second largest producer of industrial diamonds.
- Mining activity is predominantly concentrated in the south-eastern and eastern parts of the country. – Guardian Unlimited Â