25.02.2019 A Glittering Demon: Mining, Poverty and Politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo | corpwatch https://corpwatch.org/article/glittering-demon-mining-poverty-and-politics-democratic-republic-congo 1/6 Home / Publications / A Glittering Demon: Mining, Poverty and Politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo - INDUSTRIES - - ISSUES - Enter Keyword or Phrase SEARCH Tags: Environment A Glittering Demon: Mining, Poverty and Politics in A Glittering Demon: Mining, Poverty and Politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo the Democratic Republic of Congo Published by Special to CorpWatch | By Michael Deibert | Thursday, June 26, 2008 In the heart of the war-scarred Ituri region in northeastern Congo, some 200 mud-covered men pan for traces of gold in the muddy brown waters. Working for the Congolese owners of Manyida camp, the miners are following a map of the site made by the Belgians, the country's former colonial rulers. "It's very difcult, punishing work," says Adamo Bedijo, a 32 year-old university graduate from the central city of Kisangani. "We are not paid, we work until we hit the vein of gold and hope that will pay us...The government has abandoned us, so I am forced to endure all this suffering." Bedijo is one of Ituri's estimated 70,000 artisanal miners, some of whom are former employees of state mining concerns that collapsed during the country's long-running civil war. Two years after the rst democratic elections in 40 years, informal arrangements such as Manyida are operating alongside the many foreign multinationals rushing in to tap the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) extensive mineral resources. The way foreign multinationals have gained entry into Congo, and the business methods they use, raise signicant questions for a nation at historic crossroads. Will the DRC move forward to become more responsive to its nearly 67 million people scattered across an area as large as Western Europe, or will the tradition of rape-as-governance continue? Autocratic Excesses, Leopold II to Mobutu Blessed with vast deposits of cobalt, coltan, copper, diamonds and gold, and copiously irrigated by massive rivers, the DRC covers a region spanning Africa's western coast deep into the fecund mountains and miasmic rainforests at its center. Here, the historic Kingdom of Kongo existed in various incarnations for nearly 500 years, encompassing swaths of what is now Angola, Gabon and the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville). By 1877, though, most of what is now the DRC was occupied and ruled as the private efdom of Belgium's King Leopold II. ts Whose Studies Led to Ban on Monsant… https://t.co/1TqUY0Ypkm
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25.02.2019 A Glittering Demon: Mining, Poverty and Politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo | corpwatch
Home / Publications / A Glittering Demon: Mining, Poverty and Politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo
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A Glittering Demon: Mining, Poverty and Politics inA Glittering Demon: Mining, Poverty and Politics inthe Democratic Republic of Congothe Democratic Republic of CongoPublished by Special to CorpWatch | By Michael Deibert | Thursday, June 26, 2008
In the heart of the war-scarred Ituri region in northeastern Congo, some 200 mud-covered men pan for traces ofgold in the muddy brown waters.
Working for the Congolese owners of Manyida camp, the miners are following a map of the site made by theBelgians, the country's former colonial rulers.
"It's very dif�cult, punishing work," says Adamo Bedijo, a 32 year-old university graduate from the central city ofKisangani. "We are not paid, we work until we hit the vein of gold and hope that will pay us...The government hasabandoned us, so I am forced to endure all this suffering."
Bedijo is one of Ituri's estimated 70,000 artisanal miners, some of whom are former employees of state miningconcerns that collapsed during the country's long-running civil war. Two years after the �rst democratic elections in40 years, informal arrangements such as Manyida are operating alongside the many foreign multinationals rushingin to tap the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) extensive mineral resources.
The way foreign multinationals have gained entry into Congo, and the business methods they use, raise signi�cantquestions for a nation at historic crossroads. Will the DRC move forward to become more responsive to its nearly 67million people scattered across an area as large as Western Europe, or will the tradition of rape-as-governancecontinue?
Autocratic Excesses, Leopold II to Mobutu
Blessed with vast deposits of cobalt, coltan, copper, diamonds and gold, and copiously irrigated by massive rivers,the DRC covers a region spanning Africa's western coast deep into the fecund mountains and miasmic rainforestsat its center. Here, the historic Kingdom of Kongo existed in various incarnations for nearly 500 years,encompassing swaths of what is now Angola, Gabon and the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville). By 1877, though, mostof what is now the DRC was occupied and ruled as the private �efdom of Belgium's King Leopold II.
ts Whose Studies Led to Ban on Monsant… https://t.co/1TqUY0Ypkm
The image of the laboring miner is indelibly associated in the DRC with the country's immense and oftensquandered potential. The nation's 500 franc note depicts a trio of miners prospecting a riverbed. And, in a nationwhere government title and a gun are often looked on as a right to engage in banditry, mining's glittering potentialdraws impoverished Congolese and multinational corporations alike.
The company AngloGold Ashanti exempli�es the tensions between moneyed foreign mining �rms and localresidents following the collapse of the Mobutu dictatorship. Many Congolese expected the new era to bring greatdividends. Instead a decade-plus war and the downsizing or closure of state mining concerns cut off the economiclifeblood to far-�ung communities.
Formed by a merger of South Africa's AngloGold and Ghana's Ashanti Gold�elds corporations in 2003, AngloGoldAshanti is one of the largest mining companies in the world. Before its merger with AngloGold, Ashanti Gold�eldspurchased interest in a gold mining concession in Ituri that had previously existed as a joint venture betweenOkimo and Mining Development International. Known as Concession 40, the interest, of which the Congolesegovernment is still the of�cial owner, encompasses a vast swath of 2,000 square kilometers in and around the townof Mongbwalu. It is now under the management of AngloGold Ashanti's local subsidiary, AngloGold Ashanti Kilo(AGK), which began exploration in 2005.
A November 2007 report by a special commission of Congo's Ministry of Mines reviewing mining contracts aroundthe country concluded that the terms and lack of transparency in Ashanti Gold�elds original contract violatedCongolese law and was thus subject to renegotiation. Signed at the outset of Congo's civil war, the contract wasnegotiated by three state ministers and Okimo's representatives, none of whose identities were revealed.
Noting that the existing document was "silent on the social clause," obligating AGK to carry out programs toimprove the lives of the region's inhabitants, the commission noted that AGK had initiated some local social works.These included rehabilitating a water station and the road between Mogbwalu and Bunia, the provincial capital, aswell as maintaining power lines.
But coming after the Okimo years, when the state company not only produced gold but also acted as something ofa public welfare of�ce, the change in fortune for Ituri residents has been radical.
Formerly, Okimo employed around 1,700 people and was required to reinvest three percent of its pro�ts in the localcommunity.
"The relationship between AngloGold and the community is not good, there is a lot of dif�culty in communication,"says Jean-Paul Lonema, a community organizer working for the Mongbwalu branch of the Catholic organizationCaritas. "The company's decisions are taken without consulting the population. The population doesn't knowanything about the documents AGK signed with the government, they don't know their contents."
Lonema says that the company has refused to divulge the terms of its contract. "We have asked to see this contractmany times, especially the articles concerning the possible bene�ts to the community," he says, noting that, underthe Okimo scheme, both the local hospital and technical institute were bankrolled via the mine. "There is a paradoxin that there is so much gold here, but the community is still so poor."
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Under the shadow of the now-abandoned Okimo mining laboratory in Mongbwalu, dozens of men stoop in ankledeep chocolate-colored water, sifting to see if they can �nd anything of value
Andaeko Adia, 47, looks up from the red pail with which he sorts muddy earth. "We are only working to get somefood, not to make much money, and sometimes it is not even enough to pay school fees for our children," he says,wiping his hands on his dirt-spattered smock. "Sometimes we work together with our children in order to makesome money."
Around 1,500 artisanal miners work the site from 8:00 in the morning until 4:00. When they do �nd gold, they paythe mine "supervisors" - men who give them the right to work there - 30 percent of whatever they �nd. They saythey sell their gold for around $30 per gram, roughly equivalent to the world market price, and that they have nodirect contacts with either Okimo or AGK.
"We were working in Adidi (a now-defunct industrial mine run by Okimo), but AngloGold decided to close themine," Adia explains. "Now we have started working here, but there is no gold here. They promised to employ us,but they aren't employing us. Our families are really suffering."
AngloGold Ashanti representatives cite the exploratory nature of the company's involvement in the Ituri mine,which will not produce gold until 2011 at the earliest.
"We clearly have a big gap between the expectation of the population after a war period, after the total absence ofthe state, and the presence of a new company," says Guy-Robert Lukama, the company's country manager forCongo, in his of�ce in the capital, Kinshasa.
"During the previous period, Okimo was not only focused on gold but also made any social development or anysponsorship on behalf of the government," explains Lukama. "It's different for a private company like us...Thebudget constraints are very huge at this stage."
Lukama's words are echoed by AngloGold Ashanti employees on the ground in Ituri, where the company says it hasinitiated a dialogue platform with 23 representatives of the community to discuss development issues.
"We're doing exploration, which is a risk operation and we don't have any social obligation according to the DRCmining code. But as AngloGold Ashanti, we have to go together with the community," says Jean-Claude Kanku,community development and relationship manager with AngloGold Ashanti in Mongbwalu. "We have decided toput more money into road building, which has a big impact for the community. It used to take people three days toget to Mongbwalu, now it's three hours. A kilogram of rice used to cost $4, now it's $1.20. It has been a big bene�t."
The Ministry of Mines review puts the company's start-up capital at US$18 million. AngloGold Ashanti's yearlybudget for social development on the Mongbwalu projects is $150,000, says Kanku.
Con�ict in Ituri
Complicating AngolGold Ashanti's presence in Ituri is the legacy of a little-noticed war that shred the region'sdelicate social fabric. Ituri, like much of Congo, is made up of a patchwork of ethnic and linguistic groups. Thedominant tribes in the area have traditionally been the Lendu, a group composed mainly of farmers who arrivedfrom southern Sudan hundreds of years ago, and the Hema, a Nilotic ethnicity that came to the area more recentlyand devoted themselves to livestock grazing. Other ethnic groups include the Ngiti, who are sometimes associatedwith the Lendu, and the Gegere, sometimes linked to the Hema.
Despite tensions, the Lendu and Hema had co-existed more or less peacefully, if uneasily, for many years, withLendu farmers leasing grazing land to Hema herders. This arrangement ended with the arrival of the Belgians inthe 1880s. Replicating their policy in Rwanda, which elevated the Tutsi ethnic group over Hutus in the areas ofadministration, education and business, the Belgians in Congo lavished favors on the Hema, leading to feelings ofdisenfranchisement and resentment among the Lendu. That imbalance continued under Mobutu, whosenationalization of farmland previously owned by Europeans was overseen by Minister of Agriculture Zbo Kalogi,himself a Hema, who did much to favor his ethnic group.
All sides in the con�ict committed gross human rights abuses. The UPC's November 2002 siege of Mongbwalu,during which it fought alongside forces from future-presidential candidate Jean-Pierre Bemba's Movement Pour laLiberation du Congo, killed at least 200 people, the vast majority civilians. A February 2003 attack on the Hemavillage of Bogoro by the FRPI killed another 200. Their bones still lie bleaching in the �elds outside of town. Thenext month, the FNI attacked the town of Kilo, directly south of Mongbwalu, during which FNI forces sought toethnically cleanse the town in a campaign of murder, rape and looting that left more than 100 civilians dead. TheFNI eventually succeeded in wresting control of Mongbwalu itself f rom the UPC by June, at which point it mountedan ethnically-based slaughter of Hema and suspected Hema-sympathizers.
AngloGold Ashanti's links with the FNI, in particular, in their acquisition of the Mongbwalu concession have beenthe subject of �erce debate for several years.
It its 2005 report "The Curse of Gold," the New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch quotes anunnamed former employee of AngloGold Ashanti stating that Jean-Pierre Bemba, then a vice-president in Congo'stransitional government, directed the company to negotiate with the FNI as a means to begin exploratory miningat Mongbwalu. Bemba has denied this charge, and AngloGold Ashanti, in a follow-up letter to Human Rights Watch,contends Bemba's advice was merely an admonition for "the company to continue with its exploration program inthe region."
More troubling is an $8,000 payment that AngloGold Ashanti admitted making to the FNI in January 2005. Therewere also allegations made to Human Rights Watch by an AGK consultant in Mongbwalu and FNI Commander IribiPitchou that senior FNI of�cials used a 4x4 vehicle belonging to the company to traverse Ituri's decaying roads, andalso traveled on planes hired by the company to such cities as Beni in the DRC and the Ugandan capital ofKampala.
Alfred Buju, a Catholic priest who heads the Commission Justice et Paix in the provincial capital of Bunia says thatthe scramble for riches fueled the violence.
"The mining issue has been one of the key issues in the con�ict here in Ituri," says Buju.
In the company's June 2005 response to the Human Rights Watch, AngloGold Ashanti writes that "yielding to anyform of extortion by an armed militia or anyone else is contrary to the company's principles and values... That therewas a breach of this principle in this instance, in that company employees yielded to the militia group FNI's act ofextortion, is regretted."
"AngloGold Ashanti does not and will not support militia or any other groups whose actions constitute an assaulton efforts to achieve peace and democracy," the company's response continued.
AngloGold Ashanti's conduct in the DRC is not an isolated incident.
In October 2004 in the southern mineral-rich province of Katanga, at least 73 people were killed when Congolesegovernment soldiers raided the town of Kilwa in response to a half-dozen self-declared "rebels" that appeared in thevillage. A quartet of human rights organizations have charged that Australian company Anvil Mining, the leadingcopper producer in the DRC, provided logistical support to the army during the siege. Company cars transportedbodies of those killed in summary executions and stolen goods looted by soldiers; three of the company's driverswere behind the wheel of Anvil Mining vehicles used during the raid, according to investigators for the UnitedNations peacekeeping mission in DRC.
Anvil Mining did not respond to requests for comment.
Hopes for a Better Future
Despite past transgression, Alfred Buju says that he thinks there have been improvements in AngloGold Ashanti'sbehavior, and points to the �rm's involvement with PACT, a USAID-funded organization that seeks to encouragebusiness and agricultural development in mining areas. The company argues that, despite widespread poverty inIturi, synchronization with bodies such as PACT is the only way to bring real progress to the region.
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"You cannot develop a country against its people," says AngloGold Ashanti's Guy-Robert Lukama. "You cannotdevelop a country without a minimum of coordination with all the donors, with other companies, without therelevant authorities on the ground."
In the meantime, the people of Ituri wait expectantly. A traveler comes upon a pair of boys walking down theroadside carrying the telltale shovel and plastic basin that are the tools of the artisanal miners in the region.
"We don't have any other work to do," says one of the boys, Okelo Goge, 12 years old.
"I don't have money, my parents are poor, so I don't go to school," says his companion, who declines to give hisname. "This is what we have to do."
Michael Deibert is the author of Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti (Seven Stories Press). He hasreported on Africa for a variety of publications since 2007 and served as the correspondent in the DemocraticRepublic of Congo for the Inter Press Service. His blog can be read at www.michaeldeibert.blogspot.com
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