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Return of mining raises hope in Congo

Rory Carroll

THERE is little to break the silence at Kolwezi, once the economic powerhouse of Congo, 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. Congo'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 Democratic Republic of Congo. 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 U.N. 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 U.N. 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. Rene 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."

Kisula Ngoy, Katanga's Governor, said foreign capital and expertise were vital. "There is no alternative. The solution is to re-industrialise."

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 U.N. 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."

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. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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