The “accursed” wealth of a poor country

Multinationals which extract precious minerals without permits. Others exporting without paying taxes. There is a direct connection between the war, which has already caused five million deaths, and the struggle for control of natural resources

by Roberto Rotondo

Diggers in an illegal diamond mine in former Zaire. According to a government committee still at work, 90% of the mining concessions in the hands of national and foreign companies are unlawful

The Congolese man in the street knows that the immense natural resources of the Democratic Republic of Congo are being plundered by multinational companies and foreign countries. Just as he knows that the struggle for the rapacious take-over of the resources of the giant of Africa is the prime cause of the political instability, civil war, corruption, insecurity and extreme poverty. But even the most resigned man in the street must have been startled to learn at the end of March that the committee, charged by the government of President Joseph Kabila to renegotiate the terms for prospecting and mining, not only had to impugn and renegotiate all the first 61 contracts under review because vitiated by serious irregularities, but also stated that, on an initial assessment, as many as 90% of the 642 companies, from every corner of the globe, which share more than 4,500 contracts to export diamonds, gold, coltan, oil, gas and cobalt, are not in good standing. Above all the contracts permitting prospecting but not extraction of minerals, breached regularly for years, are under indictment. Such is the case of Alvin Mining that, according to the Congolese press, reported also by the Misna missionary agency, has extracted and exported gold and copper to a value of one billion, three hundred million dollars without contributing one to the coffers of the Congolese state. Such is the case also with Banro, which for years has been exploiting a gold mine, after ejecting a state company whose tax exemptions it held on to, and it is also the case with KHGM, which presented a feasibility study (only in Polish) for the construction of a factory in Katanga and instead set about extracting and marketing copper. One must also bear in mind that the ongoing work of the government commission headed by Minister Martin Kabwelulu excludes many illegal mines in various areas of the country, in North and South Kivu, for example, which are in the hands of rebel militias that swap minerals for money and weapons, despite the embargo imposed by the UN Security Council. But the looting of what lies under the soil is no greater than of what stands above the ground: the timber industry, for example, has rapidly desertified an area of rainforest on the Congo river as large as Poland. Vandalism that has caused the Western media to cry ecological disaster and, after years of silence, pay some attention to the African country. But there is a strong suspicion that the renewed interest is hypocritical, dictated by the arrival on the scene of an awkward competitor, China, which, with a record investment, has cut out for itself a central role in the economic growth of the African country. The Development Bank of China has, in fact, allocated a loan of 3.6 billion euros for the building of hospitals, railway lines, roads, schools. In return, Beijing has received mining permits and concessions for the timber industry.

The Congolese President Joseph Kabila with Chinese President Hu Jintao. The PRC is becoming a privileged partner of the African country with a record investment that will enable the construction of critical infrastructures in exchange for permits for the exploitation of natural resources

Blessed with immense natural resources, the former Zaire covers an area eighty times as large as Belgium – of which it was a colony until fifty years ago – and has 34% of the world reserves of cobalt, 10% of those of gold, over 50% of coltan, but also has significant percentages of diamonds, uranium, cassiterite, niobium. On its territory lie 70% of Africa’s water resources and wood from its rainforest is exported worldwide. Yet 75% of the population lives on less than one dollar a day and more than 1,200 people die every day for reasons linked to poverty. According to figures provided by the International Rescue Committee, merely between January 2006 and April 2007, 727,000 people died in the Congo of hunger, disease and conflict, twice as many deaths as in Darfur. It is estimated that there are 800,000 refugees who still dare not return home for fear of violence. The Congo is, in fact, in ninth place in the special classification of the most dangerous countries in the world drawn up by Jane’s Information Group, an authoritative information service on matters of safety. An unenviable position still held even after January 23, when the government and rebel militias signed an agreement in Goma for ceasefire and disarmament in the north-east, on the border with Uganda and Rwanda, the most unstable area and perpetually in crisis. Precisely from Rwanda in 1998 came a million Hutu refugees, and among them the militiamen guilty of the terrible genocide of the Tutsi and subsequently defeated. It was the match that kindled the second war in the Congo, also called the “African World War” because it involved all the countries of the Great Lakes region and caused five million deaths. In 2003 an agreement brought peace among governments but not among the allied militias of the various pretendants. The most famous, or notorious, is the Congolese commander, of Tutsi origin, Laurent Nkunda who, with the support of Rwanda, rebelled against the Kinshasa government. But no less dangerous and destabilizing are the Mai Mai Hutu militias who have helped the Congolese government against Nkunda and are fighting against Tutsi hegemony in Rwanda. The UN is unable to write the word finis to this war mainly because it is no longer, if it ever were, a matter of ethnic hatred. It is now a gang war for control of illegal mining and trafficking of all sorts.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, to the west, there is again talk of the “Grand Inga” dam project on the river Congo. A gigantic enterprise that could export electricity to the whole of Africa and even to Europe. A month ago in London, seven African governments and the major commercial banks and construction companies on the planet sat down together to talk about the largest hydroelectric power station ever built by man. That was not the first time: the evil-minded say that it was the potential gains glimpsed in the project that made it possible for the Congo to find the foreign backing that enabled it to put an end, in 2003, to the so-called African World War. Who knows whether the “Grand Inga”, described by the African Union as the dynamo for the development of the whole continent, will bring light to the 90% of the Congolese population who are without it today, or whether that, too, will be smuggled over the frontiers of a country “accursedly rich”.