Dodging bullets in the DRC
Contractors caught in the crossfire of Congo war
BENJAMIN Moore looks out across his construction camp on the road to the front line in Goma, where South African troops this week fought their first ground battle with casualties of this operation supporting the Congolese army against M23 rebels.
The place is jam-packed with mobile crushing units that reduce hulks of volcanic rock to building material, a concrete and asphalt plant, earth-moving equipment and trucks.
“We could asphalt the whole of Goma if they pay us,” he says, referring to a dispute his construction company Traminco has with the Congolese government.
To the right of the camp lies a small thicket that runs for a few hundred metres to the Rwandan border. “In the past the Interahamwe have sheltered there,” he says. The Hutu militia largely carried out the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and then fled into neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.
Just 2km down the road, in the shadow of the active Nyiragongo volcano, lies Munigi hill front line. In the valley to the right is the main UN military base, launch pad for assault helicopter attacks on rebel positions this week. Rocket fire streaks across the sky.
“Sometimes the Congolese army comes to ask me to turn the crushers off because they can’t hear the shelling. If they get too close we call it a day,” he shrugs. “Can you believe I work in a place like this? But I have to stick it out because I’m waiting to be paid.”
Moore founded Traminco with South African businessman Brian Christopher in 2002.
In 2009 Traminco won a threeyear government road-building contract worth $19-million that was supposed to be completed in January 2012. But construction was halted when the company was only paid 60% of what it was due, he says. “I was carrying about $5-million in debt and couldn’t carry on working.”
In November 2012 the rebels took Goma and occupied the city for a few weeks. “They came in and looted the camp,” he explains. “Afterwards we picked up the pieces.”
Moore moved from Namibia
We crawled behind some rocks until they stopped shooting
to Kinshasha, the DRC capital, in 1994 to start an aviation business. Two years later the country erupted into a war that led to the ousting of dictator Mabuto Sese Seko and later dragged in Angola, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Uganda and a bewildering array of allied rebel groups that has flared up ever since and left at least 5 million people dead.
Moore decided to head east to start a new aviation company, Sun Air Service.
“It’s strange to say, but I came to Goma in 1997 because I was running away from war,” says Moore. “They said there are no aeroplanes in Goma so I took a chance and started commercial flights from Kisangani.”
The eruption of Nyiragongo volcano in 2002 that resulted in a river of molten rock flowing through Goma, killing scores of people and displacing thousands, killed Moore’s business by destroying 1km of Goma airport’s runway.
He moved to neighbouring Rwanda’s capital Kigali, where he met Christopher, whose company the Metal Processing Association (MPA) bought cassiterite from Congolese sister company Mining Processing Congo (MPC). Both are subsidiaries of Kivu Resources, owned by SA listed Metmar, Coronation Capital, Johan Capi- tal and founders and managers.
Moore was appointed to run MPA’s cassiterite factory in Gisenyi, the Rwandan town on Lake Kivu bordering the eastern DRC a stone’s throw from Goma. He also started prospecting, together with Christopher and fellow South African Bruce Stride, former MD of MPA and operations manager at Kivu Resources who currently heads Maxima Silica in Rustenberg.
MPA acquired a prospecting right to Bisiye, the largest cassiterite mine in the volatile and remote Walikali region. This set it on a collision course with the well-connected Group Minier Bangandula (GMB), a company part owned by controversial Goma businessman Alexis Makabuza, who was previously accused by the United Nations of illegal arms imports and transporting rebel troops.
“GMB were actually there first but we used GPS coordinates and GMB got the location wrong on their prospecting right,” says Stride.
MPA halted operations at Bisiye three years ago after an assassination attempt on Christopher, he says.
Moore recounts the incident, which illustrates why warring factions here are intent on continuing the conflict, resulting in the mineral wealth of this region doing little to improve the lot of millions of impoverished Congolese.
“We were just sitting in the open, at a folding table in the camp. It was dark. I was busy with my laptop and Brian was talking to the engineer,” he recalls. “The shooting started from the bush about 40m away. You could see the flashes.”
The engineer was hit in the knee, and a bullet went clean through Christopher’s chair. “We crawled behind some rocks until they stopped shooting.”
Stride and Moore believe MPA had the best chance to bring development and economic upliftment to the desperately poor region — and that this was the reason they were shot at.
“There were military checkpoints everywhere where the artisinal miners were ‘taxed’ 20%. This area is very marginalised. There is no nurse, no doctor, no schools, a lot of diseases — it’s very primitive.”
The company had built two heliports, flying in tons of building materials with Russian cargo helicopters, and started to build a road.