Paying in blood for rebel gold
Stephan Hofstatter and photographer James Oatway visit one of the hellish makeshift mines that fund the seemingly endless conflict in the eastern DRC
ZAWADI Kambale came to Musia mountain from his home village of Bingi in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo looking for gold. A month later, the 32-yearold teaching graduate lies buried under a rock fall. Within seconds, scores of miners are swarming over the rubble, digging frantically with shovels and their bare hands. Kambale’s friends from Bingi — Paluku Kasusu and Malinyota Kambale — are pulled to safety, battered but alive. “People shouted to us that we were in danger, but we weren’t fast enough,” says a distraught Kasusu. “My friend Zawadi from Bingi is still in there.”
Minutes later, Zawadi Kambale’s lifeless body is carried out of the pit, laid on a muddy slope and covered with a grey shroud, his feet protruding. For a moment thousands of miners lining the ridges overlooking the pits look on in silence.
Musia gold mine — and Zawadi Kambale’s senseless death — represent all that ails the Congo, a land of immense wealth where most people live in extreme poverty thanks to foreign exploitation, military meddling and continued misrule. Musia also provides clues to how it can escape from a seemingly endless cycle of violence, deprivation and death.
Our journey to Musia mine had begun in a hotel room in Europe, where the Sunday Times held a series of meetings with an exiled rebel commander. “If you really want to understand the war in the DRC, you have to speak to General Lafontaine,” he said.
Sikuli Lafontaine is a former Congolese colonel who commands an army of “patriots” that controls the mine from headquarters in Bunyatenge village, deep in the bush. Lafontaine considers the 12 000 miners at Musia his “reserve army”, ready and willing to be trained and armed to fight for him.
For more than a decade, artisanal coltan, tin and gold mines in the eastern Congo have been ex-
We never lose hope. One day I will leave this mine and return to cultivate my land and take a wife
ploited by all rebel groups, local and foreign — including the M23, defeated this month with the help of South African troops — and used to fund further conflict. Rebels often coerce the locals into mining for them, impose heavy taxes, or monopolise the trade in food and mining supplies, charging hefty mark-ups. Because it is deemed blood gold, it cannot be traded legally and is smuggled across the border to Uganda, then exported with fake documents to Dubai.
The Belgian company Miniere des Grande Lac mined the area from 1930 until it packed up in 1956 ahead of Congolese independence in 1960. “When the colonisers left, people kept looking for gold in the area where the white man had found it, but they only found a little bit,” says local chief Mesesa Kambale. “Then, in 2000, we discovered this mountain is where the gold is, but we stopped mining because of the war.”
By then the area was controlled by Rwandan Hutu rebel group the FDLR, comprised of former genocidaires and Rwandan soldiers. The FDLR has been implicated in mass executions and rapes, and tops the United Nations intervention force’s rebel hit list after the defeat of the M23.
“The FDLR attacked us so many times I’ve lost count,” says Kambale, recounting several killings, beatings and stabbings. “They came here and asked me for food, gold and money, and when I couldn’t give it to them they stabbed me with a spear and killed my colleague.”
By 2011, with the FDLR weakened by a series of brutal reprisals, the region found itself under Lafontaine’s control.
“Now we are secure. If it wasn’t for this man, we would still be attacked,” says Kambale.
The only way to get to Musia mine is a gruelling eight-hour march through the mud from Bunyatenge village. Miners from all walks of life, including lawyers, teachers and subsistence farmers, occupy the vast, excavated
site, living in shelters dotting the steep surrounding slopes made from wooden poles lashed together with ropes and covered with tarpaulins, with walls of twigs and leaves.
The miners are divided into groups of 50. They work for a “sponsor” who pays for their food and equipment and gives them a cut of the gold found. Each group is allocated a 5mwide strip of land that runs 100m up the mountain.
It was one of Lafontaine’s own soldiers, Colonel Jacques Safari, who made a major discovery that sparked the latest gold rush.
Safari had been wounded in battle, which had left a scar from a PKM machine-gun bullet across his face. While recuperating in Butembo hospital, he was warned he would be arrested. “I came to hide in this village,” he said.
In January, Chief Kambale asked Safari if he could raise funds to mine the mountain. Safari financed a crew of 50 for six months, at a cost of $12 000. After working for half a year they made a spectacular find of 1 000kg of gold, sold for $420 000.
Safari concedes that his rebels buy weapons from the Congolese army with “whatever money we can find”. The going rate is $35 for an RPG, $25 for an AK47, $125 for a Russian PKM machine gun and $200 for a mortar. But he will not confirm if his gold was used to buy arms.
Miners interviewed all say the mine has improved their lives. Teacher Saanane Kambale, 45, says he could not make ends meet on his salary of $20 a month. “I’ve saved enough to buy a 5ha plot of land and I can send $100 a month to my wife and children in Goma,” he says.
Meza Kambale, 25, was a peasant farmer in Muhanga village near Bunyatenge. On the mine he works from 7am to 10am, breaks for a meal of rice and beans, and continues until 5pm for a dinner of cassava. “In the evening we relax by playing cards. We have no money for beer. Only on Sundays do we take a break and pray to God.”
In May, he found 6.5kg gold, which was sold for $2 500. “We haven’t found anything since then but we never lose hope,” he says. “One day I will leave this mine and return to cultivate my land and take a wife.”
The miners say Lafontaine’s soldiers never coerce or tax them, although this could not be confirmed. Their main gripes are a lack of services and prospecting equipment.
But experts warn that their gold is still tainted. “If a group is armed and has a history of fighting other armed groups and they control a mining area, then anything that comes from there should be considered conflict gold,” says Enrico Carisch, a former UN investigator in the Congo who runs a sanctions advisory group. “Obviously, it needs to be taken into account whether an armed group continues armed extortion and coercion.”
Lafontaine says President Joseph Kabila should be held responsible for Zawadi Kambale’s death. “The miners are here from everywhere — from Goma, from Beni, from Rutshuru. But where is Kabila? He has never been here. He knows nothing of how these people live and suffer. That’s why we hate Kabila.”
This piece was made possible by a Taco Kuiper grant