Mines, dollars and dams

A decade after the fall of Mobutu Sese Seko, the Kinshasa government is still plagued by grand corruption and its reform efforts look hollow

Several inconvenient facts are undermining President Joseph Kabila's ambitious 'zero tolerance' anti-corruption campaign. Recent reports highlight the failure of efforts to reform Congo's state and the continuing pillage of its mining industry by local and foreign interests. On 26 September, the Senate published a 122-page report on mismanagement in the mining business. Congo made just US$92 million from this key industry in 2008 but lost some $450 mn. through under-invoicing, tax evasion, smuggling, fraudulent contracts and poor accounting. The Chairman of the Senate Commission, David Mutamba Dibwe, said most of the mineral exports are not declared and the poorly equipped taxation authorities are unable to track the trade or the revenues. In North Kivu and South Kivu Provinces, some 80% of exported metals, which include Africa's largest tin shipments, are not registered. Only 1.09% of the tax due was paid on the $74.73 mn. claimed by the tax authorities, the Direction Générale des Impôts. DGI officials prefer to let debts accumulate, with arrears subject to heavy penalties whose amount they can then 'negotiate'. Statistics bear little relation to reality and are compiled using 'only one computer, which is old and has a very weak capacity'. Then on 30 September, the 70-year-old Canadian mining lawyer Paul Fortin resigned as Managing Director of the state-owned copper mining company Gécamines after four difficult years. 'Frankly, I'm tired,' Fortin explained. He had tried to resuscitate the company's finances and administration: his declared aim was to revive Gécamines' production of copper, cobalt, zinc and lead in tandem with foreign partners while ensuring that employees were paid and that its debt was manageable. Fortin's critics accuse him of failing to tackle the rampantly corrupt political elite which pushed through mining deals for private benefit, further undermining Gécamines' position. Sources in Kolwezi said Fortin saw the limits of his own efforts when he visited Kamoto in western Katanga and discovered the factory had been producing 50 tonnes of copper a month without his knowledge for a year. The ownership papers were appropriately opaque, and the metal was transported to Lubumbashi and sold privately. Another report suggests that company directors were selling the state's capital equipment privately, including machinery that Fortin needed to rebuild Gécamines' dilapidated factories. The new man to watch at Gécamines is Calixte Mukasa, Fortin's former deputy and now Managing Director. Mukasa is the uncle of Augustin Katumba Mwanke, a powerful advisor to President Kabila who was named as corrupt by the 2002 United Nations Expert Panel on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources of Congo, after which he was briefly sidelined by Kabila. Mukasa is not thought to be enthusiastic about reform and accountability in the mining business. Like previous Gécamines managing directors such as Billy Rautenbach and George Forrest, Fortin is likely to return to Katanga in a private capacity, but he is legally obliged to stay away for a year. We hear he gets on well with former banker Rebecca Gaskin, who now heads United Resources and its joint venture operation with Gécamines at Kipushi. The troubles in Congo's mining business are matched by concerns about political developments. It was recently revealed that Kabila is planning to change the constitution (adopted in December 2005) to abolish presidential term limits. For many Congolese this suggests a return to the pattern set by Mobutu Sese Seko. In mid-September, Kabila set up a commission to 'evaluate' the constitution, with a dozen representatives from the Senate, House of Representatives and Supreme Court. Under a senior lawyer, Néhémie Mwilanya Wilondja, the Commission held its first meeting on 18 September and jettisoned a proposal to create 15 extra provinces, in addition to the present eleven. Radically, it will consider extending the presidential term from five to seven years, with the possibility of further terms. The President would also chair the body in charge of judicial matters, the Conseil Supérieur de la Magistrature, thus breaching the separation of powers. The constitution prohibits alterations to the presidential term and guarantees the independence of the judiciary. Parliament is to consider the Commission's report next March. On 21 September, Communications Minister Lambert Mende Omalanga denied that the Commission existed; the following day, the Senate President, Léon Kengo wa Dondo, said it did exist and a week later, Mende said it was just a 'cogitation of experts'. None of this has prompted criticism from the European Union which, with the United States, provided much of the $500 mn. to pay for the national elections in 2006. 'I am not about to pay for a dictatorship here,' said Louis Michel, the Belgian minister who was then European Union Development Commissioner, before the elections; now he believes in 'quiet diplomacy'. At the end of June, Kabila declared that he intended to remodel the justice system. Soon after, 90 judges were told to retire or be fired. Next in line was the Ministry of Property Affairs; more than 80% of legal cases in Congo are about property rights and a piece of land may have several registered owners. Yet so far, reform has touched only the lowest rungs of the ladder. The much-criticised Finance Minister Athanase Matenda and advisor Katumba Mwanke hold on to their jobs despite repeated accusations by parliament and civil society. Katumba Mwanke faces criminal charges in South Africa. The apparent perpetuation of the Mobutu-style system of political patronage, pillage of state assets and impoverishment of the citizenry provides the backdrop to a new study by academics in three continents, who argue that the Congolese state is beyond reform(1). Edited by Theodore Trefon, the American who directs the Belgian Reference Centre for Expertise for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, the study concludes that foreign-backed reforms have not produced any sustained improvement - rather tens of billions of dollars have left the country through capital flight and fraudulent sales of state assets. Foreign lending - amounting to more than $15 bn. in political loans for the pro-West Mobutu regime - further impoverished Congo. The United Nations peacekeeping force, the Mission des Nations Unies en République Démocratique du Congo, costs over $1 bn. a year, yet ordinary people do not live in safety, especially in the east where there is fighting against the Lord's Resistance Army from Uganda and the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (AC Vol 50 No 15). Unrest persists in Goma and Lubero, involving soldiers of the national army. Hundreds of thousands of people have been chased from their homes. Grand macroeconomic reforms meant to reduce poverty have done nothing for Congolese, says Trefon. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation reckons that at least 17% of the population is malnourished, even in Kinshasa, where there is no systematic conflict. The FAO reckons that a crisis exists when malnutrition is at 10%. Trefon argues that aid givers have exacerbated the calamity. As different agencies pursue different agendas, he says, 'the internat