Congo (SouthScan v18/23 14 Nov 03): Mobutu veteran Kengo returns home, backs transition
Former president Mobutu Sese Seko's prime minister and ex-International Monetary Fund darling, Leon Kengo wa Dondo, has decided to put an end to nearly seven years of exile in Belgium.
In an exclusive interview with SouthScan, Kengo said he would arrive back in Kinshasa on a South African Airways flight from Johannesburg on Sunday noon.
Seeking a public welcome he decided to fly SAA to time his arrival to suit his supporters. Flights from Europe arrive in the evening in a city where public transport is difficult and there are frequent power cuts.
His objective, he says, is to give his support to the current transition process. Some months back he told SouthScan he still feared his security would not be guaranteed, but this time he said the time was right. Fears for his security were expressed even after the appointment of the new transition
government in July.
Despite his long absence, Kengo has always kept a close eye on Congolese political events and even during his exile he was consulted by African leaders, including the Gabonese Foreign Minister Jean Ping, whom he was seen meeting in the corridors of a Paris hotel during the February Franco-African summit.
He has also met a number of Congolese leaders from both the government and the rebel groups, he said, while another source tells SouthScan that the late president Laurent Kabila invited him to meet in Libreville to discuss appointing him prime minister. Kengo declined the offer, allegedly because there was no constitutional framework to delineate with clarity the respective boundaries between the powers of the president and of the prime minister. Later he also met several times representatives of the current President Joseph Kabila. Since then things have changed radically and now allow his return.
"I was expecting political visibility"
explains Kengo. "The country was divided. But now the sons and daughters of the country are gathering again. There is a constitution. We have institutions", he says.
"I think my duty is to go there and support those who lead the transition", he says, adding his decision as a "legalist" and that he respects the Pretoria power-sharing deal "agreed by everybody" last December.
"Yet to be supportive does not mean to accept everything. If it is needed, criticism can be uttered from a constructive point of view", he says, and claims he was assured by high-ranking Congolese officials that his security would be guaranteed.
This does not only refer only to his physical integrity but also indicates that he will no longer face legal prosecution. A few months after Laurent Kabila took over in 1997 the government sued Kengo, among others from the Mobutu regime, for having allegedly "misappropriated properties" while he was in office as prime minister. His name appeared in
the 1992 report of the National Sovereign Conference on that particular issue.
No ambitions for now
Beyond his support for the transition, Kengo clearly foresees a political role in the longer term, though he claims to have no political ambition during the transition. This is scheduled to end by June 2005 though it will be probably extended by another year, as stipulated in the Pretoria agreement, to allow for the setting up of the logistical and legal conditions for the next elections.
Kengo says he will run for a political job once a new constitution and a new electoral law are adopted. Challenged about the kind of message he can deliver to Congolese who believe that he failed when he was prime minister to guarantee the integrity of the country and to curb corruption, Kengo responds, "In that area, nobody can teach lessons. Without entering into polemics, let us have a humble profile. As far as the elections are concerned, it is only the people who will
have the cards in their hands. Let's not prejudge".
Nor was he keen to reveal his programme - "it is still premature" -saying he must first evaluate the situation on the field. Likewise, he was evasive when asked with whom he could make an alliance, since many of his former ministers have joined the groups now in the transitional government.
At the very least, however, Kengo's comeback is another indicator of the normalisation of political life in the DRC. Like another heavyweight of Congolese politics, Etienne Tshisekedi, also not in the transitional government, Kengo has decided to play a constructive game in order not to antagonise the Congolese people or the donor community who want to give the transition a chance.
They are both in a comfortable situation. They will not be held accountable if the transition fails to deliver on its promises, and especially the social dividend of peace that is demanded by the population. But both these veterans have a
handicap. Tshisekedi, who is nearly 68, has a large popular base but his health is fragile. Kengo, who is not much younger, seems in better shape but retains the image of a technocrat, somehow distant, whose supporters have over time disbanded. His challenge will be to gather a new audience. But at the same time he has maintained links with many of his former ministers, and some of them are back in a commanding position.
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Congo (SouthScan v18/23 14 Nov 03): Would-be gold mining giant plans return to Ituri
As the gold price continued to rise close to the symbolic $400/oz mark interest is increasing in the DR Congo's resources. Now the Ghanaian corporation Ashanti Goldfields is planning to re-launch exploration in its Mongbwalu, Ituri, concession.
But the company first has to circumvent a minefield of past contracts and deals struck with the various players during the Congo's years of war. If it does so successfully in talks with
the transitional government this will give a fillip to other minerals companies contemplating a return. That in turn would give an immense boost to export revenues and encouragement to foreign donors.
Ashanti, which is in talks on merging with AngloGold to make it the world's number one gold mining company, intends to invest between US$20 million and $30m on prospecting, the company's general manager Peter Cowley told Congolese officials during a visit to Kinshasa last month. It will begin in February 2004 at the latest. If the prospecting yields results Ashanti could invest up to $200m to re-launch production on the site, whose reserves are estimated at over 100 tons of recoverable gold, about a fifth of South Africa's annual production, worth about $1.2 billion.
The announcement was made after the meetings Cowley had with the vice-president in charge of the economy and finance portfolio, Jean-Pierre Bemba, the minister of planning, Alexis Thambwe Mwamba, a former
general manager at the gold and cassiterite company Sominki in Southern Kivu, and above all with the vice-president in charge of the politics, defence and security commission, Azarias Ruberwa.
Monuc deployment
One of the company's main concerns is security in an area where gold mines have been the main focus of battles between a number of protagonists, including the Ugandan army and different militias.
Cowley was told that in the framework of the second phase of its mission, the Ituri brigade of the UN Mission in the Congo (Monuc), reinforced since October 20 by a Nepalese contingent, would deploy its troops outside of Bunia at Aru and Mahagi on Lake Albert and at the Mongbwalu mine.
The security situation is far from calm. In line with its stronger mandate Monuc is becoming engaged in fire-fights with rebels in the Bunia area. Last week dozens of armed militiamen were reported to have attacked the UN headquarters and a military camp at Bunia and a gun battle followed with rebels believed to be from the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC).
Last Saturday (November 8) a commander of the little-known group Parti pour l'Unite, la Solidarite et
l'Integrite du Congo (Pusic) was shot dead and nine militiamen arrested when the group opened fire on a UN military patrol in the Ituri district.
Reviewing contracts
But even if security is restored in the area, another problem must be resolved before exploration can resume.
In an interview in the French daily Le Monde on October 22 the new DRC minister of mines, Eugene Diomi Ndongala, warned that the Congolese government intends to review the contract with Ashanti. Both sides disagree on the percentage of Ashanti's share in the project. Ashanti argues that it signed a contract in March 1997 in Brussels with the then chairman of the Office des Mines de Kilo-Moto (Okimo) parastatal, John Tibasima, who is the minister of urbanisation and housing in the current transitional government. This contract guaranteed the Ghanaian company a 86% stake in the Kilo-Moto gold mine.
At the time, although the mine was already being occupied by Laurent Kabila's rebels
of the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (ADFL), Tibasima acted as the representative of the legitimate government which was only overthrown on May 17, argues the Ashanti management.
In any case, after he was sworn in, Laurent Kabila declared the contract null and void and a new agreement was signed that gave 51% of the shares to Okimo and only 49% to Ashanti. But in the year 2000, in exchange for $ 1m representing the arrears on the lease for the concession, Kabila cancelled the second contract and approved the initial one, though at a time the Kinshasa authorities had lost control of the region.
Concession size contested
A second bone of contention concerns the size of the concession - 8,000 sq. km according to Ashanti, only 2,000 sq. km according to the government. There is also a disagreement between Ashanti and the government concerning the dismissal of the 1,700 workers at the mine. Ashanti is accused of failing to respect the
law but the manager of its Congolese subsidiary has said it was impossible for Ashanti to pay so many people from a production that had fallen to zero.
Ashanti also denies accusations in Le Monde that the company was maintaining close links with the Ugandan authorities through their Kampala office, headed by former Ghanaian general Ashley Lassen. Quoting unidentified "Congolese rebel sources", Le Monde reported also that Lassen co-ordinated the war with the Ugandan military.
The Congolese parliament, however, could have the final say. Under the Pretoria agreement it has been given the power to revisit all the financial contracts signed during the Congo wars of 1996-1997 and 1998-2003, prior to the appointment of the transitional government.
* On Friday (November 14) Ashanti and the world's number two gold miner AngloGold announced they would extend the deadline to December 12 to conclude the merger agreement entered into in early August. The two groups are
seeking to merge and form a gold company that would challenge US gold miner Newmont, currently world number one.
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Congo (SouthScan v18/23 14 Nov 03): Belgians aim to form Congolese brigade for Bunia
Belgium has said it will help create a Congolese brigade to boost the UN's force in strife-ridden Bunia, in the east of the country.
A Belgian delegation was touring the DRC this week to evaluate needs for the unification of the country's military and for forming a Congolese contingent to send to Bunia. The 20-strong delegation visited Kisangani in north-eastern DRC, as well as Kamina, in Katanga Province, site of one of the country's largest military bases.
"The formation of this brigade will be one of the first steps in Belgium's support of a unified Congolese army," a Belgian official said, according to the UN agency IRIN.
The leadership of a unified national army was inaugurated on September 5. However, progress
in bringing the military's rank and file together has been slow.
SOUTHSCAN
A Bulletin of Southern African Affairs
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Online at www.SouthScan.NET
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Vol.18/23 14 November 2003
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