The theme of the conference was artisanal mining, more specifically, how to come to a “professionalization” of this sector. Some fifteen presenters exposed their views to the one hundred invitees consisting of government officials of different levels, managers of mining companies, unionists, journalists, NGO-people, miners and myself.
The director of IDAK opened the conference with a spirited speech citing “yes we can” and “I have a dream.” She, too, has a dream, she stated, “a dream that one day our educated sons and daughters will no longer feel the urge to go and wash dishes in some restaurant in the West, simply because their country has nothing to offer.” The public responded with a couple of Hallelujah’s.
In DRC, similar gatherings are very solemn events during which certain ceremonial rules need to be respected. While addressing the public, for instance, each presenter begins with greeting the authorities. During the enumeration of these Excellences and Honorables, it is crucial to get their hierarchical positions right and address the more important one first. However, the province of Lualaba was only recently created, following the carving up of the former Katanga province into four, and Kolwezi was promoted its provincial capital. And clearly, the newly appointed officials have not found their bearings as yet. When the vice-governor of the new province was invited to the pulpit, she said she preferred to stay seated right where she was, and hesitantly read out loud the speech written on a sheet of paper. Some of the speakers, too, held their crib sheets tightly not to make any mistakes while honouring the Honorables.
Illustrative for the newness of the province was an issue that triggered a heated debate during the Q&A after the presentations, the ZEA, on which each party seemed to define an alternative truth. Zone d’Exploitation Arstisanale by its full name, the ZEA is a “titre minier” designated to areas where artisanal “creuseurs” are allowed to mine. It was a geologist who – very casually, during his instructive exploration of the layers of the earth – mentioned the ZEA’s. After this presentation, someone in the audience requested the floor, the moderator handed him the microphone, and he took off. He asked the provincial government authorities when these ZEA’s were finally going to be designated. It is taking such a long time, he added, that he feared that the artisanal mining experience might get lost. “Oh, but these titles have been designated already,” the man replied, “between July and December 2016, as much as 19 ZEA’s were attributed in the province of Lualaba.” “Really?,” IDAK’s head then said, “where then?,” she wanted to know, “are these zones actually situated?” Nobody seemed to know. Have these titres miniers really been designated as yet? “Yes they have,” a provincial minister with a background in the artisanal miners’ cooperatives said, “but the problem is that after having spent money to buy this small scale mining title, it costs the cooperatives of the creuseurs about an extra 4000 US$ to carry out the preliminary research to find out the value of the area. Most cooperatives simply do not have this kind of money, and as a consequence, nothing really happens in these zones.” So the zones are geographically defined, but they are not really artisanal mining zones, since what is supposed to happen there, is not happening as yet. “Rubbish, it’s just phantom titles!,” someone then shouted without waiting for the mike, “there is no such thing as a ZEA.” A lot of chatter in the audience, ZEA buzzed all over the place. Everyone now looked towards the representative of the national authorities, waiting for a fool proof answer. The man was on the phone though, commanding his staff in Kinshasa to mail him the list of designated ZEA’s as soon as possible, so he could show it to the audience. This list never appeared though. “Dear friends,” a participant concluded, “conferences far too often remain just a “tour de babel,” let’s work and make sure that something concrete comes out of this one.” Then they all addressed the next issue.
The conference left me in a daze of confusion. How could it be that all the experts gathered together did not find a crystal clear answer? I went to the office of the head of the Cellulle des Mines du Bureau Isolé de Kolwezi for another view on the ZEA’s. This department, up until today, depends upon the provincial governement at Lubumbashi at the new Haut-Katanga province, which in turn depends upon the head office in Kinshasa at national level. In due time, the department of Kolwezi will be accountable to this head office exclusively. The ZEA’s were called into existence to offer a legal frame for artisanal mining, the head of department said, as defined in the Code Minier. So in theory, he continued, these ZEA’s do exist, but in practice (“sur le terrain”), they do not, as they are not yet functional. The only thing happening in some of these zones up until today, is the “forage”, the exploring whether the zone contains valuable minerals. This explains the confusion during the conference. There is such a thing as a ZEA in theory, but in practice, these zones will be called into being from the moment the creuseurs start to dig. As it turns out, whether an area is designated ZEA or not, does not really matter in practice either. The Plan Stratégique de Développement du Secteur Minier (2016-2021), edited in 2016, mentions 200 ZEA’s throughout DRCongo, but the number of sites where artisanal miners are mining by far exceeds this number, 1364 areas more precisely, as the document indicates.
IDAK drew up some recommendations after the conference, and one of these was that the ZEA should be attributed by the provincial authorities, no longer by the national ones, that public companies should be encouraged to cede part of their concessions and turn those into ZEA’s, and that the “société civile” should claim the attribution of viable ZEA’s. Viable ZEA’S. As stated by a president of a cooperative in Kolwezi, the ZEA’s that are pinned on the map of Lualaba are quite far away from the city. In addition, the ore would be too far underground to actually allow artisanal mining.