ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the political economy of mineral resources in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the structure of conflicts it generates in the leading mining provinces of Kasai and Katanga. The DRC is well known for its diverse mineral resources (diamond, copper, cobalt, tantalum, uranium, etc.). It is also rich in biodiversity and has large agricultural potential. The equatorial forest, which transverses the northern part of the country, is endowed with assorted timber products. In spite of these vast natural resource endowments, the socioeconomic reality is that the bulk of the Congolese people live in extreme poverty and human insecurity. They do not enjoy the benefits of the enormous wealth and potential of the country. Available statistical data point to the precariousness of life in the DRC, although one must hasten to add that, as a consequence of the prolonged civil war, DRC’s statistics are, for the most part, unreliable. Even the data quoted in most official documents are suspect and can be misleading. Having said that, this study still makes use of some seemingly credible official statistics. In addition, the study relies on a plethora of empirical facts based on observation of contemporary political and socio-economic events in the DRC, as well as other secondary sources. According to the 2005 Report of the Provincial Division of Planning in Katanga, the living standard in this mineral resource-rich province is so poor that the bulk of the population subsists on less than US$1 per day. Further, a recent report released by the Netherlands Institute for Southern Africa (2006, p. 22) articulates the broader Congolese picture as follows:
We can epitomize the DRC’s paradox as follows: the country is potentially rich, but poverty becomes meanwhile the common ‘public good’. Moreover, the observed potential richness seems to produce a kind of curse linked to the fact that the use of state’s violence against the populace is preponderant in the country’s history. The kind of curse implied above tends to create within the DRC ‘a sort of culture of terror and a space of death’ (Taussig quoted in Watts, 1999, p. 9). The poetical picture of this violence is well dramatized in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. In this melodrama, Kurtz’s policy of brutality is structured in such a way that violence is used as an instrument to tame the local subjects so that resource extraction ‘in the interest of civilization’ can proceed without resistance! Kurtz as a fictional character is represented historically by true personages like King Leopold II of Belgium who reigned over the ‘Congo Free State’ (CFS) between 1885 and 1908. Under the so-called CFS, Congo was proclaimed a private property of King Leopold II, who owned the entire land of the country and condemned the subjugated natives to brutal forced labour mainly for the production of rubber. It is estimated that about 10-15 million people (half of the CFS’s population) died of brutality, exploitation and disease during the reign of Leopold II. The imperial army Force Publique adopted a brutal policy of amputation of the natives’ limbs to enforce the rubber quota requirements imposed by the King’s officials. Private Reports on reliance on military violence as ‘normal’ instrument of exploitation during the imperial regime of King Leopold II are well known (Vangroenweghe, 1986; Hochschild, 1998). Between 1908 and 1960, Congo was governed as a colonial territory of the Belgian government. In comparative terms, the colonial regime significantly mitigated the brutality of the CFS, but expanded the structure of natural resource exploitation. The perpetuation of the tradition of rapacious exploitation and brutality in natural resource governance in postcolonial history is more or less exemplified by the regimes of Mobutu and the two Kabilas.
