Western corporate giants settle over who owns Congo riches

KPFA Weekend News Anchor Anthony Fest: Two international corporate giants, one based in London, the other in Vancouver, Canada, have settled a dispute over mining interests in the Congo's Katanga Province.  This follows a fall 2011 report, by the International Food Policy Research Institute that the Democratic Republic of Congo now has the world's greatest hunger emergency. International charities have not connected the dots between hunger and starvation in Congo and foreign ownership of Congo's wealth, so say some observers. And some Africa social justice advocates say the big charities exist to obscure that connection. KPFA's Ann Garrison has the story.

 

KPFA/Ann Garrison:  News reports about long running conflict and tragedy in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo most often concern the two Kivu Provinces, North and South Kivu, which are rich in coltan, cassiterite, natural gas, and other resources, but the real heart of Congo's immense wealth is the Katanga Copper Belt in its southeasternmost province, Katanga.  

 

Veteran Africa, Congo, and human rights investigator Keith Harmon Snow spoke to KPFA about the wealth concentrated in Congo's Katanga Province and the significance of London-based Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation's agreement to pay Vancouver-based FIRST Quantum Corporation 1.25 billion dollars to settle disputed mine ownership claims in Katanga:  

 

Keith Harmon Snow: Katanga holds the world's largest copper and cobalt deposits. We don't hear about the Congo's "cobalt connection," because this is one of the most valuable single mineral assets in the world, and companies like First Quantum and Eurasian Natural Resources arrived in the wake of the US-backed invasion of 1996. 

Stockholders in these companies include arms dealers, Wall Street investment bankers, banks, tycoons -- the "untouchables" who are never mentioned in news, in Human Rights Watch reports or in UN reports, or are never mentioned by the non-profit organizations that organize these speakers' tours at US colleges to "Save" or "RAISE HOPE" for the Congo. Imagine, 1.25 billion dollars to settle a dispute! We're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars involving friends of Bill Clinton and George Bush and Margaret Thatcher and Benjamin Netanyahu, and meanwhile, people today are still starving and being butchered in the Congo. 

 

KPFA: Neither the International Food Policy Research Institute nor any of the news reports about the mining settlement suggest that western corporate ownership of Katanga's wealth might explain the starvation, disease or human rights atrocities that are acute and ongoing. Snow says that the international mega charities, otherwise known as the "misery industry," serve to obscure the obvious:

 

Keith Harmon Snow: Yeah, Westerners have no idea what is happening in Congo. I don't care what movies we've seen or what speakers we've heard or what panels we've attended. In Congo in the 2004 and 2007 time frame, I saw some of the world's worst starvation one could imagine. The profits made by the capitalist aid enterprise exceed the profits made by all the minerals, petroleum, and forest exploitation combined. Why is it suddenly in vogue to produce a report about starvation in Congo? This is one of the world's nastiest dictatorships, and the mercenaries, the massacres, the torture and disappearing that accompanied the recent Congolese elections were whited out by the media. It's the same with the big mining and its connections to suffering and to the atrocities.

 

KPFA: January 17th will mark the 51st anniversary of Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba's assassination for attempting to defend Katanga Province against secessionist forces oVeteran Africa, Congo, and human rights investigator Keith Harmon Snow rganized by Belgian soldiers and intelligence operatives. Belgium had long controlled the vast profits made from Katanga's copper, diamonds, gold, uranium, and cobalt, which remain in foreign hands to this day.       

 

For Pacifica, KPFA, and AfrobeatRadio, I'm Ann Garrison.