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Across Congo, Freelance Miners Dig In Against Modern Industry
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Yet because the artisanal system is so economically entrenched and accepted -- a billboard in the provincial capital shows a digger chatting on a cellphone -- people here say it will be difficult to uproot.
As more major mining companies head to Katanga, the diggers are playing a cat-and-mouse game with police, who chase them from site to site. When the police showed up at Luamba's site last month, hundreds of diggers repelled them with rocks.
Given the potential for unrest, companies are either turning their concessions into secure fortresses, as Freeport-McMoRan has, or attempting to reach an accommodation with the diggers.
The issue is particularly sensitive for Anvil, whose company trucks and planes were used by the Congolese military in 2004 to crush what they said was a nascent rebellion. Though Anvil was cleared by a Congolese court of complicity in the violence, in which 73 civilians were killed, the incident was a public relations disaster for the company, which has since funded a nonprofit group called Pact to help with development projects around its mines.
When Anvil found hundreds of diggers on one of its concessions two years ago, the company hired all of them. At another concession, however, Anvil found 7,000 men. For a while, the company allowed them to continue digging on the condition they sell the ore to the company. But police eventually told them to leave.
No one expects that the mining companies will be able to absorb all the 250,000 diggers in the province.
"If you find 300, perhaps they can be accommodated," said Richard Robinson, Pact's Congo representative. "But if you find 5,000, what do you do? The question is: Where do these guys go?"
In the case of Luamba's site, the provincial governor, Moise Katumbi, told the diggers they could remain. A wealthy businessman with a populist's touch, he is pushing mining companies to start agriculture projects and pave roads. But Katumbi says that Congo must also shed its old, corrupt ways.
"It's up to us not to miss this chance," he said.
