Blood Gold in the Congo

by Peter Ralph

  “George is probably right, but your mother’s going to be distraught. Don’t say anything. I’ll talk to her. I don’t want you flying on a 707. It must be fifty years old. We’ll charter a plane for the duration of your trip.”

  “I can fly commercial,” Joseph said.

  “I know you can, but then Bodho won’t be able to give you the red-carpet treatment. Besides, I want you to be able to call the crew at any time, so the plane’s ready to go. I don’t want you staying at the palace either. If something goes wrong, I want you to be able to get out in a hurry. George, there’s a new five-star hotel in the diplomatic quarter. That’s where you and Joseph will stay.”

  “Yeah, the Kempinski Hotel,” Faraday replied, “but you can’t insult Bodho. He’s invited Joseph to stay at the palace. He’s going to treat it as a slap in the face if Joseph says no. You can’t do it.”

  “You can smooth it over. Tell them the Department of Commerce officials are traveling with Joseph, and they want to stay at the same place as him.”

  “What if they say we can all stay at the palace?”

  “For fuck’s sake. Say there are CIA agents traveling with him. It’ll ensure there’s no invite.”

  Joseph frowned. He knew his father was worried because he rarely swore.

  “Dad, don’t worry, nothing’s going to happen to me.”

  “We’re all going to get rich.” Faraday grinned as he stood up and shook Joseph’s and Frank’s hands. “I’ll charter a Gulfstream. Let’s aim to fly out at midday tomorrow.”

  Later in the afternoon, Joseph entered his father’s office and said, “Dad, I don’t need George with me.”

  “You don’t like him, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t trust him. Call it a sixth sense.”

  “George has been good for this firm and is well-connected in the Congo. You’ll need him if there’s any trouble. You don’t know anyone there.”

  “No, but I still speak the language. I’ve never forgotten it.”

  “If I could get away, I’d come with you, but I wouldn’t be as valuable as George. You’re wrong about him. He’s a good man.”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  “I can’t be with you, but I do have something for you,” Frank said, handing Joseph a cellphone. “It’s the most advanced in the world. It can pick up satellites from anywhere, and if need be, the sun will charge it.”

  “God, it sounds like something CIA agents use.”

  “You’re not wrong.”

  “How did you get it so quickly?”

  “George isn’t the only one who has contacts.” Frank smiled.

  “I’m sure my iPhone would’ve been fine.”

  “Perhaps. Make sure you download your contacts before you leave.”

  “Sure, Dad, but I think you’re worrying too much. The chartered jet and phone are overkill.”

  “I’d rather overkill than leave you high and dry.”

  CHAPTER 7

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  EIGHT YEARS AFTER JOSEPH AND Maya were taken, the New Dawn Gold Mining Company – wholly owned by Liberty Investments, incorporated in Mauritania – finally commenced operations just four miles from the village. Cyclone and razor wire fenced off 300 acres. Private security guards with rifles slung over their shoulders and holstered pistols, patrolled the internal perimeter. On the outside, sixty of the army’s finest sauntered around waving AK-47s and Kalashnikovs. Before investing in the mine, the owners of Liberty Investments had wanted a guarantee it would be safe from attack. There was no way the rebels could match the firepower on display.

  There were two distinct mines within the enclosure. One was an open-cut mine where low-grade ore was blasted and dug up by enormous excavators and trucks. The operators and drivers of this equipment were highly skilled, and white. They were Afrikaners, Americans, Australians, Canadians, and British, and all were paid a fortune to put up with the heat, mosquitoes, and the jungle. It was not all hardship, though. At night they lived in a camp within the enclosure where the accommodations were air-conditioned modular huts containing well-stocked refrigerators. However, not even the hum of diesel generators could drown out the sounds of the jungle.

  The second mine was underground, where the ore was of a far higher grade. A large tunnel was sunk, and shafts leading to the ore deposits were shored up with timber beams. Explosives and machines were used to drill and blow out the shafts. Then the debris was loaded into trucks and hauled to the surface. After the shafts had been cleared, workers armed with little more than hand picks extracted the quartz. The work was back-breaking and dangerous, and the workers, except for the supervisors, were Congolese. The mine’s management made a token contribution to safety by issuing hard hats and flimsy work boots, and then deducted the cost from the workers’ wages. If management had been able to fasten light globes directly to workers’ heads rather than putting them in hard hats, they would have done so. Their real interest was making sure the miners could see to work, not to remain safe. However, it was pointless having cheap workers who couldn’t see. The mine operated two twelve-hour shifts, seven days a week, and the workers earned between three and four dollars per shift. There was no sick pay, and if a worker was injured at the mine, it was his or her bad luck.

  The company excavated a massive open tailings dam approximately a mile from the mine and two miles from the river. The mine pumped waste, including cyanide solution and heavy metals, into the tailings dam.

  The mine was adjacent to a gravel road connecting Northern Katanga to Lubumbashi – the same route Joseph had taken on his way to America. The road had cut travel times massively, and what had once been a three-day trip from the village, was cut to only eight hours. The villagers could access emergency medical services anytime, the only exception being the wet season when all roads flooded.

  Once New Dawn became established, it became the primary route for tons of cyanide tablets the mine purchased for spraying the ore and extracting the gold. This posed a huge threat to the fauna and flora. If it rained and a truck loaded with cyanide tablets crashed and they liquefied, the ecological catastrophe would be enormous. These circumstances, in a Western country, would make a government most unlikely to grant a mining permit. If it did, it would insist on cast-iron assurances that the cyanide was secure and that nothing could go wrong.

  The Congo was different, and the size of the bribe determined the government’s actions. Most of the locals were not surprised when the road was closed to them and its use became exclusive to the New Dawn gold mine, the army, and the police. Without other traffic on the road, the risk of an accident – and thus a cyanide spill – was minimized.

  Marc Boucher, a hard-nosed Canadian from Quebec with a ferocious temper, was New Dawn’s manager. The workers who built the mine’s infrastructure talked about Boucher in fear and awe. He was small but pushed them to exhaustion and sometimes death. His oil-slicked black hair and mustache resembled Hitler’s. With a baton under his arm, he marched around the mine, not hesitating to beat those he saw as malingering. Usually accompanying him was his superintendent: the Afrikaner Gert Botha, who sported pearl-handled revolvers on his hips and whose shirt could barely contain his massive chest. The workers cringed in trepidation at the mere sight of him.

  Suffering from drought and floods, the local villagers welcomed the opening of the mine. Dressed in rags, starving, and with the flesh hanging off their frames, hundreds lined up for jobs on the first day. Most were barefooted, and for them, three dollars a day was a fortune. In contrast, the whites, the security guards, and the soldiers looked healthy and well-fed.

  As the villagers jostled in line, Botha shouted into a megaphone. “My naam is Gert Botha. Ek is die myn superintendent. Jy sal my bel mnr Botha of Sir, en sal net praat wanneer gepraat. Nou stop stoot, sal daar werk vir almal van julle.”

  Eighteen-year-old Yannick Kyenge stood in the middle of the long line. He understood enough Afrikaans to know
the Afrikaner was the mine superintendent and had to be addressed as “Mr. Botha” or “Sir.” Workers were not permitted to speak to him unless spoken to. Most importantly, Botha had said there would be jobs for everyone, at which Yannick breathed a massive sigh of relief. He was over six feet tall but weighed only 120 pounds. His face was gaunt, and his ribs protruded, but finally there was hope. Four years earlier, the rebels had attacked his village, killing the males and raping the women and children before slaughtering them. Yannick had cowered in the jungle, frozen with fear as he watched his mother and father die. He had resolved never to cower again, but later when faced with another atrocity, he had failed miserably.

  After soldiers had been out on a mission, their commanders often allowed them to pillage and plunder villages as a reward for their efforts. This time was no different: They had come in the middle of the night, drunk and looking for sex, and killed anyone who got in their way. Again, Yannick ran and hid in the jungle along with seventy or so other villagers. He had watched the officer in charge, Colonel Zamenka, waving a whiskey bottle in one hand while inciting his soldiers to commit even worse atrocities. When Zamenka ripped the dress off sixteen-year-old Safi Muamba, her mother had charged him with a knife. Zamenka withdrew his pistol and put a bullet through her forehead. Twenty minutes later, when he had finished with Safi, he had taken a knife and slit her throat from ear to ear. Her screams still haunted Yannick. As dawn was breaking, the soldiers had dug a mass grave and heaped the bodies into it before soaking them in petrol. The stench of burning flesh hung over the jungle.

  Five days later, there was an article in The Congo Daily Times. Soldiers had entered a small village in northern Katanga and found it deserted. Further inspection revealed the horror of fifty tick- and rat-infested bodies in huts. There was no indication of violence, and the soldiers – scared a contagious virus might have killed the villagers – bravely donned masks and incinerated the bodies.

  CHAPTER 8

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  MORE THAN FIVE HUNDRED MEN, women, and children per shift worked in the underground mine and toiled through unbearable heat, driven relentlessly by merciless Afrikaner supervisors. Shaky cages, with a carrying capacity of one hundred workers, bumped their way deep into the bowels of the earth in the endless pursuit of gold.

  When blasting occurred in the poorly ventilated mine, debris and dust filled the shafts. In most underground mines, there is a designated safety area – but there wasn’t in the New Dawn gold mine. The supervisors wore face masks and respirators, but the workers were given nothing and breathed dust all day. A club across the shoulders or behind the knees was the punishment for slacking. Workers regularly suffered broken arms and legs as a result of the brutality of their supervisors. Two weeks after the mine opened, the first worker died of malnutrition and exhaustion. His body was hauled out as if nothing had happened, and the supervisor in charge drove his remaining workers harder to make up for the loss. Deaths from blasting, mine collapses, accidents, and exhaustion soon became regular occurrences.

  The supervisors spoke a mixture of Afrikaner, English, and Dutch, but it didn’t take long for the workers to understand them.

  “Werk jy lazy Kaffir,” the supervisors would scream as they laid into some hapless soul with truncheons.

  “Kem saam met my” were the words the workers most feared. They meant “come with me.” When the supervisors took someone away, it was a rarity to see them again.

  Yannick worked hard and kept his head down but resented the cruel Afrikaner supervisors. When he tried to organize labor to confront the bosses for better wages and conditions, he got absolutely no support. The other workers were simply too scared.

  Two years after the mine became operational, Katanga experienced torrential rains and floods. The underground mine flooded, and it was impossible to operate heavy equipment in the open-cut mine. A mile away, the tailings dam overflowed, and after a few more days of teeming rain, the dam wall collapsed. Thousands of gallons of red, toxic muck, spread across the land below the dam, relentlessly making its way toward the river. Within ten days, everything surrounding the dam was dead or dying – grass, weeds, trees, and animals. Worse, the river the villagers relied on for drinking water and fish was polluted for more than a hundred miles. Dead fish floated on the surface, while the carcasses of birds and animals littered the banks.

  Half an ounce of gold was tiny and, at market price, worth a year’s wages. The temptation to steal was overwhelming, and guards carried out random strip searches at the close of every shift. Rags barely covering workers’ bodies were searched by one guard, while two others performed full-body searches: first the hair, then behind and in the ears, the mouth, the nostrils, under the armpits, the anus, the vagina, below the testes, between the toes, and the hands. When they found a small nugget, they severely beat the guilty worker. Many were maimed, some were killed.

  In the early days, Yannick swallowed small nuggets and recovered them after they passed through him. But he soon found it was impossible to get more than half the market price, and when he rejected dealers’ offers, they threatened to report him to the mine. When he got the cash, it was hard to spend it without drawing attention to himself. Buying livestock was out of the question. In the end, Yannick decided stealing wasn’t worth the risk. Many others did not.

  It was midday when Yannick’s shift finished, and he was about twentieth in line as workers filed out of the mine. The guards had dragged an attractive young girl out of the line, and she stood naked, hands above her head, while they searched her. A few minutes later one of the guards let out a yell of exultation and held up a small rag she had concealed in her vagina. The other guard was on his two-way, and Yannick could hear Gert Botha’s booming voice. The line started to move again, but workers were ordered to assemble in front of the mine, where Mr. Botha would address them.

  It was a stinking hot day, and the guards held the naked girl in front of the assembled workers as Botha stormed toward them.

  “Wat is your naam?” Botha shouted.

  “De-Deshna,” the trembling girl said.

  “Hoekom jy het steel?”

  The bewildered girl did not reply, and the back of Botha’s hand crashed into her right eye.

  “She doesn’t understand. Don’t speak fucking Afrikaans shit. Speak French or English.”

  Botha spun around to see his boss standing a few meters away. “Ja, Mr. Boucher.”

  Yannick, watching the exchange, could see that Botha disliked Boucher’s intrusion but was scared of the smaller man.

  Botha turned his attention back to the girl, whose eye was swollen and nearly closed. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she hung her head.

  “Why did you steal the gold? Who helped you? Tell me their names and I’ll go easy on you.”

  The girl shook her head and muttered something indecipherable.

  The sun was oppressive, and Boucher knew what was going to happen. He put his baton under his arm and walked back to the comfort of his air-conditioned office.

  Two supervisors leered at the girl. Botha looked at them and said, “Fok haar en dan kill haar.”

  One of the men started to undo his fly, and Deshna screamed. For the next thirty minutes, the two men raped and sodomized her. Only her screams and cries broke the silence.

  Yannick thought he would vomit and wanted to yell charge. Leaders were possessed of great courage and knew others would follow them. But Yannick didn’t know whether anyone would follow him and was too scared to take the risk. Fear gripped him again, and he closed his eyes, unable to watch the atrocity. He’d heard the screams before, and they brought back terrible memories.

  Deshna was lying in the dirt, bleeding heavily, when one of the guards put his pistol behind her head and pulled the trigger. Blood, brain, and bone splattered everywhere.

  Botha hadn’t looked at what the two men had done to Deshna. Instead, he stood – arms folded, pearl-handled pistols on his hips – and stared at the worker
s’ terrified faces. Once he heard the shot, he shouted, “You have seen what happens when you steal. We have been too soft on you. Remember, if you thieve, you will die. Now get back to work.”

  As Yannick shuffled out the gates, he felt a surge of anger and implored those around him to band together. “We outnumber them fifty to one. We must never let it happen again. Next time we will attack them.”

  A few glanced at him, but no one responded. Fear had paralyzed them.

  CHAPTER 9

  ..................

  IN THE MONTHS FOLLOWING DESHNA’S murder, Yannick continued to agitate the other mine workers to take action against the supervisors and management. His words went unheeded even as the brutality meted out by the Afrikaner supervisors intensified. Men, women, and children were routinely bashed, often for no other reason than to set an example. Fear reigned. If a worker reached the surface without having been beaten, it was considered a good day.

  The whites responsible for operating the heavy equipment and setting and detonating charges at the open-cut mine were treated vastly differently. Generously paid and living in relative comfort, they were untouchable. The clearing away of clay and rock at the open-cut mine by use of explosives was a regular occurrence. While the underground mine was less than a mile away, the workers were never brought to the surface when blasting took place at the open-cut mine. Safety procedures did not exist at New Dawn.

  Three weeks before Joseph’s jet landed at N’djili, powder monkeys extensively primed the open-cut mine with explosives. When detonated, the explosions were intense and had the same impact as a midlevel earthquake. Four miles away, the ground at the village trembled. Shaken animals in the jungle roared and snarled. Terrified, screeching birds took flight.

  The underground mine shook, and huge clouds of dust concealed the entrance. Eight hundred yards below the surface, a poorly constructed mine shaft collapsed under the weight of hundreds of tons of rubble. Yannick was working in a shaft a level above and raced to help. The dust was suffocating. When he reached the shaft, he faced a wall of rock and rubble. Miraculously the cables to the cages remained intact, and many panic-stricken workers rushed to board them. Others joined Yannick and started to pull rocks away from the collapsed shaft in a futile attempt to save the screamers trapped under tons of rock. But within an hour, the screaming stopped, there was only the silence of death. After three days of drilling and looking for air pockets where the workers might have survived, the rescue was called off. Forty-seven men, women, and children were unaccounted for and presumed dead. Wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, and friends mourned their lost ones. An undercurrent of anger swept through the surviving workers.