Modern Mining July 2015

COMMENT

Australian miners in Africa under fire in new report

I t’s amazing to see that more than 10 years on the so-called Kilwa Incident in the DRC is still attracting attention. For those readers who don’t know what the incident was and who need to be brought up to speed, Kilwa is a small town in ‘Haut- Katanga’ on the shore of Lake Mweru in the DRC. In 2004 an uprising in the area was “bru- tally suppressed” – as some reports put it – by the Congolese army, whose actions resulted in around 100 deaths. What has this to do with the mining indus- try? Well, Australia’s Anvil Mining operated the nearby Dikulushi copper/silver mine and was accused of supplying logistical support – in the form of vehicles and a plane – to the Congolese army and of thus being complicit in the massacre. The Australian current affairs TV pro- gramme ‘Four Corners’ aired a story on the incident in 2005 that was highly critical of Anvil. The company responded by saying that while it was true that its vehicles and a plane were involved in the incident, they had more or less been commandeered by the army. The whole affair was, of course, extremely damag- ing to Anvil’s reputation. For what it’s worth, I visited Dikulushi on three occasions after it was commissioned in 2002 and I got to know Bill Turner, the com- pany’s then CEO, well on these trips. Dikulushi was the first modern mine to have been built in the DRC in decades and its success undoubtedly encouraged other Western mining companies to take the plunge and invest in the war-torn country. I found Bill to be a man of the utmost integrity and I was impressed by the efficiency of the Dikulushi operation – and the evident commitment of its management to the welfare of communities near the mine. Dikulushi, incidentally, is now in the hands of Mawson West (and on care and maintenance) while Anvil itself was sold to Minmetals in 2011. I still see Bill occasionally – he normally attends the Mining Indaba – and he is now the Chairman of the Australia-Africa Mining Industry Group. The reason the Kilwa Incident is once again in the news is a just released multi-media report – easily accessed on the Web – prepared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) entitled Fatal Extraction – Australian Mining in Africa . A summary of the report on the ICIJ website says that “more than 380 people have died in mining accidents or in off-site skirmishes connected to Australian publicly-traded mining companies in 13

countries in Africa” since 2004. Although there are more than 150 Australian exploration and mining companies active in Africa, the report hones in on four in partic- ular – Anvil, as already mentioned, Paladin Energy which owns the Langer Heinrich and Kayelekera uranium mines in Namibia and Malawi respectively, Resolute Mining, which operates the Syama gold mine in Mali, and Aquarius, active, of course, in South Africa. While it is difficult to argue with the con- clusions of journalists who have spent months carrying out their investigations, in my view the report does not make a particularly compel- ling case against any of these companies. Aquarius, for example, seems to feature mainly on the basis of the 2010 incident at Marikana in which five contract workers were killed when a huge 500-ton slab of rock fell from a hanging wall. Obviously this was a tragic accident but hardly evidence – I would have thought – of any terrible wrongdoing by Aquarius. Similarly, Resolute is mentioned primarily because of an incident at Syama in 2012, when villagers who had blocked a road near the mine were dispersed by police, who opened fire on them. Resolute’s role in this – as far as I can tell – was simply that it had asked the authorities to open the road to enable access to the mine. As for Paladin, the report makes much of an accident at Kayelekera in 2009 when a tank that was being cleaned exploded and injured several workers (two later died) but there is very little evidence presented to show any negligence on Paladin’s part. Paladin has provided a detailed response to the accusations made against it on its website and remarks that its critics “appear philosophically opposed to the activities of min- ing companies in Africa.” Paladin has probably hit the nail on the head here. There are indeed many activists around the world who seem to oppose on principle any and all mining activity, particularly if it takes place in the Third World. Having said this, the massive improvements we’ve seen in mining over the past two or three decades in respect of safety, employment prac- tices and care for the environment are arguably a result of the pressure applied by the indus- try’s critics. This being the case it’s important not to dismiss criticism out of hand and I hope CEOs and others in the mining industry will take the time to look at Fatal Extraction and learn from the unfortunate accidents and inci- dents it catalogues. Arthur Tassell

Since the beginning of

2004, more than 380 people have died in mining accidents or in off-site skirmishes connected to Australian publicly-traded mining companies in 13 countries in Africa. Conclusion of a report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

July 2015  MODERN MINING  3