Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 11:11:29 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-I: Piece work in Congo's diamond mines


This article gives some hints about the state of class relations in the
Congo. When we use terms like "proletariat" in discussion of African
politics, it is useful to understand the concrete reality of how an
important sector--the miners--defines itself in relation to the means of
production. 

Louis P.



June 1, 1997

For Congo Miners, Labor Dims the Diamond's Shine

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

ALISAMA, Congo -- Slumped on the dirt floor, so exhausted that
he ignored the huge tarantula crawling on the wall of the mud
shack, Andre Onyumbe did not seem overwhelmed by the romance of
diamonds. 

Every day from dawn to dusk, Onyumbe digs for diamonds in a pit at this
mining camp in the middle of the jungle in eastern Congo. His hands are
callused and scarred, and he is numbed by the loneliness and danger of
working at the bottom of sweltering pits in the middle of the rain forest,
toiling to help seal the love of couples half a world away. 

"The work is killing," Onyumbe said bitterly as he sat in the spreading
darkness of the hut. "Foreigners were banned from visiting these mines
just because the government didn't want outsiders to know how we
suffer." 

Under the law here in Congo, formerly Zaire, it is illegal for foreigners
to visit the mines. But when rebels evicted government troops from this
area in the spring on their way to sweeping all across the country, the
old laws were thrown into uncertainty.

So, when two foreign journalists hiked into the camp one day recently at
dusk, too late to be sent back out among the leopards and poisonous
snakes, the authorities decided after some tense deliberations to ignore
the law and show the visitors around -- and ask for U.S. investment. 

"The only tools we have are shovels, and they and everything else have to
be carried on our backs through the jungle to get them here," complained
Jean-Pierre Penge, the director of the mine, as he shared a dinner of
cassava and a bit of antelope that someone had shot. "We've requested
other equipment, but we get nothing." 

A couple of American bulldozers, he suggested hopefully, would make a
big difference. 

Penge, like everyone else in the camp, is deeply embittered at the grim
conditions here, at the way men toil with shovels and occasionally die
from cave-ins because of the lack of proper equipment. Yet this mining
camp, home to 120 miners, is typical of the hundreds of such camps
scattered throughout the country. 

These are isolated outposts that attract young men who have no other
options, and here they struggle and die -- and, very occasionally, strike
it rich. The men build their own mud-brick huts in the clearing, and at
night their campfires twinkle in the darkness as they cook quick meals and
slap at malarial mosquitoes and chat with their buddies about the diamonds
they will find.

This mine is privately owned, but the miners work for themselves rather
than the owner. They pay a small fee for the right to dig and then they
are assigned plots. They can keep small diamonds for themselves, but
profits from the sale of larger ones must be shared with the owner.

The men still talk about a 31-carat diamond that a lucky miner found here
a few years ago, and about a 12-carat diamond found by another man. 
Finding such a stone, worth tens of thousands of dollars, is the
equivalent of winning the lottery.

Yet such stones turn up mostly just in dreams. Virtually all of the miners
struggle along for many years, wearing themselves out as they find
enough tiny diamonds to keep buying food and clothing but never enough
to escape to a more secure line of work. 

Although this mining camp is a three-and-a-half-hour hike from the
nearest dirt road, obliging the miners to follow a faint path and wade
along creeks for long stretches, this is not remote by Congo standards.
Some mines are so deep in the jungle that it takes a week to hike in or
out. 

The work is fairly simple: a group of close friends who trust one another
cooperate in digging a pit about 25 or 30 feet deep, using shovels and
sacks to haul the dirt away. The mine is really just a quarry, a clearing
that is pockmarked with pits, and there are no tunnels. 

The point of the labor is simply to remove the topsoil, which contains no
diamonds, and get to a layer of sand a few inches thick that may harbor
gems. 

"Normally you dig for two months to get to the sand, and then in one
afternoon you look through the sand and know whether there are
diamonds," explained Fabrice Kashala, a 36-year-old former university
student who gave up his studies for lack of money and is now a miner.
"Then the next day, you start over and begin another two months of
digging." 

The miners wash the sand in a creek to check for diamonds, shaking the
sand in large sieves to let it slip through the mesh and see whether
anything is left. The diamonds look like tiny glassy pebbles, and until
they are cut they would not do much to adorn a finger.

Typically, miners find a few small diamonds at the bottom of each pit,
and they keep them folded in pieces of paper until they can travel to
Kisangani to sell them. 

In the past, under the Mobutu government, one of the greatest risks was
that a miner would be robbed by government soldiers while traveling to
Kisangani. Nearly all the men have stories about how the fruit of many
months' toil was seized at gunpoint by laughing soldiers. 

"The most important thing we need is security," Onyumbe said. "That
way, when people find diamonds they're not robbed and they are
allowed to sell what they've found." 


  Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company





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