Copyright 2001 Daily Mail & Guardian (South Africa)
September 4, 2001

One of the world’s last great rainforests is to be laid waste by loggers working for Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his ruling clique.Associates of the increasingly despotic 77-year-old are planning the biggest-ever logging operation in the precious tropical rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The 34-million hectares that Mugabe hopes to exploit are the heart of an area recently designated one of the most important forests on the planet by the United Nations.

Mugabe has already been attacked for the corruption of his regime and its brutal repression of political dissent. He faces United States sanctions and growing international censure for his increasingly violent brand of authoritarian government. Now he faces the wrath of environmentalists too.

“The long-term impacts on local people’s livelihoods and on rare wildlife such as the gorilla will be devastating,” said Patrick Alley, director of the human rights and environmental campaign group Global Witness. “This is forest the world can ill afford to lose.”

The rights have been conceded by the DRC’s government to representatives of the Zimbabwean president in return for military aid against rebels in the east of the country. The war in the DRC has killed about 2,5-million people in the past three years.

The logging operation is to be run by the Zimbabwean army and Forestry Commission and is expected to bring in profits of £200-million over the two to three years it will take to clear the concessions of the most valuable timber.

Little of the logging money is expected to reach the Zimbabwean people, though their army’s involvement in Congo is bankrupting the country. Inflation is running at 170%, unemployment is at 60% and millions live in poverty.

Instead, the logging revenues are likely to be shared by a small clique of senior generals and politicians.

The funds will also swell the war chest of the Zanu-PF party, Mugabe’s primary political vehicle, which has led the recent violent crackdown on the growing democratic opposition.

Zanu-PF need funds to expand its brutal campaign against the challengers to Mugabe’s power in the run-up to next year’s presidential elections.

The effect of such a huge logging operation will be devastating. Congo has nearly half of Africa’s, and 6% of the world’s, tropical rainforest. Until recently poor communications and the continuing conflict had largely spared the area from the attention of commercial tropical timber firms. But a German company has been granted a 2,6-million hectare concession by the desperately poor Congolese government and a series of deals with Malaysian and Chinese companies has also been concluded.

Mugabe’s concession has been granted to Socebo, a Zimbabwe-registered company whose board includes senior Zanu-PF and military figures. The deal was negotiated in 1999. Socebo was established last year.

Its publicity claims that the company “aims to be the world leader in trading tropical hardwoods — Sustainable forestry management is our business”. It is based in Kinshasa and is a subsidiary of another firm called Cosleg (Pvt) Ltd. Cosleg is itself a joint venture between Operation for Sovereign Legitimacy (Osleg), a company largely controlled by the Zimbabwean military, and Comiex-Congo, a Kinshasa-based firm partly owned by the family of Joseph Kabila, the president of the DRC.

Two previous projects — a cobalt mining enterprise and a diamond extraction venture — have been disappointments for the Zimbabweans. The cobalt proved less profitable than predicted, and Oryx Diamonds was unable to float on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Index following recent measures aimed at banning the trade in so-called “conflict diamonds”.

However, several other ventures have been very lucrative. Analysts believe the vastly profitable opportunities to extract valuable gemstones, minerals, metals and timber from Congo have drawn regional powers into the war there.

At least six countries have bartered military support for one or other side in the conflict for the right to exploit some of the country’s vast resources.

One United Nations committee, set up to investigate what has been dubbed “The New Scramble for Africa”, alleged that Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, all hope to exploit the conflict for their own financial gain. The armies of Angola and Namibia are also involved in the war.Last week leaders from all the warring factions met in Botswana in a bid to negotiate an end to the fighting. They have agreed to meet again in October, but few are optimistic that the war will be ended soon.

The leader of the Rwandan-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) says his party is adamant that it will not accept the withdrawal of foreign troops as a precondition to inter-Congolese dialogue.

Dr Adolphe Onusumba Yemba, who was in Johannesburg recently, says his party will not accept the withdrawal as he believes the Zimbabwean troops will not follow suit. “The Zimbabweans have various business interests — several partnership deals with government — so it will not withdraw just as yet.”

Yemba was in South Africa to garner support to influence Kabila not to impose the “precondition” of withdrawal of troops as “it would be a stumbling block” to the entire peace initiative.

“Zimbabwe’s logging deal provides a strong motive for Mugabe to keep his troops committed,” said Alley, whose organisation will publish a report on Mugabe’s logging operation next week. “That could threaten the whole peace process, and is yet another example of the way in which natural resources are fuelling conflict across Africa and the world.”

Zimbabwe’s involvement in Congo, which has cost about £300-million so far, started three years ago when Laurent Kabila, the former president who was then leader of the rebels, requested Mugabe’s assistance in ousting president Mobutu Sese Seko. A spokesperson at the Zimbabwean High Commission said the commission knew nothing about any logging in the DRC and had no comment to make.

Additional reporting by Jaspreet Kindra Error: Unable to read footer file.