Tension on the rise in Katanga mining town

Human rights and local government officials in Democratic Republic of Congo’s Katanga province have expressed concern about rising tension between different communities in a mining town there.

Clashes broke out on the night of 26 August between residents of Kolwezi and people from neighbouring provinces who work in the town’s copper, cobalt, tin and manganese mines.

“There was some material damage, 45 bicycles were burnt,” Jean-Marie Dikanga Kazadi, the provincial interior minister, told IRIN.

“Residents decided to avenge a man who had been beaten up [earlier the same day] and set upon the miners, deeming them responsible,” the minister said, adding that police helped to restore calm by midnight.

“Anything could happen and not much is being done about it,” said Golden Misabiko, president of the Katanga branch of the African Human Rights Association.

“There is a problem between the groups originating from here - the Tshokwe, Lunda, Kahonde, Nungu, Dembo and Kalwena – and the Sanga-Baheke who come from the adjacent province. It’s ridiculous to allow people to create the same situation that led to the killings in 1962 and 1991,” he added. Hundreds of people were killed and many thousands displaced amid inter-communal clashes in those years.

A new source of tension is draft decentralisation legislation approved by parliament that breaks up the province of Katanga.

“The Sanga and the Baheke are fighting the others because they want to keep the town of Kolwezi, which the new set-up takes away from them and places in the mini-province of Lualaba,” said local resident Jean-Marie Mpoyi Lungeni.

There is also a dispute between the central government in Kinshasa and local officials in Katanga over controls imposed over the movement of people into the province. The national interior ministry recently prohibited the mayor of Lubumbashi from imposing a sort of visa system on visitors to the town, a decision local authorities said they would ignore.

ei/am/sr