Kamatanda is a region just north of Likasi in the Haut-Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It gives its name to an open-pit copper mine, a railway junction, an abandoned airport and a residential area of Likasi.
The Sanga people mined copper at Kamatanda in the pre-colonial period. The Belgian Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (UMHK) was established in 1906 and took over the mine. In 1966 possession passed to the state-owned Gécamines. Gécamines allowed artisanal miners to operate the mine, working in dangerous conditions for very low pay. The miners established an informal residential community around the mine, which suffered from lack of clean water and power, lack of drainage and pollution. Starting in 2016 Gécamines began modernizing the operation. A new ore crushing plant came into operation in 2019.
The Kamatanda junction on the Sakania–Bukama section of the Compagnie du chemin de fer du bas-Congo au Katanga (BCK) railway was at an elevation of 3,962 feet (1,208m). As of 1944 it had branches leading to Jadotville (Likasi), Kambove and Panda.[4] The 29.6 kilometres (18.4mi) branch line from Kamatanda Junction to the mines of Kambove opened on 15 June 1913. The complete 114.3 kilometres (71.0mi) line from Jadotville via Kamatanda Junction and Tenke to Tshilongo opened on 15 July 1914.[5] The abandoned Kamatanda Airport is to the north of the mine.[3] It is at an elevation of 1,299 metres (4,262ft) above sea level.[6]
Mining
Pre-colonial
Long before the Belgians arrived in Katanga the Sanga people engaged in copper mining there.[7] Sanga mines in the area between the Lufira and the Lualaba included Kamatanda, Likasi, Kambove, Msesa, Kalabi and Kakanda.[8] From 1850 to 1910 they may have produced about 700 tonnes of the metal. When the Belgians took over, the traditional chiefs lost significant powers.[7]
Colonial era
Congo Railways - Kamatanda - A view of the train station area c.1910
John R. Farrell, an American mining engineer employed by Robert Williams, managing director of Tanganyika Concessions, produced a detailed report based on his "personal examination" of the Kamatanda mine and others in the region during the dry season of 1902. However, there is some doubt about whether he actually visited the mine.[9] The Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (UMHK) was founded in 1906 as a joint venture by the Compagnie du Katanga, the Comité Spécial du Katanga and Tanganyika Concessions.[10]
Émile Richet issued a report for UMHK in 1923 that discussed prospecting in the Kamatanda block.[11] Plans of the Kamatanda polygon and mine by the UMHK from 1914–1923 have been preserved.[12] A 1932 report described results of prospecting in the Kamatanda area with three wells of 20 metres (66ft) depth, galleries and trenches. Mineralization was mainly found in foliated siliceous rocks.[13]
A call for a general strike of mineworkers spread through the region in November and December 1941. Some of the workers at Kamatanda, Kolwezi and Kamoto, influenced by millenial sects like the Watchtower movement, saw the call for a strike as a millenial wake.[14]
Gécamines
Joseph-Désiré Mobutu seized power in a bloodless coup in 1965. In December 1966 he seized the assets of UMHK, and in January 1967 transferred them to a parastatal called Générale Congolaise des Minérais (Gecomin).[15] This was renamed Générale des Carrières et des Mines (Gécamines) in 1971.[16]
As of 2003 the Kamatanda Mine had estimated annual capacity of 57,000 metric tons of copper and 4,000 metric tons of cobalt.[17] In 2005 the Chinese company COBEC began talks with the Ministry of Mines over reviving mining in Kamatanda and rehabilitating three ore processing units there.[18] A residential area grew up around the mine. In 2005 Groupe Bazano set up a pyrometallurgic plant in Kamatanda on the Abattoirs Avenue. The inhabitants of the residential quarter complained of the dust and smoke emitted by the plant's furnaces.[19] As of 2012 the residential area had no drainage system for rainwater or wastewater. There were no connection to the REGIDESO drinking water supply, so water had to be carried from older neighborhoods. There were no connections to the SNEL electric network.[20]
A 2008 Bloomberg Markets report described the 2.5 square kilometres (0.97sqmi) mine as an area of land in which pits and holes up to 25 metres (82ft) deep had been dug by freelance men, women and children.[21] The diggers climbed down into the holes without ladders, barefoot and only lightly dressed. They used head torches and candles to see as they dug out ore from horizontal corridors using hammers and chisels, small shovels and pickaxes and bare hands.[22] They sold the ore to middlemen who paid others to screen it in the river and then sold it to a smelter in Lubumbashi. The owner, Gécomines, was not involved in the process.[23] Saesscam, a state agency, charged the workers 18 cents per 110 pounds (50kg) bag of ore. The ore was purchased by a subsidiary of Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt.[21]
In March 2008 there was a violent clash between diggers and riot police in Lukasi.[24] Police had forcibly removed some of the miners from Kamatanda. Later police fired on several hundred miners who were protesting in Likasi. 32 were injured and one died.[25] The diggers were protesting against plans by Gécamines to evict them and reclaim the mine.[24] Early in 2009 there were further protests at Kamatanda, this time against Vanger, a processing company that was trying to get EMAK to grant it a monopoly on buying ore.[25] As of 2010 about 400 children from Kamatanda and the surrounding villages were helping about 2,000 diggers. The children sorted, carried and cleaned the ore for wages of under US$4 per day. Parents often relied on the income and encouraged their children to leave school and work at the mine.[26]
In February 2014 Martin Kobler, head of the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Monusco), visited the mine. There were about 400 artisanal miners working in the area, mostly from 15 to 49 years old, but before the visit police had chased away younger children who usually carried the ore from the workings to wash it in a nearby stream. In the dry season, when there is less risk of landslides, as many as 2,000 people may be working the deposits. Kobler was told that the miners were producing about 8 tonnes of ore daily, fetching an average of $200 per ton. Typical earnings are $4 per day, but workers have to pay over 50 cents to public officials or unions to enter the site.[27]
In August 2016 Gécamines said it planned to increase copper production by up to 40%. This would be achieved by a new concentrator at the Kambove site, new electrical lines and an ore-crushing machine at the Kamatanda mine.[28] A $17 million crushing plant was installed in Kamatanda that became operational at the start of 2019. The crushed ore is fed to the Heap Leach Unit in Panda, then the copper-containing solution is taken to the electrolysis room at the Shituru Factories, where high-quality copper electrodes are produced.[29]
Clark, Simon; Smith, Michael; Wild, Franz (September 2008), Young Workers, Deadly Mines(PDF), China in Africa: Special Report, Bloomberg Markets, retrieved 2021-09-12
Katanga was one of the four large provinces created in the Belgian Congo in 1914. It was one of the eleven provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1966 and 2015, when it was split into the Tanganyika, Haut-Lomami, Lualaba, and Haut-Katanga provinces. Between 1971 and 1997, its official name was Shaba Province.
Kolwezi or Kolwesi is the capital city of Lualaba Province in the south of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, west of Likasi. It is home to an airport and a railway to Lubumbashi. Just outside of Kolwezi there is the static inverter plant of the HVDC Inga-Shaba. The population is approximately 573,000.
The Union Minière du Haut-Katanga, often abbreviated to Union Minière or UMHK, was an Anglo-Belgian mining company which operated in the copperbelt in the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1906 and 1966.
Likasi is a city in Haut-Katanga Province, in the south-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Copperbelt is a natural region in Central Africa which sits on the border region between northern Zambia and the southern Democratic Republic of Congo. It is known for copper mining.
La Générale des Carrières et des Mines (Gécamines) is a Congolese commodity trading and mining company headquartered in Lubumbashi, in the Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is a state-controlled corporation founded in 1966 and a successor to the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga. Gecamines is engaged in the exploration, research, exploitation and production of mineral deposits including copper and cobalt.
Kambove is a town in the Haut-Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Copper mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo mainly takes place in the Copper Belt of the southern Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Kambove mines are a group of active or abandoned copper mines near Kambove in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They were originally established by the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga under Belgian rule.
Shituru is a town that is now a commune of the city of Likasi in Haut-Katanga province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is also the location of a copper mine, smelter and hydrometallurgical plant that was operated by the state-owned Gécamines.
The Kamfundwa Mine is one of the Kambove mines in the mining region around Kambove, Katanga Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is near the Shangulowé Mine, about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) north of the Kamoya mine district.
The Ruashi Mine is an open-pit copper and cobalt mine operated by Metorex that is located about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) from Lubumbashi in Katanga Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The project includes a plant to concentrate the ore from the Ruashi and Etoile mines, and a modern solvent extraction electrowinning (SX-EW) processing plant. As of 2008, annual capacity was estimated to be 10,000 tonnes of copper and 1,000 tonnes of Cobalt.
The Etoile Mine is an open-pit copper mine on the outskirts of Lubumbashi in Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Chemaf owns the license. Chemaf is 95% owned by Shalina Resources and 5% by the DRC government.
Luishia mine was an open pit copper and cobalt mine in Katanga Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. A concession to the south of the mine has recently been opened to exploitation.
Haut-Katanga District is a former district located in the former Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The copper mining centers of Lubumbashi and Likasi were surrounded by the district but were administratively separate.
Ciments du Katanga is a company in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that makes cement and related products. It was established during the copper boom of the early 1920s to supply the new mining and refining companies, including worker housing and industrial construction.
Jean-Baptiste Kibwe Pampala Uwitwa was a Congolese and Katangese politician who was the Minister of Justice and Vice-President of the State of Katanga.
The Compagnie du Congo pour le Commerce et l’Industrie (CCCI) was a private enterprise in the Congo Free State, later the Belgian Congo and then the Democratic Republic of the Congo, whose subsidiaries engaged in a wide range of activities in the Congo between 1887 and 1971. These included railway and river transport, mining, agriculture, banking, trading and so on. It was the largest commercial enterprise in the Congo for many years. It went through various mergers in the years that followed before its successor Finoutremer was liquidated in 2000.
The Comité Spécial du Katanga (CSK) was a parastatal created in 1900 by the Congo Free State and the Compagnie du Katanga. At first it was responsible for administering the huge Katanga Province on behalf of the state, and also for exploiting the province's mineral resources. Mineral exploration and mining were soon delegated to separate companies. After the Belgian Congo took over from the Free State, the CSK handed over its administrative powers to the provincial government. However, as a parastatal it remained responsible for many aspects of development in Katanga until independence in 1960, when it was dissolved.
Tanganyika Concessions Limited was a British mining and railway company founded by the Scottish engineer and entrepreneur Robert Williams in 1899. The purpose was to exploit minerals in Northern Rhodesia and in the Congo Free State. Partly-owned subsidiaries included the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (UMHK), which undertook mining in the Katanga portion of the copperbelt, and the Benguela railway, which provided a rail link across Angola to the Atlantic Ocean. Belgian banks eventually took over control of the company. The Angolan railway concession was returned to the state of Angola in 2001.
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