Rape and plunder of DRC: How EAC states betrayed a wounded neighbour

Soldiers from the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The war sucked in Congo's EAC neighbours. File photo.

By Jeff Otieno (email the author)

The Hotspots

North Kivu and South Kivu (Gross human rights violations on civilians, mainly killings and rape in all the four stages of war)
Forces involved: Zairean armed forces, rebels faithful to Laurent Kabila, anti Rwanda and Uganda rebels and Allied forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire comprising Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda soldiers.

Katanga also a hotspot in all the four stages (rape, killings, maiming and wanton destruction of property)
Forces involved: Zairean armed forces, anti Rwanda and Uganda rebels and Allied Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire

Kinshasa hotspot in first, third and fourth stages (killings and rape)
Forces involved: Congolese armed forces, Allied Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire,

Orientale Province, Equateur, Maniema and Bas-Congo Hotspot (Gross human rights violations mainly killing, rape and maiming)
Forces involved: Congolese armed forces, Allied Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire and Soldiers from Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia.

The Congo war that sucked three East African Community member states had four conflict stages, all playing a major role in the catalogue of gross human rights violations.
The stages are summarised below:

First Stage; March 1993–June 1996: Failure by the Mobutu regime to initiate the democratisation processes in Congo and the larger regional crisis.

The first period covers human rights violations committed in the final years of the regime of President Mobutu Sese Seko, as a result of its authoritarian rule and dismal performance in the democratisation process.

During this period, the unstable Central African state also experienced devastating consequences of the Rwandan genocide, particularly in the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu.

Second Stage: July 1996–July 1998: First Congo War and the Allied Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL) regime.

The second period concerns gross human rights violations committed during the First Congo War and the first year of the regime established by President Laurent-Désiré Kabila.

This period had the greatest number of incidents in the whole of the decade under investigation, with 238 listed incidents.

The report says the information available confirmed the significant role of other countries in the First Congo War and their direct implication in the war, which led to the overthrow of the Mobutu regime.

At the start of the second stage period, serious violations were committed against Tutsi and Banyamulenge civilians, 19 principally in South Kivu.

This period was then characterised by the relentless pursuit and mass killing (104 reported incidents) of Hutu refugees, members of the former Armed Forces of Rwanda (later “ex-FAR”) and militias implicated in the genocide of 1994 (Interahamwe) by the Alliance des forces démocratiques pour la libération du Congo-Zaïre (AFDL) or Allied Forces for the liberation of Congo-Zaire.

The report adds that a proportion of the AFDL’s troops, arms and logistics were supplied by the Armée Patriotique Rwandaise or Rwanda Patriotic Army (APR), the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) and the Forces armées Burundaises or Burundian Armed Forces (FAB) throughout the Congolese territory.

This period was also marked by serious attacks on other civilian populations in all provinces without exception.

Third stage. August 1998–January 2000: Second Congo War
The third period involves a catalogue of violations committed between the start of the Second Congo War in August 1998, and the death of President Kabila.

This period included 200 incidents and was characterised by the intervention on the territory of the DRC of the government armed forces of several countries, fighting alongside the Forces armées Congolaises or Congolese Armed Forces (FAC) or against them.

There was also involvement of multiple militia groups and the creation of a coalition under the banner of a new political and military movement, The Gathering of Congolese for Democracy (RCD), which later split into smaller groups.

Fourth Stage: January 2001–June 2003: Towards transition

This final period lists 139 incidents committed, in spite of the gradual establishment of a ceasefire and the speeding up of peace negotiations in preparation for the start of the transition period on June 30, 2003.
During this period, fighting that had shaken the province of Ituri, in particular the ethnic conflicts between the Lendu and the Hema, reached an unprecedented peak.

The period was marked by clashes between the Congolese Armed Forces (FAC) and the Mayi-Mayi forces in Katanga province.

«La fin de seize ans d’impunité pour les vainqueurs au Rwanda»

Par SABINE CESSOU

Dix ans de meurtres, de viols et d’exactions en république démocratique du Congo (RDC) et une accusation d’éventuel génocide à l’encontre du Rwanda d’aujourd’hui : c’est ce que contient la version provisoire d’un rapport de 545 pages que n’a pas encore publié le Haut-Commissariat des Nations unies aux droits de l’homme (HCDH), mais dont les fuites sont parvenues jeudi à la presse. Le document revient sur ce qui s’est tramé dans l’ex-Zaïre entre mars 1993 et juin 2003. Une période qui couvre les deux guerres du Congo, qualifiées de «guerre mondiale africaine» en raison du nombre de pays impliqués - 9 selon le rapport - mais aussi de victimes, qui se comptent par millions.

Rejeté jeudi comme «balivernes» par le gouvernement rwandais, le document met Kigali dans l’embarras. Il ouvre la voie à d’éventuelles poursuites pour «crimes contre l’humanité, crimes de guerre, voire de génocide». Si tous les regards se tournent de nouveau vers le Rwanda, il ne s’agit pas, cette fois, de se souvenir du génocide de 800 000 Tutsis par des milices hutues en 1994 mais du massacre systématique et prémédité par l’armée rwandaise, en territoire congolais, de dizaines de milliers de Hutus qui avaient fui le Rwanda par crainte de représailles tutsies. Le régime de Paul Kagame dément toute exaction en RDC, et affirme n’avoir fait que poursuivre dans l’ex-Zaïre les miliciens hutus génocidaires. Or, ce rapport du HCDH change un rapport de force et une écriture de l’Histoire, que décrypte pour Libération le sociologue français André Guichaoua, spécialiste de la région des Grands Lacs.

Pourquoi des fuites de ce rapport parviennent-elles maintenant à la presse ?

En fait, le rapport est congelé depuis plusieurs mois. Ces fuites sont habituelles, sur ce type de document, mais le plus surprenant aujourd’hui, c’est la réaction indignée des autorités rwandaises, alors qu’elles font pression depuis plusieurs semaines pour bloquer le rapport !

Que pensez-vous de l’accusation de génocide formulée à demi-mots par le rapport, à l’encontre d’une armée rwandaise accusée d’avoir massacré des Hutus en RDC ?

Des actes génocidaires ont été commis, c’est indéniable. Mais de tels actes ne font pas génocide. Si toutes les fois que des actes génocidaires étaient commis, on utilisait le terme de génocide, nous en aurions dix ou vingt par an. L’utilisation du terme est d’ailleurs laissée à l’appréciation des juristes par le rapport, qui n’a pas voulu franchir ce pas.

Quoi qu’il arrive, il me paraît très difficile de mettre sur le même plan la reconnaissance d’un éventuel génocide des Hutus au Congo avec celui des Tutsis au Rwanda. Il n’y avait pas les mêmes objectifs, la même finalité. Ce qui est plus ennuyeux encore, c’est le risque de globalisation de toutes les victimes des deux guerres du Congo. Entre 1998 et 2003, la grande guerre africaine a fait entre 3 et 4 millions de victimes, essentiellement civiles, dont on ne peut pas attribuer la responsabilité au seul Rwanda. Or, l’amalgame risque d’être fait dans les comptes rendus et l’utilisation politique du rapport.

Paul Kagame va-t-il de devenir un paria sur la scène internationale ?

Son affaiblissement est déjà réel. La dernière présidentielle au Rwanda, qu’il a remportée avec 93% des voix, n’a pas été une fête, en grande partie à cause de la manière dont la campagne a été menée. Les motifs d’énervement du candidat-président tenaient déjà à l’actualité qui se profilait, avec ce rapport. Il existe par ailleurs un désenchantement des bailleurs de fonds. Le département d’Etat américain a adressé des critiques au Rwanda. Or, ce pays ne tient que grâce à deux ressources : l’aide extérieure et les minerais du Kivu, région de la RDC située à la frontière du Rwanda. C’est le fait de le dire qui pose problème aujourd’hui.

Pourquoi les autorités rwandaises se montrent-elles aussi nerveuses concernant ce rapport ?

Parce qu’il met fin à seize ans d’impunité du camp des vainqueurs au Rwanda. Si le Tribunal pénal international pour le Rwanda (TPIR) avait joué son rôle et lancé des procédures sur les massacres de Hutus, des actes connus et documentés, le sentiment profond d’une incroyable injustice n’existerait pas aujourd’hui. Parce que le Rwanda a bénéficié du laxisme de la communauté internationale, il se retrouve dans une situation très complexe aujourd’hui. Des Rwandais, mais aussi des pays comme l’Espagne ou le Canada, dont des ressortissants ont été tués, et qui n’ont jamais osé porter plainte, vont pouvoir le faire.

Le rapport de forces idéologique a changé, et risque de se solder par une multiplication des procédures. Même des observateurs des Nations unies ont été assassinés par le Front patriotique rwandais [FPR, au pouvoir à Kigali, ndlr], et les dossiers ont ensuite été enterrés. Tout cela peut ressurgir. On a mis sous le boisseau un nombre incalculable de procédures, alors que tout le monde savait que des crimes importants avaient été commis. On a construit une success story rwandaise, un noyau de croyances qui s’est consolidé avec la caution tacite des Nations unies. Si le TPIR avait fait son travail, on n’en serait pas là.

Will United Nations Cover-Up Rwanda’s Congo Genocide?

By Milton Allimad

Let's see how Paul Kagame's chief apologists, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Ban Ki-Moon, and Tony Blair help the co-architect of Rwanda’s genocide spin his way out of the accusations in a yet-to-be published United Nations report, that his troops committed genocide in Congo during the 1990s.

The report is scheduled to be released in October and according to media accounts it exhaustively documents the massacres of tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees who had fled to Congo after Rwanda’s President Juvenal Habyarimana
was assassinated --a dastardly deed which courts in France and Spain have pinned on Kagame-- Rwanda erupted in massacres and the country was overrun by an invading army from Uganda.

Hundreds of thousands of Rwandans –an estimated almost one million—were murdered and the majority is reported to have been Tutsis.

The commander of the army which invaded Rwanda on October 1, 1990—the army was actually units of Uganda's regular national army which was then renamed the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF)-- was Paul Kagame. He trained at Fort Leavenworth, in the U.S. shortly before the invasion, during the Bill Clinton Administration. The spiritual commander and financier of the operation was Uganda’s President, Gen. Yoweri K. Museveni.

There were also news accounts, including in The New York Times that Uganda provided the missile used to shoot down Habyarimana’s presidential plane, also killing the president of Burundi.

Rwanda's history has been sad and brutal. Kagame's family fled massacres directed at Tutsis in the early 1960s when the Hutu majority overthrew a Tutsi monarchy. He grew up in Uganda. In the 1980s, he was recruited along with thousands of other Tutsi refugees into Museveni's rebellion in Uganda. When Museveni came to power in 1986, the fighters were rewarded.

Kagame later became chief of Uganda's military intelligence.

Many analysts predicted that the 1990 Museveni-sponsored invasion of Rwanda could spark unspeakable massacres. In a short piece I published in The New York Times on April 20, 1994, I offered an analogy similar to the following: What if Pakistan were to sponsor an invasion of India, and have the Indian prime minister assassinated, while units of the Pakistan army --comprised of Muslims and renamed, for this comparison, the India Patriotic Front-- moved to seize Delhi? What would happen to India's Muslim minority?

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/20/opinion/l-don-t-write-off-rwandan-violence-as-ethnic-uganda-shares-blame-841447.html


In fact, in past columns I maintained that Kagame and Museveni planned the assassination of Habyarimana knowing full well that it would invite the mass murder of Tutsis by the Hutu majority; Museveni's army, on loan to Kagame under the name
Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) would then march into the capital of Kigali and "restore" law and order as "liberators." The arsonists would put out the fire and take the credit for extinguishing a conflagration they had ignited.

France's first counter terrorism judge, responsible for looking into serious crimes, Jean-Louis Bruguière in 2006 came to the same conclusion and indicted Kagame: that Kagame planned the assassination hoping it would provoke the killings and chaotic conditions that would follow --begging for a "liberator" -- macabre as it may sound.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6168280.stm

http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=11133

Bill Clinton’s administration went with the program. Museveni and Kagame had sold the master plan as a great opportunity to dislodge the snobbish French influence from Central Africa. That's probably why Clinton even opposed a robust international intervention plan to halt the massacres--it would have ruined the Museveni/Kagame script and denied the RPF the opportunity to be hailed as heroes. What better explanation could there be to stand by and watch the killings which lasted several weeks?

One million or so dead? Under the Clinton-Museveni-Kagame reckoning, this was acceptable collateral damage.

U.S.-supported Gen. Museveni has been a genocidal killer in the East and Central Africa region for more than a quarter century now; that is without debate. He is also co-architect of the Rwanda calamity.

Museveni has been consistent. In Uganda, he confined a whole ethnic population, the Acholis in camps where several
hundreds of thousands died over more than two decades. In Congo, his army committed genocide in eastern Congo when it occupied part of the country—estimates of Congolese death as a result of the war unleashed by Uganda and related fighting and calamities reached seven million.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) found Uganda liable for what amounts to war crimes and awarded Congo $10 billion compensation in 2005. The International Criminal Court also started its own investigation, according to an article in The
Wall Street Journal on June 8, 2006.

http://www.friendsforpeaceinafrica.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=60&Itemid=110

Apparently the ICC investigation of Museveni's role in the crimes for which the ICJ found Uganda liable has been blocked by Moreno Ocampo, the prosecutor whose ethics are highly questionable, given that he is alleged to have raped a female journalist in South Africa.

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/articles/2009-Spring/full-DeWaalFlint.html

Without Ocampo, it’s possible that Museveni may well be on his way to the Hague to answer for the Congo crimes. (We can
expect Uganda to also announce that it would also withdraw its forces from Somalia if the ICC were to ever indict Museveni).

Yet Kagame, from early on, also provided evidence that he was up to the task. He had learned well from his mentor, Museveni, even before he came to power in Rwanda in 1994.

In fact, Raymond Bonner, a New York Times correspondent once wrote an article during the tumultuous period in 1994 after the massacres, about the RPF arriving at a location in Rwanda and literally killing everyone in sight. Bonner must have found this incident confusing. Why would the celebrated "liberators" kill Tutsis as well as Hutus indiscriminately if Hutus were the "bad" guys?

Of course, it would only make sense if Kagame's primary goal was to escalate the body count. After all, later, when the skulls were stacked up in the memorial museums, who would know who was a Tutsi or Hutu victim? Who would know who were
killed by Habyarimana's defeated and discredited army, or the Museveni army on loan to Kagame? To the outside world, all the skulls would represent victims of the “evil” Hutus and had it not been for Kagame’s victory, so goes the narrative, many
more skulls might have joined the pile.

Now we come to the United Nations report which is due to be published in October. The world is a very funny place. The international community pretends that there is need for a United Nations report to show that Kagame's army and its Congolese
militia allies, committed genocide in Congo when it pursued the more than one million Hutus who fled to Congo when the RPF seized control. Forget that The New York Times' Howard French –who was an exception; the rest of the Times’ reporters,
including Donatella Lorch, sold the narrative of Kagame as liberator-- wrote a number of articles about the massacres at the time. There were even accounts of bodies being meticulously incinerated.

Why was there a cover-up of the massacre of Hutus? Because Kagame was sold to the international community as the "good guy" who had liberated Rwanda from the "evil" Hutus. Admitting that Kagame was a mass killer would undermine the Hollywood script and make supporting him unpalatable.

So, the fiction blossomed, with people like Bill Clinton, now a former president, and Blair, a former prime minister, extolling Kagame's virtues, in articles, or having Kagame as an invited speaker at Clinton's annual Global Initiative meetings. Seated next to other world leaders in a fine suit, who could believe that Kagame’s hands were so bloodstained?

Indeed, many Hutus committed the terrible massacres that followed Habyarimana’s assassination in 1994, four years after Uganda invaded Rwanda. Not all Hutus could have participated in these murders. Yet, a whole ethnic population, Hutus, who make up perhaps 85% of the population, have been demonized and unfairly tagged with the “genocide” label.

As witnessed in the run-up to the recent sham elections in Rwanda, the Kagame regime has elevated Hutu demonization to national policy--anybody who questions the established narrative of the 1994 tragedy is a "genocide denier" and disqualified
from national elections, or murdered, as in the case of some opposition leaders there.

So, it’s not surprising that Kagame would like to have the United Nations report implicating his army in genocide of Hutus in Congo blocked. It's also not surprising that some elements within the United Nations, including reportedly Secretary General
Ban Ki-Moon want to have reference to "genocide" removed from the report; the international community is obligated to act against those who commit genocide.

Ban Ki-Moon, probably encouraged by Washington and London, apparently sees genocide as an inconvenience that the United Nations does not need to deal with—not unless it involves Sudan’s Omar Hassan al-Bashir and Darfur of course.

This week Rwanda threatened to pull out its troops that are part of peace keeping operations in the Sudan's Darfur region. Ban Ki-Moon has urged Rwanda not to withdraw. What a repulsive response. The United Nations should be demanding that
Rwanda withdraw its army, given the alleged crimes in the impending UN report, instead of begging it to maintain its forces in UN peace keeping. Ban Ki-Moon’s appeal to Rwanda is shameful and contemptible—it confirms that when his term
expires at the end of the year, he should be eased out of the job as world’s top diplomat.

At the end of the day, Ban ki-Moon is probably doing the bidding of the powers in Washington and London. It’s also worth watching Kagame’s chief apologists, Clinton and Blair, who have both remained silent since Rwanda’s sham elections which Kagame “won” by 93% .

People who genuinely care for Africa and for the citizens of Congo and Rwanda should not remain silent when the West and a handful of individuals play with the lives of millions of Africans.

The Internationally-created special court prosecuted the killers of Tutsis. Now it’s time to bring to book the killers of Hutus, including the foreigners who aided and abetted the ugly deeds. A good start is to release the United Nations report without whitewashing by Ban Ki-Moon.

Editor’s Note: Please call the United Nations at (212) 963-1234 press “0” and ask for the Secretary General’s office. Let Ban Ki-Moon know that he shouldn’t obstruct potential prosecution of crimes against humanity. Call the U.S. Department of State
at (202) 647-2492 and ask for Secretary of State Clinton’s office and also let her know you don’t want your taxpayer money used to support a regime like Kagame’s, which just conducted sham elections and is now implicated in genocide. Please forward this article widely.

RWANDA'S reckoning has come and it is long overdue

Accusations of genocide now levelled in a leaked UN report at its Tutsi-led government are no surprise to the peacekeepers or aid workers who have lived and worked in the tragic crucible of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and heard the terrible testimony of the massacres there.

The report, due for release next month, details the systematic killings of tens of thousands of ethnic Hutus inside the DRC in the wake of the 1994 genocide. Most of the incidents that the report documents are at least 15 years old. For most of that time, they have been considered simply too explosive to be scrutinised publicly, adding to a conspiracy of silence about the Tutsi crimes of the Rwandan genocide.

Rwanda proclaims itself furious that investigators did not go there to ask questions. Would they have got any answers? Rwanda is a virtual police state where the human rights community is among the most cowed in the world. To challenge the accepted narrative of the Tutsis as Rwanda's liberators is to "perpetrate genocidal ideology" and is forbidden.

Rwanda is outraged to be judged by the UN, an organisation that so dramatically failed it in its hour of need. Here it may have a point. But Rwanda has too long relied on the world's guilt over failing to stop the genocide to avoid scrutiny of its more unpalatable behaviour.

Paul Kagame, the Rwandan President and leader of the troops accused of genocide, has been adept at milking this, becoming the darling of Western governments and the recipient of billions in aid. Britain, in particular, has long been enamoured by him, despite evidence that millions of pounds of British aid helped to fund his plunder of natural resources in Congo, contributing to millions of deaths in the war there.

Will this report change anything? As the authors note, it is up to an independent court to decide whether what happened was genocide.

That court could be the International Criminal Court, to which Congo is a signatory. Rwanda, intriguingly, is not.

Justice for Rwanda has been victor's justice until now, but that narrative has a potent challenge.

The Times

UK complicit in bankrolling Congo conflict

As the Guardian reported last week, a 600-page report by the UN high commissioner for human rights was leaked, documenting the role of Rwanda in possible genocide in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in the late 1990s (Leaked UN report accuses Rwanda of possible genocide in Congo, 27 August). This has seismic implications for British foreign and development policy towards Rwanda, which the present government needs to take extremely seriously.

Since the 1990s the Paul Kagame regime has represented itself as the progressive and modernising "Singapore of Africa", courting international support and legitimacy in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Yet, alongside the suppression of human rights domestically, it has continued to play a direct and indirect military role in North Kivu, both in pursuit of Hutus who fled Rwanda in 1994 and natural resources that have bankrolled Rwanda's "economic miracle". All the while, the British government has continued to unquestioningly back Kagame, being Rwanda's largest source of overseas development aid. It has failed to recognise the complicity of Britain in effectively bankrolling a conflict in the Congo that has lead to millions of deaths.

The argument is simple: 1) More people have died in the conflict in the eastern Congo than in any war since the second world war; 2) The UN report provides evidence that Rwanda and Paul Kagame are directly and inextricably implicated, not only in fuelling that conflict, but in possibly carrying out the most serious crime in international human rights and humanitarian law – genocide; 3) The UK – its taxpayers and voters – are Kagame and Rwanda's biggest international supporters, largely unconditionally, and David Cameron and his colleagues continue to take annual Conservative party summer holidays to promote Rwanda's international reputation.

Dr Alexander Betts,

University of Oxford

Why No One Wants to Upset Paul Kagame

Mark Leon Goldberg

The big news out the UN today is that top UN Human rights official Navi Pillay announced she will delay the release of a controversial report about Rwanda's actions in the Congo (then Zaire) from 1993 to 2003. The so-called Mapping Report is an attempt to document alleged atrocities that occurred during the DRC's long civil war, of which DRC's neighbors played a lead role. A draft of the report, leaked last week to Le Monde, alleges that the Rwandan military committed genocide against Rwandan hutus who fled to the DRC. At the time, a Tutsi militia, led by Paul Kagame, defeated Hutu forces that committed genocide against Rwandan Tutsis. Kagame, of course, was recently elected to his third term as president of Rwanda.

To put it lightly, this did not go over well in Kigali. The Rwandan government has threatened to pull its troops out of all peacekeeping missions should the final draft of the report include the genocide allegation. As the Rwandan foreign minister cynically informs Phillip Gourevitch, “If you’re going to accuse our army of being a genocidaire army, don’t use us for peacekeeping.”

This is a threat that the United Nations has to take seriously. Rwanda has over 3,000 troops deployed to UN peacekeeping missions, making it the eighth largest troop contributing country to UN peacekeeping. Rwandans make up the single largest contingent of the peacekeeping force in Darfur--a mission that is already struggling. It is no wonder that Pillay decided to delay its release.

This episode goes to show how relatively small countries can punch above above their diplomatic weight class if they participate in UN peacekeeping. There is simply not a global surplus of peacekeepers. (And African forces are in particularly high demand.) Unless global powers raise the political cost of Rwanda making these kinds of threats, the UN will have little interest in crossing Kagame.

To wit, here is the Secretary General responding to a question about the Rwanda issue at a press stakeout earlier today.

Q: Sylvia Westall from Reuters, I wanted to ask you about Rwanda. Could you comment on Rwanda’s threat they may pull out their troops of UN peacekeeping missions starting in Darfur if they are accused of genocide in this upcoming report and if this does happen what will the UN do?

SG: First of all, the United Nations is very grateful to such a strong support and contribution of the Rwandan government to send their men and women as peacekeepers in UNAMID in Darfur and in UNMIS in Sudan and many other places, at least five missions they they are now taking part. It is very important, and I sincerely hope that such support and contribution will continue for peace and security in the region. The peace and security in Darfur and Sudan and elsewhere has implications, very important implications, for peace in the wider region. We are going to closely coordinate and work with President Kagame. He has been leading this leadership and he has been participating as one of the very important African leaders, not only in peace and security, but also as one of the co-chairs of MDG advocacy group and I am very much appreciative of his leadership.

S Africans stake claims to Congolese oil

By William Wallis and Simon Mundy in Johannesburg

Published: August 1 2010 18:05 | Last updated: August 1 2010 19:43

Women wash clothes at Tchomia on the Congolese shore of Lake Albert, the disputed site of vast oil reserves

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s volatile Ituri province is already home to a gold rush. Now, prospectors are staking claims to oil proved to exist in vast quantities under Lake Albert on the other side of the disputed border with Uganda.

In their latest incarnation, the prospectors are South African. Big names from Johannesburg have emerged as triumphant in the latest round of a long battle for control of exploration rights and knocked Ireland’s Tullow Oil off its perch.

According to a production-sharing agreement seen by the Financial Times, Khulubuse Zuma, nephew of Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s president, signed for Caprikat, one of two British Virgin Islands-registered companies which paid $6m (€4.6m, £3.8m) for control of rights awarded by Joseph Kabila, Congo’s president in June. Michael Hulley, lawyer to the South African president and business associate of his nephew, signed for Foxwhelp, the other company.

Advising Khulubuse Zuma on the deal was Mike Willcox, chief executive of Mvelaphanda Holdings Ltd, the company of Tokyo Sexwale, billionaire businessman and South Africa’s housing minister. Foxwhelp lists its address at an office in Johannesburg registered to Mr Sexwale, although Mr Zuma told the FT Mr Sexwale was not personally involved.

The deal offers a potential bonanza. Tullow is already developing a block on the other side of Lake Albert with an estimated 2bn barrels of oil. The terms of the agreement are highly favourable to the new entrants, which can expect significant profits.

The South African and Congolese governments’ interests dovetail neatly. South Africa has long sought commercial gain from its involvement in peacemaking efforts in Congo, and has been seeking a foothold in Africa’s new oil provinces.

For Mr Kabila, bringing in well connected business people from the continent’s economic powerhouse potentially buttresses him against some of his more hostile neighbours.

But not everybody is happy. The deal has raised fresh concern among western donors about the way Congo is managing its vast mineral wealth. Local interests in Ituri province – host to some of the worst massacres of the 1998-2003 war – are also up in arms. FTSE-listed Tullow, which has been battling for four years to activate exploration rights in the same area has responded furiously.

Mr Kabila never approved Tullow’s licence, for which the company paid $500,000 in 2006, and was reportedly holding out for more cash.

Representatives of the Irish company say they have sought to persuade Kinshasa of the benefits for stability as well as logistics of developing the shared oilfield jointly with Congo’s former enemies in Uganda.

“There aren’t going to be two pipelines for the oil export: one Ugandan and one Congolese,” Tim O’Hanlon, Tullow’s vice- president for Africa, told the FT. “This is one geological resource, one commercial reserve, one community of Africans around one isolated lake with a border down the middle.”

Complicating matters further, one of the blocks was also claimed by Divine Inspiration, another South African group.

“Our original contract is still absolutely valid. We don’t accept the second contract on top of ours, let alone the third,” Mr O’Hanlon said, adding that, if necessary, the company would defend its claim using legal channels.

Andrea Brown of Divine Inspiration said her group paid a $2m signing bonus for one of the blocks only after the Congolese government had cancelled Tullow’s original contract. She, too, is seeking compensation.

Lambert Mende, Congo’s information minister, has dismissed criticism of the deal by both companies as sour grapes.

Businesspeople and diplomats in Kinshasa believe the new licence holders could attempt to sell on quickly to experienced operators such as Italy’s ENI.

But Khulubuse Zuma said he had no intention of selling.

He told the FT that he planned to merge Caprikat and Foxwhelp into a single entity called Congo Oil and bring “new players” into the new company’s shareholding structure.

“As an example, if we see PetroSA [South Africa’s state oil company] as being strategic and adding value, they will be invited,” he said.

“Also, Congolese entrepreneurs, if we feel they will add value, we will invite them too. Every expertise will be included.