Displaced (9 page)

As the government official responsible for
mining operations, it was Negusse who had signed off on Bembe’s and
then Orias’ joint venture with Saxon Mineral to restart mining
operations in the region. Negusse had been bought and paid for, and
Orias had inherited him from Bembe. As a practical matter, the
government mining administration’s approval wasn’t necessary. The
agency was ineffectual in maintaining any kind of control over
mining operations in Ituri despite having legal authority over the
concession.

Negusse was corrupt and his role was a
pretext for Saxon Mineral’s claims to legitimacy, allowing them to
maintain compliance with national laws. Negusse became indebted to
Orias when he borrowed money to build his home in Bunia. When the
UN took over Bunia, he went behind on his payments and the loan was
past due. It had been more than a year since the last payment, but
Orias had not forgotten, nor was he willing to simply let it go.
“If that fuck Negusse thinks he can hide behind the UN, he is
wrong,” he’d told his defense minister. He sensed an opportunity
and held up his hand and stopped one of his men, who was walking
toward Peter with a rope.

“Negusse, Jonas Negusse?” he asked Peter.

“Yes.”

“You saw the daughter?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“At the camp at Djugu.”

“What were you doing in Djugu?”

“I have a woman there, please I am telling
the truth.”

“How do you know it was his daughter?”

“It was his daughter, Nicole Negusse. I went
to school with her in Bunia. I recognized her.”

“Why would you tell me this?”

“Because, I remember that you said that if
you got your hands on Negusse that you would kill him and that he
stole money from you.”

Orias paused and contemplated Peter tied to
the tree.

“You better not be lying to me.”

“Please Mr. Orias, I am telling the truth.
I’ll pay back for the ore.”

“Yes you will pay me back,” he said, “and
then you will take us to the daughter and she better be there.”

He signaled to his men, “only give him half
as much.”

“Oh no,” cried Peter. “Please no Mr. Orias.”
Orias ignored him and walked away.

****

On the train ride to Amsterdam, to catch the
late flight out of Schipel airport, Matanda peered out the window,
at the lights from an industrial park, headlights from a roadway,
then blackness as the train moved forward passing through the
countryside at night. Bembe was his last link to his home in the
Congo, and looking out the train window he recollected the night in
Kinshasa and saw the orange glow of flames reflected in the glass
panes of his apartment. When he came down to the street that night,
the arsonists didn’t bother to run but lingered in the shadows in
the distance. One of them carried a petrol can and made no effort
to discard it, and was not afraid of being caught with evidence.
Matanda stood and watched as they slowly walked away and the flames
fanned by the night air lit up the dark, stripping his car to a
charred metal skeleton. He took the warning seriously.

After the cease fire agreements were signed
and Bembe moved to Kinshasa and was made vice president in the name
of power sharing, Matanda became his right hand man with an
increased profile. It was then that the representative from Saxon
Mineral first contacted Matanda. The company had previously bought
a stake in a joint venture operation between United Mining
International and the state controlled mining interest. Matanda
remembered the meeting with Saxon Mineral’s vice president Trevor
Smith in Kinshasa. He thought Bembe never really understood the
company’s intentions. In his usual blunt manner, Bembe told them to
“go and talk to the little guy in Ituri,” referring to Orias.

Mr. Smith explained that he understood the
realities of the situation, but nevertheless it was important for
them to have an agreement with the government in Kinshasa. It was
left to Matanda to work out the details and an agreement was
drafted for exploration of the Ituri concession. Not in exchange
but as a payment of costs, he was given an envelope containing
$25,000 in US dollars. Mr. Smith called it a signing fee. A second
envelope containing the same amount of money was produced as a
campaign contribution. Certainly corporations could contribute to
political campaigns as in the west, he was asked. He found their
methods crude and preferred the custom of the anonymous envelope.
But despite his contempt for being patronized, Matanda accepted the
money.

Bembe used his position as vice president to
challenge Kabila in the next presidential election. But by
confronting Kabila directly, Bembe overestimated his strength and
over played his hand. He attacked Kabila personally and ran as the
candidate, who was “one hundred percent Congolese.” A not too
subtle dig at Kabila, whose nationality had been questioned after
spending much of his childhood in exile in Tanzania. But Kabila
gave as good as he got, if not more so. One of Bembe’s radio
stations in Kinshasa was burned to the ground under suspicious
circumstances, and his television station, CCTV, was attacked by a
mob and forced off the air.

When election day came, neither candidate was
able to garner the necessary fifty percent of the vote. The
subsequent runoff between Kabila and Bembe was marred by violence
and fatalities on both sides, but Kabila eventually emerged with a
majority of the ballots cast. Bembe at first contested the results
and then accepted defeat, but not until after his supporters had
set fire to the Supreme Court building.

It was during the post election realignment
that new trouble began for Matanda. Kabila began consolidating his
position and focused on Bembe as a threat to state authority. Bembe
refused the order to register his personal guard and incorporate
them into the army. The army, in turn, laid siege to Bembe’s
neighborhood and Bembe’s militia defended themselves in a sustained
firefight. Matanda received a number of threats advising him to
leave the country or else. When his car caught fire, he accepted it
as not coincidence but a direct warning. He had no intentions of
becoming a martyr, a political prisoner or worse. When he heard
through channels that the government was preparing an arrest
warrant, he took the opportunity to flee. He used his overseas
passport and traveled to London.

Bembe’s remaining militia on the streets of
Kinshasa were outnumbered and forced to surrender, and Bembe took
refuge in the South African embassy. He called for a negotiated
settlement, but the government, with victory in reach, was not
inclined to negotiate. Instead, it accused him of treason and
threatened prosecution. And when Bembe asserted his immunity as a
senator, the attorney general responded that immunity did not
extend to crimes against the state and that it could be stripped
legally, with the concurrence of the courts. It became clear that
legal niceties would not carry the day. Though he refused to admit
as much, in the end Bembe was forced to flee. He declared that he
was traveling to Portugal to receive treatment for a broken leg.
Which was true to an extent, the fiction he maintained was that
there would be a return journey. The South African government
negotiated safe passage to the airport and his departure from the
country.

Not satisfied with Bembe’s exile, the Kabila
government pursued charges against him with the International
Criminal Court for crimes committed by his militia in Ituri. Congo
was a member of the Court, and the Court consistent with its
mandate undertook an investigation. Bembe himself did not deny the
deaths of civilians but maintained that they were the collateral
effects of legitimate military operations. Matanda was key in
protesting that the claim was politically based and that the Court
should not insert itself in what was essentially an internal
political dispute in the Congo. “This is not about justice but
about politics,” he told the newspapers. “The Court should not
sully its credibility by politicizing prosecutions,” he argued.
“This prosecution is support for every critic that the Court is
incapable of acting objectively without imposing what is
essentially victor’s justice.”

Despite his objections, the Court decided
that the complaint had cause and issued a warrant for Bembe’s
arrest. It found that not only was there reason to believe that
Bembe’s militia had committed crimes against civilians but that
they had done so with his approval and on his orders. Bembe was
betrayed by his own self regard and made the mistake of traveling
to Brussels where he was arrested while shopping for new suits.

Matanda thought of this time, their shared
past a world away, as the train jostled through the Dutch
countryside. He recounted events and considered how things could
have gone differently. He did not feel sorry for himself, nor did
he feel guilty. Politics in the Congo was a contact sport and he
was a practical man. Despite the campaign, he knew Bembe was an
opportunist and not an ideologue. He took comfort in this fact,
which gave Bembe a quantity of reliability. Civilians had been
killed, but he didn’t believe they were targeted. Bembe had
resisted the extreme wing of Hema nationalism. Tribalism simply was
not good for business.

****

Horst paged through the file on his desk in
the Court’s offices. He kept turning back to one document in the
file, a response to a request for information, a letter
interrogatory. He was used to getting the brush off from parties
not wanting to cooperate with the Court’s investigations, but
something about the tone of this particular response struck him. He
couldn’t put a finger on it. The response seemed either
particularly defensive or maybe more strident. Not merely declining
to cooperate as a matter of privacy, like so many others, but
asserting a legal prohibition.

He contemplated how to move forward in this
particular investigation. One of his main witnesses had disappeared
and was presumed dead. His liaison with the UN mission on the
ground had returned to the family home but had found no additional
sign of Jonas Negusse or his family. The UN Officer contacted
friends and neighbors trying to find some evidence of the family’s
whereabouts. He was a military man and not trained as an
investigator, but ultimately he caught up with a local boy who
minded the Negusse property. After some persuasion, the boy
described a discouraging scene. He witnessed the soldiers driving
toward the house earlier in the day. He thought they were DRC army
soldiers but couldn’t be sure, and believed there were about five
of them. When he arrived at the home, the soldiers were gone as was
Jonas Negusse. His wife was dead with a devastating wound to her
head and the daughter was still alive.

Horst recounted the story again for Alex
Moore one of the senior prosecutors on the case. Alex was mercurial
and hard to read, and Horst never knew exactly what to expect when
they met. At times he could be near ebullient and full of optimism
but on the whole he was more likely to be taciturn and
dissatisfied. His dissatisfaction wasn’t personal nor directed at
any individual but general in nature. His lack of satisfaction was
equal opportunity and likely why he drank, Horst suspected, or
perhaps it was his drinking that made him so irritable. Either way
despite his mannerisms, Horst liked the man. He was honest and
Horst knew where he stood as a junior staffer.

“Do we know what happened to the daughter?”
Alex asked.

“According to the kid who worked there, her
Uncle came for her. We are still trying to track him down. We don’t
have a number for him but Jean went to his house with a couple of
blue helmets and he wasn’t at home. We’re gonna keep trying, either
get a number for him or make another visit.”

“Okay please do, maybe the Uncle can tell us
something or maybe the daughter knew something about her father’s
business, I want to follow all leads.”

“Right, will do, I’ll keep you up to
date.”

“I think we also have to review our
procedures,” Alex said with weariness and irritation. “How the fuck
can I pursue this case if we lose our witnesses?” he asked more to
himself than to anyone else. The only other person in the room was
Julie, a paralegal, and Horst couldn’t help but feel that the
comment was directed at him, but knew better than to respond. “I
mean what the fuck, you guys promise this guy you’ll protect him if
he cooperates and then he goes and gets his skull bashed in.” He
confused Negusse with his wife but Horst wasn’t about to correct
him. “And I don’t mean you in particular but also the guys in
Congo, we’re supposed to have protection services, they ought to
protect for chrissakes.” Alex took a deep breath, frowned and
closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. “Sometimes, I wish I had
the courage to be a bum,” he muttered to himself. He looked tired,
like he had had a late night. “I know the DRC is difficult terrain
and the UN – well the UN can’t even guarantee the protection of
their own. But still I can’t help but believe if things had been
done differently, maybe if we had taken the witness into custodial
protection or something, well then he’d still be around. We lost an
important witness and this concerns me.”

“It concerns me too.” Horst had taken the
opportunity to respond but this only made Alex frown more deeply at
the obviousness of his statement. “Negusse declined continual
protection, we were scheduled to pick him up the next day and fly
him and his family out. Word must have leaked out that he was
cooperating.” Horst knew this wasn’t particularly helpful. “Without
the witness’ cooperation, there’s only so much we can do.”

“Still it fucking sucks.”

“You’re right, let me take it up with
Charlie.” Charlie was the head of protection services. “I’ll raise
your concerns and get back to you.”