Man of the people (E F N)
Belgian film-maker Thierry Michel is renowned for focusing his camera on controversial topics in Africa. Talking about his latest documentary, he tells Nina Lamparski why the Congo’s unregulated mining business is undergoing a revolution
He has been jailed, threatened and blacklisted by African authorities for his work. Yet, to date, no obstacle has proven big enough to stop Belgian director and writer Thierry Michel from contributing to what the Democratic Republic of Congo possibly needs most as a post-colonial, independent nation: an extensive audiovisual archive chronicling the country’s turbulent past and present. In a region that for too long has been devoid of historical archives, this quiet, charismatic man holds near-legendary status among locals.
The fancy Brussels hotel bar where we meet to discuss Michel’s latest documentary, Katanga Business (released in April), is a far cry from the red plains, dusty villages and exotic territories he has explored with his camera for more than 30 years.
In the course of his award-winning career, he has put the spotlight on armed humanitarian aid in Somalia, Africa’s colonial heritage and the socio-cultural role of the Congo River. Most famously perhaps, Michel is the author of an intimate three-part film portrait of dictator Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, following his fall from grace after a three-decade long reign of the country that was then known as Zaire. Released in 1999, pirate copies of this “Shakespearean tragedy” continue to circulate widely around DRC, according to local media reports.
But despite the critical nature of his work, Michel says his aim is “not to judge but to challenge and confront”.
With Katanga Business, the 56-year-old Walloon ventures into new territory. While his previous films have focused more on socio-political topics, this new documentary looks at the “uncompromising economic war” being waged between European, American and Chinese businesses as they compete for multimillion dollar mining contracts in Katanga, one of the most mineral-rich provinces in DRC.
Michel explains his choice of subject was influenced partly by his upbringing in the Walloon city of Charleroi, a once-important industrial hub for coal and steel production that now struggles with unemployment and impoverishment.
“My grandfather was a miner, so I became familiar with the workers’ culture and developed a strong social conscience,” he says. “The region is known as the Pays Noir [Black Country] and I acquired a fascination for the raw landscape and people’s faces marked by deep wrinkles and years spent working underground. The other thing that marked me was to see the decline of a world as factories shut down and lives were shattered.” Unlike in Charleroi, the mines of Katanga continue to thrive. From cobalt and copper to diamonds and radium, the southeastern region is a veritable investor’s paradise. However, despite these vast natural resources, widespread corruption and fraud, alongside a lack of organisation and limited investment, have kept the people extremely poor, its infrastructures basic and its public services very limited.
“Under Mobutu, the mines in Katanga were nationalised and run by the state-owned firm Gécamines, which quickly sank into corruption and drove the business to the brink of bankruptcy,” says Michel. “In the aftermath of his reign, the trade was privatised again, junior companies popped up and, most importantly, renegades keen to make a quick profit started to infiltrate the market to sell off and export raw minerals illicitly. So you have the official sector, in which Western and Asian multinationals use industrial mining methods and bring in their own workers, and the informal, artisanal sector where miners excavate and dig for minerals with their hands in a totally unregulated setting.
“It’s a battle fought between big multinational companies from competing continents and emerging economies, as well as a social war for Africans who witness how the profits from their forefathers’ land benefit everyone except themselves. Of course, there are also enormous environmental damages because the big manufacturing plants deforest large chunks of land, although this is an aspect I haven’t concentrated on yet.”
Katanga Business, which Michel describes as “an economic– political thriller based on social violence”, shows the “many actors involved in the region’s drama as everyone tries to get a piece of the cheese”.
Among these figures are the industrial Belgian patriarch George Forrest, whose family mine employs around 80,000 workers; Paul Fortin, a Canadian hired by the World Bank and the Congolese government to save the ailing Gécamines; and Chinese state interests represented by Mr Min, nicknamed “the nine-billion dollar man” in reference to the investment deal he strikes with Fortin. But Katanga’s true hope comes in the shape of the province’s governor and local hero, Moïse Katumbi Chapwe, in office since February 2007. Barely 45, this charismatic politician, who also owns the local football club, TP Mazembe, embodies a new generation of leadership, one that could help the region to emancipate itself on the back of the current industrial revolution.
“Moïse is a visionary businessman who understands his people,” says Michel. “The province now faces a real chance to revolutionise the way in which the mining business is run, to establish rules and norms to regulate the trade, and to help locals finally become self-sufficient and live off their land thanks to high-tech equipment.”
While Katanga Business has only just hit the screens in Belgium, Michel is already busy working on his next project, a tour across Asia, including Tibet. When told that Chinese officials have once again shut the borders to foreigners, he laughs: “I guess I don’t like the easy path.”