You will not find small-scale miners at the Bulyanhulu gold mine today. But you will find a massive commercial mining operation set to pull in major rewards for Kahama, Barrick and international investors.
Barrick’s potential life of mine gross revenue at Bulyanhulu could be as high as $3 billion, given the current price of gold. With total proven reserves of 10 million ounces, with a cash cost each ounce of $130 to $166 US according to Barrick’s 2000 report, but higher according to information subsequently supplied by Barrick, the potential profits are indeed rich. Barrick has also made hundreds of millions US worth of capital and infrastructure investments in the area.
Evictions from Bulyanhulu opened the door to ample opportunities for other Canadian mining companies. In a December 10 1996 report to DFAIT, after the eviction of the small-scale miners, the Canadian High Commissioner wrote: “…in most cases there is a will on the part of the Tanzanian government to facilitate solutions [to the problems of foreign mining companies with peasant miners] regardless of legal or resource constraints. The new mining legislation should deal with current problems” (emphasis ours).
Despite Mchome’s ruling that even simple peasants need to be compensated, no provision was ever made for the resettlement of the indigenous people. In a June 21, 1995 meeting with the Tanzanian Prime Minister, the Canadian High Commissioner did indicate miners could be relocated using funds from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). But CIDA never had a project or provided funds in Tanzania in the region mentioned, according CIDA spokesperson Domenique Hetu.
To date, the Tanzanian government has compensated only 56 of the miners.
Even Kahama Mining stated in its own report to the World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency that “…after the cessation of artisanal mining in Bulyanhulu in August 1996, the income of the majority of people declined significantly…”
The IMF, which suspended funding in 1994, returned it in 1996 and has been loaning hundreds of millions US to the country every year since then.
Mining Watch Canada’s Joan Kuyek said what is most striking is that tens if not hundreds of thousands of peasants were displaced “to make way for a Canadian mining company to use up the gold resource within 20 years, to hire no more than 600 Tanzanians, and to return to the government of Tanzania a pittance compared to what they were making from small-scale mining.”
Barrick clarified that the Bulyanhulu gold mine employs around 1,000 people and has created more than 7,500 “indirect jobs,” and that more workers were also employed during mine construction.
For its part, the Canadian government believes the case is closed. Based on their understanding of the situation and their policy, “we do not seek to come up with any further action at this point,” said DFAIT spokesperson André Lemay.
“We’re not saying that we’re not going to change our position. We’re just simply saying that if further information is brought to our attention, we will consider that information, see whether or not we must or should in fact modify our approach. If that is the case, then we will take the appropriate action at that point.”
Barrick does not apologize for the evictions. When asked where the small-scale miners were supposed to go, Barrick’s legal counsel Kent Thomson replied, “Bearing in mind that you’ve got a highly migrant population, and bearing in mind that this site is surrounded by a number of other sites, including the Bulyanhulu South site, operated by Ashanti Goldfields and not Sutton Resources, who exactly was deprived of their livelihoods?
“If you’ve got a highly transient, highly migrant population which is able to walk onto a site which is one kilometre south of Bulyanhulu, and they are able to do so shortly after the government’s removal order, why do you say they were deprived of their livelihood?”
Barrick representatives preferred to focus on August 7 and 8, for which the company has documented the process of filling in the shafts and the peaceful departure of the locals.
“We’ve got photographs, we’ve got videotape, we’ve got any number of contemporaneous documents dated on the very day this is happening, not two weeks after the fact, not four years after the fact, and not six years after the fact, as some of these witness statements now are. What they indicate beyond a doubt is that the way people left this site was in a peaceful, systematic fashion. There is just not one shred of contemporaneous evidence of people being beaten up or forced physically off the site.”
Barrick states that prior to any shaft-filling, every shaft was inspected while the police and Ministry of Mines supervised the process.
“If someone is found inside, that person is brought to the surface immediately. The person is taken to the police officer, who photographs the person. The person is documented and the person is then told to leave the area. When they verified that the shaft was empty, and only when they verified that the shaft was empty, they would take the bulldozer and fill the shaft in.”
In short, Barrick contends that the reports of burials were concocted after the fact by the Miners’ Committee, specifically by Mallim Kadau, the committee chairman. Barrick’s position is that those like Tundu Lissu who have put these claims forward are motivated by political opportunism. Lissu ran as an opposition candidate in the 1996 parliamentary elections. He had no connection to Bulyanhulu at the time. Furthermore, both Barrick and the Canadian High Commission accuse the Miners’ Committee of attempting to extort money both from the small-scale miners and from Kahama.
Certainly there must have been many disputes over such a valuable resource as a gold mine, even within the miners’ community. Mine workers appear to have had less representation on the committee, but the committee also used some funds to build a local school and fund a soccer team.
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