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Dan Gertler
Somewhere in the Congo mining boondocks
May 2004
“Chutzpah, s. (lit. ‘presumption’).This Hebrew term is applied to a very distinctive Jewish quality. The Jew has the courage of his opinion about himself, and in displaying it, exhibits what is known among Jews as ‘Chutzpah.” It is not really impudence, because it has a sort of backbone of ability attached to it, but it is often mistaken for impudence by others than Jews, and is one of the elements that contribute to their want of popularity. George Brandes, in his monograph on Lasalle, begins by pointing out that his chief characteristic was ‘chutzpah.’” (Joseph Jacobs, ed. The Jewish Year Book: An Annual Record of Matters Jewish. 5660. 5th September, 1899—23th [sic] September, 1900. London, Greenberg & Co., 1899.)
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“The Jewish community is one of the communities whose co-religionists have been walking from one end of the Democratic Republic of Congo to the other well before our country’s independence. We salute this community for choosing our country as second homeland and for putting a lot of itself into the development of the economic sector. May this community prosper in the Democratic Republic of Congo” (Joseph Kabila quoted in Kadima, the Jewish quarterly magazine of Kinshasa).
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A few days ago, the blog Congo Siasa relayed a Bloomberg scoop on the jaw-dropping “undisclosed sale of assets by Gecamines,” the Congolese derelict mining parastatal. Prefacing the Bloomberg article, Jason Stearns wrote: “It’s huge in terms of money involved and the secretive way it was handled, and not least due to the involvement of Dan Gertler. My guess is: it’s not a coincidence this is happening just before elections”(emphasis mine). Stearns’s observation and the Bloomberg article strike at the heart of development of African and other developing countries: the quandary of elite capture of resources. The allusion to the elections in Stearns’s remark means that there are kickbacks (or “opération retour” in Congolese parlance) or quid pro quo involved in the deal; kickbacks that would ultimately help finance Joseph Kabila’s upcoming presidential campaign.
This isn’t the first coup of Dan Gertler in the DRC. According to award-winning Zimbabwean journalist Peta Thornycroft, in June 2006, there was another “deal struck in mysterious circumstances” involving Gertler and the Rais. According to the report, the rogue Zimbabwean tycoon John Bredenkamp—erstwhile associate of Billy Rautenbach (his fellow countryman and one-time fugitive sought by South African authorities for his financial malfeasance in South Africa; a plea bargain has since been struck between Rautenbach and the RSA)—was “suddenly… summoned to Kinshasa for an interview with Kabila.” After that interview, it later on transpired that Gertler “massively overpaid Bredenkamp roughly $60 million for his cobalt mountain and the concentrator. Bredenkamp returned about $8 million, maybe to pay off the Zimbabwe government, or for Kabila's election campaign” (emphasis mine).
The major headache for those voicing these repeated accusations of kickbacks to Kabila is that there’s no hard proof to support these allegations, as Barry Sergeant, Africa Editor and investigative journalist of the South African Mineweb, freely admits in a 2007 article recounting Getler’s then “DRC mining contract quandary”: “Hard evidence of corruption is difficult to find, but there is documented proof that Kabila's Parti Pour la Reconstruction et le Développement (PPRD) uses Gécamines as a vehicle for party financing.”
A strange statement indeed, in which Barry Sergeant claims that “hard evidence of corruption is difficult to find” and in one breath alleges that there’s “documented proof” of corruption without citing any documentation to back his claim.
Sergeant’s article had this subtitle: “Meet Dan, the King of the Congo.”
Well, Dan Gertler isn’t the King of the Congo. But he’s arguably one of Congo’s Picaresque Saints. For without bold businessmen of the ilk of Dan Gertler, George Forrest, John Bredenkamp, Billy Rautenbach and others who took the risk of injecting much-needed cash into the war effort of Laurent Kabila, the DRC as we know it would have turned today into a vast open air carceral system—a gulag run by the über-warden Paul Kagame with his zweiter-warden Yoweri Museveni.
Dan Gertler’s enemies often point to the 2001 UN Reportof Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo that mentions Dan Gertler and his company the International Diamond Industries (IDI) as proof of his dubious business dealings in the Congo: the “monopoly on diamonds” granted to him by the government of Laurent Kabila in exchange for a $20m contribution to Congo’s war effort as well as “access to Israeli military equipment and intelligence.” A contract Gertler is alleged to have failed to honor, paying “only $3million instead of $20 million” and failing to deliver “military equipment.”
The following objections could however be lodged against these critics:
1. Businessmen like Dan Gertler were contracted by the legitimate government of the DRC whose territory had been invaded by armies of neighboring countries whose sole motive was the plunder of the country’s natural resources;
2. If Dan Gertler and other business interests as well as friendly neighboring countries (Angola, Zimbabwe, etc.) linked to the war effort of the Kinshasa government were even mentioned in that UN report at all, it was due to the outright preemptive rejection of the report’s conclusion by Rwanda if alleged plunderers on the side of DRC government weren’t included too. Whereas during 5 long years Rwanda and Uganda had occupied half of the Congolese territory and had engaged in systematic theft and robbery of its resources without so much as a peep out of the UN Security Council or the international community to condemn this medieval military enterprise of cross-border banditry. In point of fact, the international community perpetuated instead the myth of a domestic rebellion, all the while marveling at the blood-soaked so-called “African Renaissance” and the steadily soaring economic growths taking place in the hyper-militarized and plunderous regimes of Rwanda and Uganda. While these countries continued to receive military aid in their colonizing enterprise of their neighbor, the DRC was choked by unjustified sanctions and embargoes. And when their savage “competition over Congo resources” came to a head, the occupation forces of Rwanda and Uganda fought a savage urban war in Kisangani that virtually destroyed that Congolese city;
3. While it’s true that Dan Gertler failed to deliver on Israeli equipment, he did, however, by and large fulfill his part of the bargain (in spite of the fact that 2000-2001 was particularly tough going for the Israeli diamond industry, with exports plummeting by 20 to 25 percent, "due to the global crisis in this sector"). And continue to do so. At this period when the boat Congo-pessimism is sailing at full mast in the murky seas of global politics, Gertler has taken the risk of betting on the DRC, so much so that he’d been painted in broad strokes as “a vociferous supporter of Kabila's regime” by the London-based Africa Confidential, while, according to investigative reporters Yossi Melman and Asaf Carmel of Haaretz, everyone who really knows the man should also know of his instinctive “recoil from the media.” Gertler uses instead PR people as “buffer between him and the press.” As I just said, he has, however, wagered on the Congo and Kabila. But his action for the DRC and Kabila is rather limited to discrete diplomatic lobbying “to enhance the status and image of the Congo regime.” Thus, still according to the same Haaretz report quoted above, in March 2005, Gertler “leased [a] plane to accompany Kabila on a visit to China.” In 2003 and 2007, he was instrumental in securing meetings at the Oval Office between Kabila and George W. Bush. Without Gertler, a photo like the one below wouldn’t have been possible.
Joseph Kabila and George W. Bush
The Oval Office
November 5, 2003
Photo: UPI/Roger L. Wollenberg
All the flak Gertler is taking over his involvement in the Congo or with Joseph Kabila never mentions that he didn’t just happen upon the Congo ex nihilo as if by proxy of a deus ex machina. The Jewish presence in the Congo dates back to the 1880s—prior to the constitution of the territorial entity now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo. Most of the early Jews in the Congo were Italians—geographers, physicians, engineers, as well as gung-ho and swashbuckling types, such as Enrico Palombo, an officer of the embryonic Force Publique (FP), the ancestor of the Armée Nationale Congolaise (ANC), that would morph into today’s FARDC.
Then successive migratory waves ensued.
Throughout the colonial period and beyond, the Jews built the country’s industrial infrastructure, transportation and invested in commerce and agriculture. Buildings that bear their names and businesses are still among the prized landmarks of downtown Kinshasa and other urban centers in the Congo. The governor of the mining province of Katanga and owner of the football team T.P. Mazembe, Moïse Katumbi, is the son Nissim Soriano, a Rhodes Jewish Congo immigrant, had with his Congolese wife. Both paternal grandparents of Governor Katumbi perished in the Shoah.
Jews were in far greater concentration in Elisabethville (today, Lubumbashi), the mining capital of the Congo. By 1937, when Chief Rabbi Moshe (“Moïse”) Levy, at age 22, arrived from Rhodes in Lubumbashi, the community was already boasting 187 Jewish families and a synagogue. Rabbi Moshe Levy also catered to the Jewish communities of what was then called Ruanda and Urundi (Rwanda and Burundi today). The paramilitary group Irgun counted many of its recruits among Jews from the Congo. The Congo Jewish community ranked among the most important contributors to the Jewish funds Keren Kayemeth Leisrael and the Keren Hayessod. In 1956, Menachem Begin, then leader of the Israeli political party Herut, even visited Lubumbashi to meet with Moshe Levy and his community.
Chief Rabbi Moshe Levy and Belgian King Léopold III
Undated photo
Unknown Location
Though known for their proverbial discretion, leaders of the Congolese Jewish community, at crucial junctures, uncharacteristically do not shy away from direct involvement into DRC contentious political issues. Shortly after independence, when Katanga Province seceded from the Congo, Moïse Tshombe, the secessionist leader, made Rabbi Moshe Levy his roving ambassador—entrusting him with sensitive diplomatic missions to Israel, France, and the US. Strangely, in the aftermath of the secession, Rabbi Levy continued to have good relationships with Kinshasa authorities and, later on, with Mobutu. When Mobutu seized western-owned businesses in the early 1990s 1970s (the much-decried “Zairianization”), Congolese Jewish interests took a severe hit, which prompted many members in the community to move to South Africa and Europe. But during a trip Mobutu made to Lubumbashi, Rabbi Levy confronted him about the seizure of Jewish businesses at “Zaïrianization” and obtained that they be retroceded to their rightful owners. Arguably, Rabbi Levy was the architect of the dramatic volte-face of Mobutu from Zairianization to a new policy called by the euphemism “radicalization of the revolution” that saw most of the seized businesses return to their rightful owners. Zairianization, the Kinshasa riots of 1993 (during which one member of the Jewish was killed) and the chronic strife in the country resulted in the ebbing number of the Jewish community, with only 300 families today; though it still remains vibrant and influential.
In March of this year, when I was still in Kinshasa, just two days after the attempted coup against Kabila and the raid on the Kokolo army barracks, the Chabad movement celebrated with great pump pomp its “20 years of presence in Central Africa” at the Grand Hotel. Among the hundreds of guests that attended the event were Congolese authorities, including Prime Minister Adolphe Muzito. Chabad spokesperson Yaacov Behrman gave a boost of morale to the Congolese officials still shaken by the attack by telling the audience of international guests: “The streets of Kinshasa are calm, and we feel very safe here.” Still reeling from the attack, Kabila phoned Rabbi Shlomo Bentolila, Chabad regional representative, “to congratulate him and to express his support and gratitude for the ‘confidence that Chabad and the Jewish community have in his country.’”
The current leader of the community, Aslan Piha, who also serves as the editor-in-chief of Kadima (the Jewish quarterly of Kinshasa created in 2004), was born and grew up in Lubumbashi.
Below are two photos of Aslan Piha: on the left, as a teen, with Moïse Tshombe, the Katanga secessionist leader, in Lubumbashi (1961); on the right, with Joseph Kabila.
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(Credits)
It was therefore through this Jewish community, pretty well embedded within the fabric of the Congolese nation, that Dan Gertler made his first foray into the Congo by the end of the 1990s. It’s even rumored that it was Shlomo Bentolila (who is also the rabbi of the Beit Yaacov Kinshasa synagogue beside being Chabad representative in Central Africa) and his wife Myriam who had extended to Gertler an invitation to visit Kinshasa.
Chief Rabbi Shlomo Bentolila
Beit Yaacov Kinshasa synagogue
Central Africa Chabad Representative
This might explain why, in 2001, after Laurent Kabila’s assassination and the subsequent cancelation of the infamous IDI diamond monopoly contract by Joseph Kabila shortly after his taking over power from his deceased father, Gertler abruptly dropped his threat of dragging Kinshasa authorities to the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA). Local Jewish businessmen, who have always played their cards close to their chests when dealing with Congolese authorities, might have pressured Gertler to change tack and to woo the head of state instead.
Which brings me full circle to the issue of elite capture of resources…
I never bought into the propaganda spread by the international community about “counter-elite” approaches of development, a sort of release valve for class conflicts cooked by World Bank and IMF guilt-ridden and "Starbucks-fueled" bureaucrats from their air-conditioned Washington offices. Twisted economic theories they discover serendipitously while tweeting one another as they do their cardiovascular on the treadmill and watch distractedly Fareed Zakaria bloviating on CNN. By the way, they only deploy these “counter-elite” strategies when it comes to meaningless so-called community development projects. Peanuts, as it were—while at the same time these very institutions cynically encourage “co-opt-elite” approaches that obtain massive resource grabs by local and global plutocratic elites.
In the particular case of the mining sector of the Congo, the World Bank is certainly among the chief culprits of this harrowing anarchic privatization of Congo invaluable assets. For instance, in the Mineweb report quoted above, Barry Sergeant cites NIZA, a Dutch advocacy NGO, which had at the time forcefully “argued that the interaction between the Congolese government and the World Bank had resulted in an ‘anarchistic and opaque privatisation process that has stripped Gécamines of all its assets, [by 2002 an estimated $5b of assets had thus been diverted ‘from the state mining sector to private companies,’ according to a report by a UN Panel of Experts]. The parastatal company is now bound by countless contracts with, often dubious, private partners that contribute little or nothing to Gécamines or to the national treasury.’”
This cruel brinkmanship reminds me of the Jewish joke I incidentally read in one issue of Kadima of Kinshasa. The joke goes something like this: At the Wall of Lamentations, a Jewish investor is pondering the wisdom of his embarking into a multimillion-dollar joint venture in New York when he overhears a poor guy standing nearby, who’s begging God to make him come by 100 shekels to feed his family that day. Furious, the Jewish investor fishes one thousand shekels out of his pocket, hands the money to the indigent, and snarls: “Here, take the money to feed your family this week and let God focus on serious issues!”
That’s how the Congolese masses are being shortchanged by the World Bank and the IMF who have transformed the country into a giant casino franchise. In other words, Dan Gertler isn't the problem but the system set up that allows him to play. In other words, bring in another mogul or any other anonymous entity propelled by all the best practices of corporate governance in the world, the end result will be the same if the set-up isn't changed. In other words, "blanc bonnet, bonnet blanc," as the French have it...
What’s more, to come up with meaningful remedies to elite capture of resources, the word “corruption” needs to be redefined , its field of extension broadened ((in fact, by current standards, some forms of “undue influence” that cause so much harm in the developing world are not even considered illegal), an international corruption court set up at The Hague, banking regulations and their enforcement mechanisms wrested from nations-states and entrusted to a United Nations international anti-corruption police unit. Stuff you’d only find today in Tad Williams’s science-fiction novels…
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