Governor walks tightrope on copper regulation
By Tawanda Kanhema, recently in the DRC
Mineral smugglers invaded the DRC soon after the run-off election in November 2006, with Chinese and Lebanese nationals swarming the Katanga province and buying precious stones and metals off locals in the mineral rich region until the new governor for Katanga Moses Katumbi instigated [...]

After poll, the big new investments
By Tawanda Kanhema, recently in Lubumbashi
Earthmovers, mining installations, books and drugs replace guns, bombs and other military materiel in containers bound for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as the country awakens from two decades of stony sleep and embraces its big new investments.DRC is not exactly the flavour of [...]

Roman Catholic Cathedral in Lubumbashi… the most beautiful and unscathed building in the city.

A policewoman controls traffic with a whistle at a busy intersection in Lubumbashi. She controls trafic for the first two hours of the morning, thereafter… as you like it!

A homeless boy sleeps on the pavement of a street in Lubumbashi… I took this with my phone-cam. People are rather camera shy here, and the slightest suspicion that you’re filming can stir serious trouble.

A boy walks past a poster of former president Laurent Desire Kabila, assassinated by one of his personal bodyguards in 2001. His son, Joseph Kabila is now president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) after winning the run-off polls in November 2006.

Congolese people optimistic about their country’s prospects, need support
By Tawanda Kanhema recently in Lubumbashi, DRC.
There are many changes in the Democratic Republic of Congo today, a country emerging from a protracted political crisis spanning over four decades. The Southern Times’ Zimbabwe Bureau Chief, Tawanda Kanhema, recently visited the DRC’s second largest city of Lubumbashi in [...]

D.R Congo is a country in transition. Its middle class had exported their families to Harare and Johannesburg in fear of further instability in the late 90s. Now, their once empty mansions are getting facelifts and filling up with imported furniture as people prepare for life in their land of birth.

I came here to see and write whatever the Congelese are doing right. The construction, the reforms and the optimism that characterises the new Demoratic Republic of the Congo, despite all its shortcomings.
My first encounter with Congolese police was a brief detention at the Kasumbalesa border, after which I lost about US$70,00. The charge, “infraction”… [...]