Range Exploration Corporation (TSX: TNX)

Profile

Tan Range Exploration (T.TNX) is a unique, publicly-traded financial gold company whose business strategy is to acquire royalty interests in gold production from its core assets in the Lake Victoria greenstone belt (LVGB) of Tanzania where a reported 40 million ounces of gold have been discovered since the mid-1990's.

Tan Range is presently the largest landholder in the LVGB - one of the most prolific goldfields in the world. Established producers in this belt rank within the lowest percentile globally in terms of cash production costs.

Our royalty strategy offers investors significant, low-risk leverage to gold prices, limited shareholder dilution, and the potential to have their shares valued at a premium in the marketplace.

Business Plan

The Company's long history in Tanzania, the strategic location of its Lake Victoria properties, coupled with its strong in-house technical capability and capacity to identify and acquire high quality projects in a timely manner, distinguishes Tan Range from its competitors and provides an asset base for the Company's royalty strategy to unfold.

In actual fact, the Company's practice of farming out (optioning) its landholdings to qualified industry partners for pre-production royalties and direct royalties in future gold production positions Tan Range to receive a much higher market valuation than other companies in its peer group.

The Company's business strategy is a variation or hybrid of the one employed by Franco Nevada Mining which merged with Newmont Mining and Australia's Normandy Mining to form the world's largest gold producer.

At the time, Newmont paid 97 times annual 2001 sales for Franco Nevada, a premium that will certainly be used as a yardstick in future takeovers of royalty companies. Royal Gold, the only "pure" royalty play on the market, was trading at 32 times sales in June of 2003 and would likely be valued much higher in any takeover scenario.

Franco Nevada's strategy involved the purchase of production royalties on the open market whereas Tan Range intends to develop royalty income by way of property agreements with industry partners, most of them major companies. In essence, Tan Range believes it can find gold cheaper through exploration than buying gold reserves on the open market.

In order to exploit the potential on our holdings in the Lake Victoria region, we first define gold potential on the properties (in effect value-adding them) after which they are dealt to industry partners who meet strict internal selection criteria.

Entering into partnerships with major companies to exploit the mineral potential on our properties helps mitigate financial risk to the Company and its shareholders. This is extremely important given the cyclical nature of the minerals business and the Company's reliance on capital markets to fund its activities.

In our situation, the funding commitment for these properties is the responsibility of our industry partner which is usually a major company with the financial capacity and commitment to meet its long term obligations.

All of our property agreements are structured such that we receive advanced royalties before production and escalating royalties after production that are based on rising gold prices.

For most properties in our exploration portfolio, we prefer industry partners with assets net of liabilities of at least C$100,000,000 and gross annual revenues exceeding $500,000,000. Nonetheless, we have partnered with junior companies that are willing to advance our prospecting licenses on terms generally accepted by larger companies.

Because our properties are also prospective for diamonds (the historic Mwadui pipe of the Williamson diamond mine is located in the area of our core holdings), we have structured our royalty agreements to include diamond production as well. In the past year, we have also acquired a major land position in Tanzania's Kabanga Nickel Belt where Barrick Gold and Falconbridge Ltd. are developing a high grade nickel deposit.
At this juncture - and assuming the various royalty projects we have negotiated advance as expected - management of Tan Range expects that in the near future advanced royalty payments from our holdings will cover the majority of the Company's general and administrative expenses, allowing Tan Range to maintain a sound working capital position which has been the number one priority of its Chairman and CEO, James E. Sinclair.

More information: Tan Range - Tulawaka project.

Management Team:

Jim Sinclair
Chairman, CEO & Director

Marek Kreczmer M.Sc.(Geol.), B.Sc.(Geol.)
Chairman-Technical Committee/Director

Mrs. Victoria Luis MBA, CSCPA and AICPA member
CFO

Dr. Norman Betts, PhD, FCA
Director

Anton Esterhuizen
Director

Dr. William M. Harvey BA, PhD,
Director

Ulrich Rath B.Sc.(Hon), M.Sc.(Geol)
Director

Rosalind Morrow LL.B
Director

Corporate Head Office:
Tan Range Exploration Corporation
93 Benton Hill Road
Sharon, CT 06069
Telephone: 860.364.1830 860.364.1830

http://www.tanzanianroyaltyexploration.com/s/Home.asp

Sub-Sahara Resources N.L. (ASX: SBS)

Sub-Sahara Resources N.L. is an Australian junior exploration company based in Perth, Western Australia.

The Company has an exploration focus in Eritrea and Tanzania – Nyanzaga.

Nyanzaga Project (PL1501/2000, PL1700/2001, PL1772/2001) - 91% & PL1596/2000 - 90%

The four licences that make up this project are located approximately 50km southwest of Mwanza and about 40km northeast of the 16.4Million ounce (Moz) Bulyanhulu Gold Mine. The project covers part of the easterly extremity of the Archaean Sanza-Geita greenstone belt and is dominated by Nyanzian Group lithologies made up of felsic volcanics, massive and laminated tuffs, coarse grained pyroclastics and banded iron formations (BIF).

Placer Dome Africa Limited (“Placer”), a subsidiary of Placer Dome Inc, funded a further US$250,000 (A$470,000) of exploration consisting of 1,325.22 metres of diamond drilling in four new drill holes and three extensions to earlier diamond drill holes, with drilling designed to further test both the Tusker and Serengeti Zones.

Sub-Sahara confirms that the assay results from all 7 holes further support the broad +120 metre wide zone of gold mineralisation at Tusker and the drill holes verify an open strike length of over 450 metres. Potential to extend the Tusker zone both along strike and at depth remains strong.

Management Team:

Mr. Henry David Kennedy
Chairman

Mr. Michael Richard Griffiths
CEO

Mr. Desmond John Foynes
Director

Mr. Peter Lawson Munachen
FCA, FAICD

Mr. Alasdair Smith
Exploration Manager

Head Office:
Perth Business Centre
Western Australia 6849
Telephone: +61 8 9227 3260 +61 8 9227 3260

http://chalicegold.com/

Resolute Limited (ASX: RSG)

Resolute has a 100% interest in the project Golden Pride through its Tanzanian subsidiary, Resolute (Tanzania) Limited. The Golden Pride site achieved a record 644 days without a lost time injury in December 2004. The operation’s won the Presidential Environmental Excellence and Leadership Award for the second consecutive time. The current mine is designed to produce an average of approximately 160,000 ounces of gold per annum at a cash cost of US$230 per ounce over the remaining three to four year mine life.

The 2005 Financial Year exceeded expectations with production of 149,866 ounces of gold at a cash cost of US$269. Further enhancements to process plant carbon management improved the gold recovery rate to 95.6% while at the same time plant throughput increased to a record 2.98Mt.

The open pit produced 7 million cubic metres of material with an emphasis on waste production from the north and south cutbacks in the central portion of the pit in order to secure ore production from 2006. Ore production came from the central and eastern sections of the pit with the eastern end completed mostly to design limits.

Development drilling programmes on the north-east end of the pit identified a new ore zone and has resulted in a new resource being developed. The North East pit abuts the eastern end of the Golden Pride open pit and provides additional oxide ore feed to the plant through to the end of the 2005 calendar year.

The treatment plant continued to improve its performance with higher throughput rates at better than forecast gold recovery rate levels. A second thickener was commissioned during the year and has greatly improved water recovery at higher throughputs. The plant treated 2.98Mt of ore, well above the design capacity of 2.6Mtpa and last year’s record of 2.8Mt.

The Golden Pride mine has now produced in excess of 1.1 million ounces of gold since commissioning.

Executive Team:

Chairman – PE Huston
Chief Executive Officer – PR Sullivan
Non-Executive Director – TC Ford
Non-Executive Director – HTS Price

Head Office:

4th Floor, The BGC Centre
28 The Esplanade
Perth, Western Australia 6000
Postal: PO Box 7232 Cloisters Square
Perth, Western Australia 6850
Tel: + 61 8 9261 6100 + 61 8 9261 6100
Fax: + 61 8 9322 7597
contact@resolute-ltd.com.au

http://www.resolute-ltd.com.au/

Placer Dome (NYSE: PDG)

Placer Dome is one of the world’s largest and most successful gold mining companies. Based in Vancouver, Canada, the company has interests in 16 mining operations in seven countries and employs more than 13,000 people around the world. The company’s shares trade on the New York, Toronto, Swiss and Australian stock exchanges and Euronext-Paris under the symbol PDG.

In 2003, Placer Dome expanded its presence on the African continent with the acquisition of the North Mara mine in the highly prospective northern region of Tanzania.

North Mara (100% owned): Acquired in mid-2003, this mine in Tanzania is a relatively new facility situated in a largely unexplored and highly prospective gold district. North Mara is surrounded by an extensive package of land, where an aggressive exploration program has added more than one million ounces of reserves since the acquisition. Gold production in 2005 is expected to be approximately 290,000 ounces, a 38% increase over 2004 due to mining operations moving into the higher grade Gokona pit.

On January 20, 2006 Barrick Gold Corporation acquired 81% of shares and gained control of Placer Dome.


Head Office:

Suite 1600 - 1055 Dunsmuir Street
Vancouver BC V7X 1P1
Canada
Phone: +1 604 682 7082 +1 604 682 7082
Toll free: +1 800 565 5815 +1 800 565 5815
Fax: +1 604 682 7092
http://www.barrick.com/

MDN Northern Mining (TSX: MDN)

Corporate Profile

MDN Northern Mining is a Canadian mining company focused on the discovery and development of new gold and base metal deposits that can provide a superior return to our shareholders. We are actively exploring highly prospective areas in Tanzania and Eritrea, East Africa, and in the Province of Quebec, Canada. In 2005 we became gold producers through our participation in the Tulawaka Mine in Tanzania. Our Company is managed by an experienced team and has a strong Board of Directors with well known industry players.

A brief corporate history

NORTHERN MINING Explorations Ltd. ("MDN Northern Mining") is a Canadian mining company incorporated pursuant to the Mining Act (Province of Québec) by the issuance of letters patent dated January 27, 1954, under the name Northern Quebec Explorers Ltd. On September 4, 1987, the Company was continued under Part 1A of the Companies Act (Québec) by the issuance of articles of continuance and its corporate name was changed to Northern Mining Explorations Ltd./Explorations Miničres du Nord Ltée. Pursuant to the reorganization of the Canadian exchanges, all the common shares of the Company were listed and posted without restriction at the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) at the opening on December 6, 1999, under the symbol "MDN".

MDN NORTHERN MINING has a 30% participating interest in the Tulawaka Project in Tanzania, which started commercial production in March 2005 as theTulawaka Gold Mine.

Click here for more information.

DIRECTORS

Carlos H. Bertoni
David A. Fennell
Paul-A. Girard
Serge Savard
Anthony P. Walsh

MANAGEMENT

Carlos H. Bertoni
M. Sc., CEO, P. Geo
Tim Williams
Ph. D., COO
Paul-A. Girard
VP, Investor Relations
Dominique Moreau Treasurer
Treasurer

Contact:

Paul-A. Girard
VP, Investor relations
1010, de la Gauchetičre Ouest
Bureau M-110
Montréal (Québec)
Canada H3B 2N2
Telephone : +1 (514) 866-6500 +1 (514) 866-6500
Fax : +1 (514) 866-3799
Email : info@Xnord.com
Website: www.Xnord.com

Helio Resource Corp (TSX: V HRC)

Helio is a well-financed junior gold exploration company focused on developing the SMP Gold project in Tanzania into a significant gold resource. Helio controls 27 km of the Saza Shear Zone, the main gold bearing structure in the region.

Since June 2006, the Company has drill-tested thirteen targets, eleven of which are hosted by the Saza Shear Zone. All thirteen targets have intersected bedrock-hosted gold mineralisation, the most advanced being the Kenge Target, which has returned up to 21.95m grading 6.92g/t gold (Company press release dated May 23, 2007).

The primary objective of the current 20,000m drill programme is to outline a resource at the 2km long Kenge target, where infill drilling is ongoing, and to demonstrate the potential to significantly increase upon that resource by drill testing newly defined targets, such as Mbenge (39m @2.6g/t Au) and Porcupine (42m @ 2g/t Au).

In addition to the SMP gold project in Tanzania, Helio has a portfolio of earlier stage projects in Namibia, Botswana and Mozambique. As part of its strategic approach to project development, Helio has joint-ventured a total of 17 of its Namibian licences: 9 to Desert Minerals (UK) Ltd. and 8 to TransAfrican Minerals Limited to fund work on these properties. Helio continues to pursue joint venture partners for its other projects in Namibia, Botswana and Mozambique, while advancing the SMP Gold project in Tanzania.

Management Team:

Christopher J. Mackenzie, M.Sc., C. Geol.
Director & COO

Richard D. Williams, M.Sc., P.Geo
Director & CEO

D. Grenville Thomas, P. Eng.
Chairman

Clifford T. Davis, CA
Director

Stephen M. Leahy
Director

Colin Jones, B.Sc., MausIMM
Director

Head Office:

Helio Resource Corporation
Suite 580 -­ 625 Howe Street
Vancouver, British Columbia, V6C 2T6
Phone: +1 604 638 8002 +1 604 638 8002
Fax: +1 604 638 8011
e-mail: richard@helioresource.com
irene@helioresource.com

http://www.helioresource.com/s/home.asp

Gallery Gold Limited (ASX: GGN)

Gallery Gold Limited is an emerging gold producer with a 100,000-ounce-per-annum project in production at Botswana, a second project expected to go ahead next year in Tanzania and several important exploration programs in southern and eastern Africa.

Buckreef

The Buckreef Project is located 35 kilometers south west of Ashanti/Anglo's 18 million ounce Geita open pit gold mine in the Lake Victorian Archaean greenstone/granite terrane. The gold mineralisation at Buckreef-Rwamagaza is associated with shear zones or splays off the main shear and usually hosted in intensely altered mafic and/or ultramafic rocks. Similar to other gold deposits around the world, areas of extension and dilational zones appear to host the best zones of mineralisation.

Kitongo

The Kitongo Project includes the Kitongo PL, Mwamazengo PL, Mwamazengo South PL and Ugambilo PL which form a contiguous block of tenements 80 kilometres south of Mwanza.

Gold mineralisation has been identified in three areas with the Main Zone having a measured, indicated and inferred resource of 479,000 ounces @ 1.3 g/t Au. To the north west of the Main Zone a new discovery was made in 2001 at Isegenghe Hill where an inferred resource of 75,000 ounces @ 14.4 g/t Au has been estimated. The third occurrence is at Kitongo Hill.

Primary gold mineralisation at Kitongo has a strong structural control along a north west trending regional corridor and is hosted in a mafic volcanic sequence underlying a series of intermediate to felsic volcaniclastic units and sediments composed of cherts, BIF and phyllites. Drilling indicates the gold is associated with silicification, quartz veining and arsenopyrite within brecciated cherts and tuffs.

Gallery has focused on validating the Kitongo data base in view of the numerous local grids used in the past. The Company is following up several untested gold in soil anomalies defined by Ashanti Gold in 2000 under a joint venture with Spinifex. An IP survey is also due to commence over the main areas of mineralisation to better define the controlling structures.


John T Shaw BSc, FAusIMM, MCIM, FAICD, SME
Chairman

Hamish J Bohannan B(Eng)Sc (Hons), M(Eng)Sc, MBA,FAusIMM, CEng
Managing Director

Michael P Curnow
Non-executive Director

Craig R Munro FCPA, FAusIMM, FAICD
Non-executive Director

P Buck BA Earth Sciences, MSc (Geology)
Non-executive Director


East Africa Mines Ltd.
Plot No 103W Capri Point
Mwanza Tanzania
Postal Address:
PO BOx 1678
Mwanza Tanzania
Telephone: +255 28 250 2236 +255 28 250 2236
Fax: +255 28 250 0298
Email: eastaf@eastafricamines.com

AngloGold Ashanti Limited (NYSE: AU)

In April 2004, AngloGold Limited and Ashanti Goldfields Limited merged to form AngloGold Ashanti Limited, a global gold company with 20 operations on four continents, a substantial project pipeline and an extensive, worldwide exploration program. The new company is listed on the New York, Johannesburg, Ghanaian, London and Australian stock exchanges, as well as the Paris and Brussels bourses.

AngloGold Ashanti is committed to continuously improving the performance of current assets through cost management and increased labor productivity, as well as seeking out value-adding growth opportunities through exploration and a disciplined acquisition strategy. The company is focused on generating competitive financial returns and on rewarding shareholders with semi-annual dividends.

For more information on AngloGold Ashanti projects in Tanzania (Geita), please click here.

MR R M GODSELL (52)

BA, MA
Chief Executive Officer

MR S VENKATAKRISHNAN (VENKAT) (40)

B.Com, A.C.A (ICAI)
Finance Director

MR R CARVALHO SILVA (53)

BACC, BCORP ADMIN
Chief Operating Officer, Americas and Australia

MR R N DUFFY (42)

BCOM, MBA
Business Development

MR N F NICOLAU (46)

B Tech (Min, Eng); MBA
Chief Operating Officer - Africa

MR K H WILLIAMS (57)

BA (Hons)
Marketing Director

Head Office:
11 DIAGONAL STREET
JOHANNESBURG
SOUTH AFRICA, 2001
Phone: +27 11 637-6000 +27 11 637-6000
Fax: +27 11 637 6624

http://www.anglogold.com/default.htm

Barrick Gold Corp (TSX: ABX)

Barrick is a leading international gold mining company, with a portfolio of operating mines and development projects located in the United States, Canada, Australia, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Tanzania. In 2004, the Company’s 12 operating mines produced about 5 million ounces of gold, at a cash cost of $212 per ounce, the lowest cash cost of all senior producers. The Company increased its reserves by over 3 million ounces during 2004, with gold mineral reserves of 89 million ounces as at December 31. For 2005, the Company expects gold production to be 5.4 to 5.5 million ounces at an average total cash cost of about $225 per ounce.

The Company has successfully completed the construction of the Tulawaka, Lagunas Norte and Veladero mines in 2005, and it has three development projects at various stages in the pipeline. These new mines and projects are expected to add significant amounts of production at low cash costs to achieve the Company’s aggressive growth profile by 2007. This robust pipeline of development projects is due to the Company’s ongoing commitment to exploration, even in times of lower gold prices. Barrick is also actively exploring approximately 100 projects, in 16 countries.

Barrick has the gold mining industry’s strongest balance sheet, which positions the Company to take prompt advantage of attractive development, exploration and acquisition opportunities as they arise.

Barrick shares are traded on the Toronto, New York, London and Swiss Stock Exchanges, and the Euronext-Paris.

During 2004, Barrick re-activated an exploration-drilling program at Bulyanhulu. The objective of the program was to add more than 0.5 million ounces to the resources/reserves of the mine. In late July 2004, drilling began on the Reef 1 deep western down-plunge extension; Reef 2 down-dip extension; and Reef 2 eastern strike extension. By the end of November, 16,193 meters of diamond drilling had been completed. The most significant intersections occur in the Reef 2 horizon – east. The resources/reserves replacement program will continue in 2005. Approximately 17,000 meters of diamond drilling are planned on Reef 1, most of it to be performed from the surface. Approximately 12,000 meters of diamond drilling are planned for Reef 2, with most of it to be done from underground.


Peter Munk
Chairman - Barrick Gold Corporation

Gregory Wilkins
President and Chief Executive Officer

Peter J. Kinver
Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

Jamie C. Sokalsky
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Alexander J. Davidson
Executive Vice President, Exploration and Corporate Development

Patrick Garver
Executive Vice President and General Counsel

Head Office:

BCE Place
Canada Trust Tower
161 Bay Street, Suite 3700
P.O. Box 212
Toronto, Canada M5J 2S1
Telephone: (416) 861-9911 (416) 861-9911
Toll Free: 1-800-720-7415 1-800-720-7415
Fax: (416) 861-2492

http://www.barrick.com/

Uganda: Ugandans in illegal gold trade

Kampala (Uganda) — Ugandan businessmen have been named in illegal gold trade and supporting a Rwandan rebel group, FDLR, operating in eastern Congo.
According to a report compiled by a group of five experts last month and sent to the UN Security Council, FDLR gold networks are tightly intertwined with trading networks operating within Uganda, Burundi and the United Arab Emirates.
The report cites Ugandan businessman Roy Joseph Ziwa, who used to own DAS Air and DAS Handling Services in Entebbe, to have been in telephone contact 41 times between April and September 2009 with Bande Ndagundi, a Congolese gold and arms trafficker.
The report says seven different gold traders interviewed separately in Butembo, Kampala and Dubai confirmed that the main personalities involved in orchestrating gold laundering and smuggling from Butembo to Kampala and Dubai were Indian traders in Kampala. They are named as Rajendra Vaya and family and J. V. Lodhia (known by Congolese and Indian traders as “Chuni”), together with his son, Kunal Lodhia.
The Indian traders, the report says, have extensive family ties in Nairobi. According to the report, Vaya is the director of Machanga Limited and J. V. Lodhia is the director of Uganda Commercial Impex Limited.
“Gold traders confirmed that both the Vaya and Lodhia families pre-finance cash to trusted intermediaries who then offer slightly above market prices in order to guarantee maximum interest from local traders in the DR Congo,” the report notes.
Vaya’s network is reported to handle a larger volume of gold than Lodhia’s. “The gold is smuggled to Kampala by road or by commercial flight to Entebbe and finally to Dubai, where it is handled by an associate of both families, called Jigar Kumar,” the report notes.
Kumar, who works at Asia Exchange Centre forex bureau in Dubai, was named as a gold supplier on the 2008 client list of Emirates Gold, a major gold refinery in Dubai.
The report says that although Vaya denied having any ongoing business relationship with gold dealers, the experts obtained receipts showing that he purchased over $40,000 in flight tickets between May and June 2009 for associates travelling between Entebbe, Bujumbura, Nairobi and Mumbai. “Vaya has been unable to explain what these flight tickets were purchased for.”
The group is still investigating more FDLR contacts in Uganda, including another unnamed Kampala-based trader who has been in contact using satellite telephones belonging to FDLR operatives over 600 times from August 2008 onwards.
The experts noted that by helping the FDLR sell their gold, the Ugandan businessmen are supporting the rebel group.
FDLR (Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda) is a militia formed by the defeated Rwandan Hutu refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo which allegedly counts among its ranks some members of the Interahamwe who carried out the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The group is fighting the Rwandan government.
The report says experts have traced the flow of gold from sites exploited and taxed by FDLR and other militia showing significant amounts of gold being trafficked through Uganda and Burundi and eventually to the United Arab Emirates. The team interviewed traders in Uganda, Tanzania, DR Congo, Burundi, Rwanda and Dubai. They found that money was being wired to the FDLR rebels through Western Union.
The report says FDLR contacts in Uganda received the highest number of calls among the people the militia called in 28 countries in Europe, Asia and Africa since the beginning of this year. Uganda’s FDLR contacts received 650 calls, followed by those in Tanzania with 572 calls, Belgium 351 and Germany 258. Other countries FDLR operatives called to are the UK, the US, France, Italy, Morocco, Norway and Kenya.
The researchers say that the networks in Uganda and Burundi are interrelated and both have commercial ties to individuals operating in the United Arab Emirates. However, the researchers said the respective governments did not co-operate when contacted.
“Several gold traders interviewed in Kampala and Dubai, as well as an anonymous contact, informed the group in separate interviews and communications that major gold trading businesses in Kampala were instructed to shut down their activities during the week of the group’s visit to Kampala in June 2009,” the report states.
The experts cited strong indications of high-level protection and in some cases complicity in the illicit gold trade by governments and commercial airlines, notably Emirates Airlines, Kenya Airways and Ethiopian Airlines.
In Uganda, the researchers complained that they were provided with incomplete customs declarations for gold exports by the Ugandan Revenue Authority (URA), which officially provided records of 130 gold exports between January 2008 and May 2009.
“We were nevertheless able to obtain statistics through an employee of URA displaying 215 recorded gold exports during the same period. These records have been archived at the United Nations.
“We were also informed by Ugandan-based gold traders that they were encouraged to declare Congolese gold they imported or re-exported from Uganda as gold of Southern Sudanese origin on their official documentation,” the report says.

source.newvision.ug
Posted by africanpress on December 17, 2009

Ansel Adams, Photographer

An only child, Adams was born when his mother was nearly forty. His relatively elderly parents, affluent family history, and the live-in presence of his mother's maiden sister and aged father all combined to create an environment that was decidedly Victorian and both socially and emotionally conservative. Adams's mother spent much of her time brooding and fretting over her husband's inability to restore the Adams fortune, leaving an ambivalent imprint on her son. Charles Adams, on the other hand, deeply and patiently influenced, encouraged, and supported his son.



Natural shyness and a certain intensity of genius, coupled with the dramatically "earthquaked" nose, caused Adams to have problems fitting in at school. In later life he noted that he might have been diagnosed as hyperactive. There is also the distinct possibility that he may have suffered from dyslexia. He was not successful in the various schools to which his parents sent him; consequently, his father and aunt tutored him at home. Ultimately, he managed to earn what he termed a "legitimizing diploma" from the Mrs. Kate M. Wilkins Private School — perhaps equivalent to having completed the eighth grade.
The most important result of Adams's somewhat solitary and unmistakably different childhood was the joy that he found in nature, as evidenced by his taking long walks in the still-wild reaches of the Golden Gate. Nearly every day found him hiking the dunes or meandering along Lobos Creek, down to Baker Beach, or out to the very edge of the American continent.
When Adams was twelve he taught himself to play the piano and read music. Soon he was taking lessons, and the ardent pursuit of music became his substitute for formal schooling. For the next dozen years the piano was Adams's primary occupation and, by 1920, his intended profession. Although he ultimately gave up music for photography, the piano brought substance, discipline, and structure to his frustrating and erratic youth. Moreover, the careful training and exacting craft required of a musician profoundly informed his visual artistry, as well as his influential writings and teachings on photography.

If Adams's love of nature was nurtured in the Golden Gate, his life was, in his words, "colored and modulated by the great earth gesture" of the Yosemite Sierra (Adams, Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada, p. xiv). He spent substantial time there every year from 1916 until his death. From his first visit, Adams was transfixed and transformed. He began using the Kodak No. 1 Box Brownie his parents had given him. He hiked, climbed, and explored, gaining self-esteem and self-confidence. In 1919 he joined the Sierra Club and spent the first of four summers in Yosemite Valley, as "keeper" of the club's LeConte Memorial Lodge. He became friends with many of the club's leaders, who were founders of America's nascent conservation movement. He met his wife, Virginia Best, in Yosemite; they were married in 1928. The couple had two children.

The Sierra Club was vital to Adams's early success as a photographer. His first published photographs and writings appeared in the club's 1922 Bulletin, and he had his first one man exhibition in 1928 at the club's San Francisco headquarters. Each summer the club conducted a month-long High Trip, usually in the Sierra Nevada, which attracted up to two hundred members. The participants hiked each day to a new and beautiful campsite accompanied by a large contingent of pack mules, packers, cooks, and the like. As photographer of these outings, in the late 1920s, Adams began to realize that he could earn enough to survive — indeed, that he was far more likely to prosper as a photographer than as a concert pianist. By 1934 Adams had been elected to the club's board of directors and was well established as both the artist of the Sierra Nevada and the defender of Yosemite.

Nineteen twenty seven was the pivotal year of Adams's life. He made his first fully visualized photograph, Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, and took his first High Trip. More important, he came under the influence of Albert M. Bender, a San Francisco insurance magnate and patron of arts and artists. Literally the day after they met, Bender set in motion the preparation and publication of Adams' first portfolio, Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras [sic]. Bender's friendship, encouragement, and tactful financial support changed Adams's life dramatically. His creative energies and abilities as a photographer blossomed, and he began to have the confidence and wherewithal to pursue his dreams. Indeed, Bender's benign patronage triggered the transformation of a journeyman concert pianist into the artist whose photographs, as critic Abigail Foerstner wrote in the Chicago Tribune (Dec. 3, 1992), "did for the national parks something comparable to what Homer's epics did for Odysseus."


Although Adams's transition from musician to photographer did not happen at once, his passion shifted rapidly after Bender came into his life, and the projects and possibilities multiplied. In addition to spending summers photographing in the Sierra Nevada, Adams made several lengthy trips to the Southwest to work with Mary Austin, grande dame of the western literati. Their magnificent limited edition book, Taos Pueblo, was published in 1930. In the same year Adams met photographer Paul Strand, whose images had a powerful impact on Adams and helped to move him away from the "pictorial" style he had favored in the 1920s. Adams began to pursue "straight photography," in which the clarity of the lens was emphasized, and the final print gave no appearance of being manipulated in the camera or the darkroom. Adams was soon to become straight photography's mast articulate and insistent champion. [Ed. Note: Manipulated in this instance meaning altering the clarity or content of the photographed subject matter. Techniques such as "burning" and "dodging", as well as the Zone System, a scientific system developed by Adams, is used specifically to "manipulate" the tonality and give the artist the ability to create as opposed to record.]


Adams, Ansel (Feb. 20 1902 — Apr. 22, 1984), photographer and environmentalist, was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Charles Hitchcock Adams, a businessman, and Olive Bray. The grandson of a wealthy timber baron, Adams grew up in a house set amid the sand dunes of the Golden Gate. When Adams was only four, an aftershock of the great earthquake and fire of 1906 threw him to the ground and badly broke his nose, distinctly marking him for life. A year later the family fortune collapsed in the financial panic of 1907, and Adams's father spent the rest of his life doggedly but fruitlessly attempting to recoup.


In 1927 Adams met photographer Edward Weston. They became increasingly important to each other as friends and colleagues. The renowned Group f/64, founded in 1932, coalesced around the recognized greatness of Weston and the dynamic energy of Adams. Although loosely organized and relatively short-lived, Group f/64 brought the new West Coast vision of straight photography to national attention and influence. San Francisco's DeYoung Museum promptly gave f/64 an exhibition and, in that same year, gave Adams his first one-man museum show.

http://www.anseladams.com

Adams's star rose rapidly in the early 1930s, propelled in part by his ability and in part by his effusive energy and activity. He made his first visit to New York in 1933, on a pilgrimage to meet photographer Alfred Stieglitz, the artist whose work and philosophy Adams most admired and whose life of commitment to the medium he consciously emulated. Their relationship was intense and their correspondence frequent, rich, and insightful. Although profoundly a man of the West, Adams spent a considerable amount of time in New York during the 1930s and 1940s, and the Stieglitz circle played a vital role in his artistic life. In 1933 the Delphic Gallery gave Adams his first New York show. His first series of technical articles was published in Camera Craft in 1934, and his first widely distributed book, Making a Photograph, appeared in 1935. Most important, in 1936 Stieglitz gave Adams a one-man show at An American Place.


Recognition, however, did not alleviate Adams's financial pressures. In a letter dated 6 August 1935 he wrote Weston, "I have been busy, but broke. Can't seem to climb over the financial fence." Adams was compelled to spend much of his time as a commercial photographer. Clients ran the gamut, including the Yosemite concessionaire, the National Park Service, Kodak, Zeiss, IBM, AT&T, a small women's college, a dried fruit company, and Life, Fortune, and Arizona Highways magazines — in short, everything from portraits to catalogues to Coloramas. On 2 July 1938 he wrote to friend David McAlpin, "I have to do something in the relatively near future to regain the right track in photography. I am literally swamped with "commercial" work — necessary for practical reasons, but very restraining to my creative work." Although Adams became an unusually skilled commercial photographer, the work was intermittent, and he constantly worried about paying the next month's bills. His financial situation remained precarious and a source of considerable stress until late in life.

Adams's technical mastery was the stuff of legend. More than any creative photographer, before or since, he reveled in the theory and practice of the medium. Weston and Strand frequently consulted him for technical advice. He served as principal photographic consultant to Polaroid and Hasselblad and, informally, to many other photographic concerns. Adams developed the famous and highly complex "zone system" of controlling and relating exposure and development, enabling photographers to creatively visualize an image and produce a photograph that matched and expressed that visualization. He produced ten volumes of technical manuals on photography, which are the most influential books ever written on the subject.


Adams's energy and capacity for work were simply colossal. He often labored for eighteen or more hours per day, for days and weeks on end. There were no vacations, no holidays, no Sundays in Ansel Adams's life. Frequently, after and intense period of work, he would return to San Francisco or Yosemite, promptly contract the "flu," and spend several days in bed. His hyper-kinetic existence was also fueled by alcohol, for which he had a particular fondness, and a constant whirl of social activity, friends, and colleagues. As Beaumont Newhall writes in his FOCUS: Memoirs of a Life in Photography (1993), "Ansel was a great party man and loved to entertain. He had a very dominating personality, and would always be the center of attention" (p. 235).
Adams described himself as a photographer — lecturer — writer. It would perhaps be more accurate to say that he was simply — indeed, compulsively — a communicator. He endlessly traveled the country in pursuit of both the natural beauty he revered and photographed and the audiences he required. Adams felt an intense commitment to promoting photography as a fine art and played a key role in the establishment of the first museum department of photography, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The work at the museum fostered the closest relationships of Adams's life, with Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, a historian and museum administrator and a writer-designer, respectively. Their partnership was arguably the most potent collaboration in twentieth-century photography. In the 1950s and 1960s Nancy Newhall and Adams created a number of books and exhibitions of historic significance, particularly the Sierra Club's This is the American Earth (1960), which, with Rachel Carson's classic Silent Spring, played a seminal role in launching the first broad-based citizen environmental movement.
Adams was an unremitting activist for the cause of wilderness and the environment. Over the years he attended innumerable meetings and wrote thousands of letters in support of his conservation philosophy to newspaper editors, Sierra Club and Wilderness Society colleagues, government bureaucrats, and politicians. However, his great influence came from his photography. His images became the symbols, the veritable icons, of wild America. When people thought about the national parks of the Sierra Club or nature of the environment itself, the often envisioned them in terms of an Ansel Adams photograph. His black-and-white images were not "realistic" documents of nature. Instead, they sought an intensification and purification of the psychological experience of natural beauty. He created a sense of the sublime magnificence of nature that infused the viewer with the emotional equivalent of wilderness, often more powerful than the actual thing.
For Adams, the environmental issues of particular importance were Yosemite National Park, the national park system, and above all, the preservation of wilderness. He focused on what he termed the spiritual-emotional aspects of parks and wilderness and relentlessly resisted the Park Service's "resortism," which had led to the over development of the national parks and their domination by private concessionaires. But the range of issues in which Adams involved himself was encyclopedic. He fought for new parks and wilderness areas, for the Wilderness Act, for wild Alaska and his beloved Big Sur coast of central California, for the mighty redwoods, for endangered sea lions and sea otters, and for clean air and water. An advocate of balanced, restrained use of resources, Adams also fought relentlessly against overbuilt highways, billboards, and all manner of environmental mendacity and shortsightedness. Yet he invariably treated his opponents with respect and courtesy.
Though wilderness and the environment were his grand passions, photography was his calling, his metier, his raison d'etre. Adams never made a creative photograph specifically for environmental purposes. On 12 April 1977 he wrote to his publisher, Tim Hill, "I know I shall be castigated by a large group of people today, but I was trained to assume that art related to the elusive quality of beauty and that the purpose of art was concerned with the elevation of the spirit (horrible Victorian notion!!)" Adams was often criticized for failing to include humans or evidence of "humanity" in his landscape photographs. The great French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson made the well-known comment that "the world is falling to pieces and all Adams and Weston photograph is rocks and trees" (quoted by Adams, Oral History, Univ. of Calif., Berkeley, p. 498). Reviewers frequently characterize Adams as a photographer of an idealized wilderness that no longer exists. On the contrary, the places that Adams photographed are, with few exceptions, precisely those wilderness and park areas that have been preserved for all time. There is a vast amount of true and truly protected wilderness in America, much of it saved because of the efforts of Adams and his colleagues.
Seen in a more traditional art history context, Adams was the last and defining figure in the romantic tradition of nineteenth-century American landscape painting and photography. Adams always claimed he was not "influenced," but, consciously or unconsciously, he was firmly in the tradition of Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, Albert Bierstadt, Carlton Watkins, and Eadweard Muybridge. And he was the direct philosophical heir of the American Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and John Muir. He grew up in a time and place where his zeitgeist was formed by the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt and "muscular" Americanism, by the pervading sense of manifest destiny, and the notion that European civilization was being reinvented — much for the better — in the new nation and, particularly, in the new West. Adams died in Monterey, California.
As John Swarkowski states in the introduction to Adams's Classic Images (1985), "The love that Americans poured out for the work and person of Ansel Adams during his old age, and that they have continued to express with undiminished enthusiasm since his death, is an extraordinary phenomenon, perhaps even unparalleled in our country's response to a visual artist" (p. 5). Why should this be so? What generated this remarkable response? Adams's subject matter, the magnificent natural beauty of the West, was absolutely, unmistakably American, and his chosen instrument, the camera, was a quintessential artifact of the twentieth-century culture. He was blessed with an unusually generous, charismatic personality, and his great faith in people and human nature was amply rewarded. Adams channeled his energies in ways that served his fellow citizens, personified in his lifelong effort to preserve the American wilderness. Above all, Adams's philosophy and optimism struck a chord in the national phsyche. More than any other influential American of his epoch, Adams believed in both the possibility and the probability of humankind living in harmony and balance with its environment. It is difficult to imagine Ansel Adams occurring in a European country or culture and equally difficult to conjure an artist more completely American, either in art of personality.
Adams's vast archive of papers, memorabilia, correspondence, negatives, and many "fine" photographic prints, as well as numerous "work" or proof prints, are in the John P. Schaefer Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, Tucson. A portion of his papers relating to the Sierra Club are in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Adams's Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (1985) was unfinished at the time of his death and was subsequently completed by Mary Street Alinder, his editor. An Autobiography offers a somewhat rose-colored and selective view of Adams's life. A selection of correspondence, Letters and Images (1988), contains a small but interesting fraction of the estimated 100,000 letters and cards that Adams wrote during his lifetime. He wrote and contributed photographs to hundreds of articles and reviews from 1922 until 1984. He published eight portfolios of original photographic prints (1927, 1948, 1950, 1960, 1963, 1970, 1974, 1976). Nearly four dozen books bear Adams's name as author and/or artist. Those not mentioned in this article include Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail (1938); Michael and Anne in Yosemite Valley (1941); Born Free and Equal (1944); Illustrated Guide to Yosemite Valley (1946); Camera and Lens (1948); The Negative (1948); Yosemite and the High Sierra (1948); The Print (1950); My Camera in Yosemite Valley (1950); My Camera in the National Parks (1950); The Land of Little Rain (1950, new ed. with Adams's photographs); Natural Light Photography (1952); Death Valley (1954); Mission San Xavier del Bac (1954); The Pageant of History in Northern California (1954); Artificial Light Photography (1956); The Islands of Hawaii (1958); Yosemite Valley (1959); Death Valley and the Creek Called Furnace (1962); These We Inherit: The Parklands of America (1962); Polaroid Land Photography Manual (1963); An Introduction to Hawaii (1964); Fiat Lux: The University of California (1967); The Tetons and the Yellowstone (1970); Ansel Adams (1972); Singular Images (1974); Ansel Adams: Images 1923-1974 (1974); Photographs of the Southwest (1976); The Portfolios of Ansel Adams (1977); Polaroid Land Photography (1978); Yosemite and the Range of Light (1979); a new technical series, including The Camera (1980), The Negative (1981), and The Print (1983); Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs (1983); and, posthumously, Andrea G. Stillman, ed., The American Wilderness (1990); Stillman and William A. Turnage, eds. Our National Parks (1992); Harry Callahan, ed., Ansel Adams in Color (1993); and Stillman, ed., Ansel Adams: Yosemite and the High Sierra (1994). More than a decade after his death, there was still no biography covering his entire life. Nancy Newhall, Ansel Adams: The Eloquent Light (1963), is a relatively short and adoring biography of Adams's first thirty-six years, written with zest and insight, as well as Adams's full collaboration.

— William A. Turnage

Tiffany Lamps

Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) began creating his famous lampshades in the early 1890’s. The public got its first glimpse of these at the 1893 World’s Colombian Exposition in Chicago where Tiffany exhibited two large light fixtures along with his leaded-glass window exhibit.

Tiffany began selling his blown glass shades in the mid-1890’s, then leaded glass shades in 1898, which actually began as a by-product of the stained-glass windows that preceded them. Tiffany used the several thousands of pieces of glass that remained after cutting individual elements for his windows.

Genuine Tiffany Lamps routinely sell for $10,000 or more. Many sell at auction in the six-figure-range up to a staggering $2-million-plus for a single lamp! Not bad considering in 1900 the average Tiffany lamp sold for $100 with some of the smaller examples bringing as little as $40.

A major downside to super-high-priced antiques and collectibles though, is that they continually bring out a fresh crop of reproductions that flood the market. Most are well-intentioned copies not meant to fool anybody; however, there are unscrupulous dealers and out-right forgers that add maker’s marks and use aging techniques to bilk unsuspecting collectors and interior decorators out of hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
Identifying a Fake Tiffany Lamp
It is estimated that for every genuine Tiffany lamp there is a fake one. Now, when I use the term “fake” I’m not referring to a newly created Tiffany-style lamp based on an original Tiffany Studios design—I’m referring to a lamp created or altered specifically with the intention of being passed-off as an original coming out of either L. C. Tiffany & Associated Artists, L. C. Tiffany & Co or the Tiffany Studios in New York during the mid-1890’s through 1930’s. Without deliberate attempts to deceive, a newly created Tiffany-style lamp is not a fake in the sense that no one is trying to pass it off as genuine—it’s simply a nice piece of decorative art.

So how can we tell? Well, you first need to realize that it is much easier to tell if a lamp is a fake rather than if it is genuine. This is because true Tiffany originals were hand-made and were not consistently marked and some lack marks altogether. There is no hard-and-fast rule to follow that says they did it “this way” or “that way”. Therefore, you’ll have a better chance of revealing a fake by catching the tell-tale signs of the many methods used to deceive, and eliminate those characteristics from the lamp in question.
Characteristics of a fake Tiffany lamp:
POOR QUALITY AND SHODDY CRAFTSMANSHIP. It’s safe to say that if your lamp was manufactured with low-grade glass and sloppy soldering, or if the base was made of pot metal, chances are it’s a fake. Tiffany only used high-quality materials and expert craftsmen.
APPLIED ANTIQUING TO THE SHADE. Take a look at any dust-soiling or grime covering your lampshade. Was it purposely sprayed on or coated? You should be able to take a Q-tip with some acetone (nail-polish remover) and swab the glass without any dirt or grime coming off that couldn’t also be taken off with soap and water. No coloring should transfer to the Q-tip from any Tiffany leaded glass shade.
ABSENCE OF CRACKS OR LOOSE ELEMENTS. It is rare to find an authentic Tiffany leaded glass shade without at least few cracks. This is because the heat generated by the light-bulb stresses the glass causing it to crack. Also, it is unusual for no pieces to become loose over the years. You can gently tap the individual elements and notice that some will rattle. If all the pieces are tight and without cracks, it doesn’t mean it’s a fake, but I’d be skeptical.
UNEVEN MAKERS MARKS. Although some Tiffany shades were not marked, many were, and almost all lamp bases were. Also, note that there was no consistent method of marking Tiffany lamps, so this can be quite confusing. At any rate, the one tell-tale sign on marked pieces is that all letters and numerals in a single line mark should be of the same height. Forgers sometimes use two different sets of stamps to mark their fakes resulting in uneven markings. Some bases were marked with the TGDCO logo and TIFFANY STUDIOS NEW YORK. If the logo appears without the text, it is likely a fake.
FRESH MAKERS MARKS. When pieces were marked, they were usually die-stamped, and they were usually stamped before the patina was applied. Therefore, if the mark does not have the same patina as the surrounding area, I’d be skeptical. Usually when a fake piece is stamped after the patination process, the marks appear shiny with fresh metal exposed. Be aware too that many of the newer forgeries have the mark casted in the base during the molding process which would mean they would pass the patina test; however, stamped marks have a sharper appearance than molded pieces, and after a while it is pretty easy to tell the difference.
MARKED WITH A MIXTURE OF UPPER AND LOWER CASE LETTERS. All original Tiffany Studios marks are in full capitol letters. If there are any lower case letters, beware.
MARKS CONTAINING SERIFS ON THE LETTERS. Serifs are the little tails or hooks on the letters of some fonts (such as Times New Roman). All original Tiffany Studios marks contain only sans-serif letters—the “T” in Tiffany should consist of only two lines without any little accents. An authentic TGDCO logo however, if it should appear on your piece, does have serifs in its letters.
There are many other ways Tiffany lamps are faked, but just knowing the above clues should greatly reduce the chances you will get taken, and bring you closer to evaluating the authenticity of your piece.
Bibliography (focusing on books known to be in print)
Louis Comfort Tiffany (Library of American Art) / Alastair Duncan, Louis Comfort Tiffany / Hardcover / Published 1992/ - Print status unknown
The Art of Louis Comfort Tiffany Hardcover / Published 1991 / Republication of original book commissioned by Tiffany's family in 1914 as a gift for family, friends, and colleagues / In print, special order
The Jewelry and Enamels of Louis Comfort Tiffany / Janet Zapata / Hardcover / Published 1993 / In print
NEW Tiffany Favrile Art Glass (Schiffer Book for Collectors) Moise S. Steeg / Hardcover / Published 1997 / In print
NEW the authoritative The 'Lost' Treasures of Louis Comfort Tiffany by Hugh McKean is now back in print.
NEW the two classic books mentioned below are now published in a volume of the combined works of Robert Koch.
The following are the first two scholarly works in the field by Robert Koch, out of print but often available used, and well worth acquiring:
Louis C. Tiffany, Rebel in Glass
Louis C. Tiffany's Glass - Bronzes - Lamps
Other classics worth seeking out from used book sources include Tiffany Lamps by Egon Neustadt, Tiffany Windows by Alastair Duncan

Uganda Gold

Idi Amin: London stooge against Sudan
In February 1971, Gen. Idi Amin came to power in Uganda, in a military coup against President Milton Obote. British sponsorship of the semi-literate Amin, son of a sorceress, was quickly evident; Britain was one of the first countries in the world to recognize the Amin government, long before any African country. And when relations with Britain had soured after Amin expelled the Asian business community from Uganda, British intelligence operative Robert Astles remained as Amin's mentor in Uganda until the very end. Amin's tyranny, lasting until 1979, trampled Uganda's political and economic institutions, leaving the country a wreckage from which it has never recovered.
For London, as the book {Ghosts of Kampala} by George Ivan Smith reports, the primary reason for fostering the Amin power grab was Sudan. Idi Amin was willing, in fact eager, to permit Uganda to be used as a base of operations to aid the southern Sudanese in their war against Khartoum; Obote was not.
Nurtured Nilotics
Amin, now safely ensconced in Saudi Arabia, was a member of the Kakwa tribe, which straddles the borders of Uganda, Zaire, and southern Sudan. The tribe supplied Amin with his power base in the Ugandan Army.
As a young man in 1946, Amin joined the King's African Rifles, founded in 1902. The British had traditionally taken soldiers of this outfit from the grouping designated ``Nilotic peoples,'' particularly southern Sudanese. In London's recipe for colonial rule, minority groups were assigned to the enforcement roles, enhancing reliability. In 1891, contingents of southern Sudanese were recruited by Captain (later Lord) Lugard for service in Uganda on behalf of the Imperial British East Africa Company. After Britain ruled Uganda officially, large numbers of Dinka and Azande troops, then living in Egypt, were sent to Uganda. Although nominally Muslim, they had fought against the Mahdi's army in the 1880s, on the British side. In Uganda, they were called ``Nubis.''
After Amin took power, he staffed all Army command posts with ``Nubis,'' in much the same way that Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Army is commanded by Himas, or Tutsis of southern Uganda, and the Banyarwanda, former Rwandan Tutsis. During the Sudanese civil war of 1955 to 1972, southern Sudanese had been brought directly into the Ugandan Army, making Uganda the perfect buttress for the southern Sudanese fighting Khartoum.
Obote bucks policy
In the early years of independence, Obote had invited delegations from Israel to help carry out farming projects in northern Uganda and to assist training the Army. Israel had a specific interest in Uganda: its proximity to Sudan. The Israelis were soon moving into southern Sudan to assist directly the Anyanya movement against Khartoum. In 1966, however, Obote visited Khartoum, and came to an agreement that Uganda would exert every effort to restore peace in the south. But the policy was ignored by the Defense Ministry and by Idi Amin, who was up to his eyeballs in smuggling operations in the Congo (now Zaire) and Sudan. Amin was in charge of an operation which smuggled gold and ivory out of Congo, in exchange for giving weapons to Congolese rebels, and was brought before a commission of inquiry when it was discovered that he was pocketing thousands of dollars in the process. The commission further discovered that Amin had become involved in the Congo venture through Robert Astles, who was making contacts between the Congolese rebels and the Ugandan Army. Astles's private airline company was handling the smuggling.

Amin put in to destabilize the Sudan, who was Egypt's ally
Ugandan Army officers also charged that Amin was working--against government orders--with the Sudan rebels inside Sudan. They alleged he went on a number of unauthorized flights with a foreign pilot--possibly Astles--to meet Sudanese rebels and arranged to supply them with materiel intended for the Ugandan Armed Forces. A German mercenary named Rolf Steiner was an accomplice in the operation. In his autobiography, {The Last Adventurer,} Steiner relates that he had arranged a meeting in Kampala ``under the supervision of General Idi Amin with the purpose of reaching an agreement on the leadership of the [Sudanese] liberation front.'' Out of this meeting, Steiner was given money to buy goods wholesale and ship them across Uganda to the tribal chiefs in southern Sudan. Steiner notes that ``although not all-powerful, he [Amin] was strong enough to order his army to turn a blind eye to my harmless smuggling service.''
Meanwhile, Obote refused to grant Israel landing rights for their supplies to the Anyanya. The crisis over Sudan policy hit in November 1970. Steiner was arrested by Ugandan police upon reentering Uganda from Sudan. Obote stated, in a later interview, ``The government of Uganda as such was not involved in aiding the Anyanya but was involved in finding political solutions in the Sudanese conflict. The arrest of Steiner brought out the fact that Israel was using Uganda to supply Anyanya.'' Obote was couped while he was in Nairobi, on his way back from the Singapore Commonwealth conference. As he relates, ``It is doubtful that Amin, without the urging of the Israelis, would have staged a successful coup in 1971.... Israel wanted a client regime in Uganda which they could manipulate in order to prevent Sudan from sending her troops to Egypt.... The coup succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.... The Israelis set up in Uganda a regime which pivoted in every respect to Amin, who in turn was under the strictest control of the Israelis in Kampala.... The Israelis and Anyanya were hilarious; the regime was under their control.''
When the Sudanese civil war was halted in 1972, Israel quickly lost interest in Amin. Enter Libya. In February 1972, Amin visited Libya, striking a pact with its President Muammar Qaddafi. In March 1972, all Israeli personnel were told to leave Uganda. In August 1972, all Asians were expelled, whereupon Britain withdrew its support for Amin. In September 1972, Libya proffered full military assistance to Uganda and sent 500 technicians to Kampala. By 1974, the intelligence services in Uganda were being run by Libya, and Libya was giving Amin Soviet MiG fighters. Libya even supplied troops to defend Amin when the Tanzanian Armed Forces invaded Uganda to drive Amin out. Overseeing the entire venture, from beginning to end in 1979, was London's Astles.
The Israelis were soon moving into southern Sudan to assist directly the Anyanya movement against Khartoum. In 1966, however, Obote visited Khartoum, and came to an agreement that Uganda would exert every effort to restore peace in the south. But the policy was ignored by the Defense Ministry and by Idi Amin, who was up to his eyeballs in smuggling operations in the Congo (now Zaire) and Sudan. Amin was in charge of an operation which smuggled gold and ivory out of Congo, in exchange for giving weapons to Congolese rebels, and was brought before a commission of inquiry when it was discovered that he was pocketing thousands of dollars in the process. The commission further discovered that Amin had become involved in the Congo venture through Robert Astles, who was making contacts between the Congolese rebels and the Ugandan Army. Astles's private airline company was handling the smuggling.

Congo and Uganda: a rush of gold

In November the UN Security Council adopted sanctions, which include freezing assets and travel restrictions, against anyone breaking the arms embargo on the Democratic Republic of Congo. The east of the country is rife with smuggling, especially in gold. Regional conflict that left 3 million dead between 1998 and 2003 has exhausted the country, and general elections that were due this year have been pushed back to June 2006.
By Stefano Liberti
MONGBWALU, a desolate village in Ituri district in the northeastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), looks like something out of an old western. A single dusty road runs through it, with cafes on either side that resemble saloons, a squalid hotel with a broken-down sign, and groups of youths observing passersby as though they were expecting a shoot-out any minute. The comparison with the Wild West isn’t fanciful, for here, as in the towns that mushroomed in the United States during the gold rush, everything revolves around gold.
Ituri is right in the middle of one of the most important gold deposits on earth (1). Several hundred kilograms are extracted every month from the primitive mines around Mongbwalu. The gold is taken illegally to neighbouring Uganda, from where it is exported to Europe, usually Switzerland. Because of the enormous profits generated, the gold is much coveted - and the cause of the bloody conflict that has plagued the DRC and this region since 1998 (2).
The subsoil of this huge African country - formerly Zaire - is so gorged with minerals that it’s sometimes called a geological outrage. From 1982, when the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko (in power from 1965 to 1997) liberalised gold mining in parts of the country, Mongbwalu became a sort of tropical Klondike. Thousands of small-scale miners threw themselves into a business that continued through the worst moments of the war. The miners still leave the village every day at dawn in battered old 4x4s and follow the earthen tracks to the mines. There they split into teams and start digging. The open pit mine resembles an enormous hive in which thousands of people busy themselves inside mud combs. Some men stand waist deep in water, digging feverishly and putting the earth in plastic crates that are passed along by men pressed against the sides of the embankment.
Each team works for itself. The soaked earth and stones are placed on a sieve above a pool of water. The first stage is to look for gold dust. Then the more promising stones are broken with clubs in the hope of finding veins of gold. “You have to know where to dig,” says Etienne, who spent 10 months in the hills of Mongbwalu. Around him a group of young men are examining stone chips in a sieve, hoping to find a few specks of gold. “No luck today,” says Etienne, “but I’m sure it’ll get better later. If we find a good chunk, we’ll manage to get $5 each.”
At the top of the embankment you can make out the ruins of a building. It is all that is left of the “factory”, the public enterprise set up for gold extraction in the Kilo-Moto region to which Mongbwalu is the gateway. Gold mining was in full swing during Mobutu’s time, when Ituri was under the control of the Kinshasa government. In those days the profits went straight into Mobutu’s pockets, enabling him to amass a fortune in foreign banks. The battle to gain control of this rich piece of land was triggered immediately after his fall in 1997.
Africa’s largest gold seam
Kilo-Moto is one of the most unstable areas in the Great Lakes region. Because of its extraordinary potential - it has the largest gold seam on the continent - it has been coveted by the main players of what has been called “the first African world war” (which pitted government forces supported by Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe against rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda).
In 1998, when the country was invaded by Rwanda and Uganda, the region was occupied by the Kampala forces, which flew the gold straight back to Uganda. After the 2003 Sun City agreement in South Africa, foreign troops were obliged to leave the country. The area then became the scene of fighting between the Union of Patriotic Congolese (UPC), supported by Rwanda, and the Front for National Integration (FNI), backed by Uganda. Sixty thousand people are thought to have died in these conflicts, despite timid intervention by Monuc, the UN observer mission in the DRC, set up in 1999. After falling to the UPC, the region was taken back by the FNI.
The militiamen stand accused, among other things, of subjecting workers to forced labour. According to a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the FNI takes a percentage of the mined gold and extracts one dollar a day from the workers in exchange for allowing them to work the mines (3). The soldiers hotly deny this. “It’s peace, our men are unarmed. All the men here work for themselves and for the good of the country,” says Iribi Pitchou Kasamba.
This small, stocky man became head of the front after its leader, Floribert Ndjabu, was arrested in Kinshasa for killing nine Bangladeshi Monuc troops in Ituri in February. Flanked by his “lieutenants”, Kasamba inspires fear and respect in equal measure in the zone around the mine. He describes the accusations by HRW as “total rubbish”, adding that “the only money we’ve received is the $8,000 that AngloGold Ashanti paid us quite voluntarily.”
This major South African company obtained a 10,000sq km mining concession around Mongbwalu and has recently been accused of bribing the rebel forces. Since 2003 the UN embargo prohibits any support to armed rebels in the DRC (4). The company claims that it was obliged to pay to guarantee the safety of its employees. But the scandal has tarnished its image - particularly since it boasts an ethical policy inspired by a commitment to “corporate social responsibility” (5). In any case AngloGold Ashanti has not yet started to mine gold in its concession.
Shovels and sieves
Mining continues the primitive way, with shovels and sieves. Near the site a crowd of men equipped with scales gets ready to start buying. The luckier gold-washers crowd around them clutching handfuls of their precious find. This is the start of the transaction. The gold dust in placed on a coal heater and mixed with nitric acid to separate any impurities. The remaining gold is then weighed and sold. The price is about $10 a gram. The rate depends on the market and increases the further you get from the mining area. In Bunia, Ituri’s main town, gold fetches $11.5 a gram. The small-time buyers at the source, as well as the dozens of others who gather in Mongbwalu’s main street, are the middlemen for traders in Bunia and Butembo in the neighbouring province of North Kivu.
Numerous small jobs are grafted on to the business of the mine itself. Women sell fruit, potatoes and rice; young motorcyclists ferry people to and from the mining sites and the centre of Mongbwalu. There is also a motley crew of musicians who seem more comfortable with guns than guitars and seem to monitor the comings and goings. The mere presence of Kasamba is enough to deter anybody from speaking.
Only later, and anonymously, does someone from Mongbwalu agree to give us his view: “In the factory and the other mines near the village, the FNI’s control is limited. Since the Monuc forces arrived the militia have had to be more discreet. But you only have to go a few kilometres further out to see them back in their old ways, forcing people to work for them, harassing them and confiscating gold.”
The 140 Pakistani soldiers from Monuc (6) who arrived in April, and who are in charge of disarming the militia, are even more discreet than the rebels. They are confined to their camp outside the village and their actions are limited to a few patrols. One of the leaders of the contingent admitted that he didn’t really know what went on in the mines.
At the Bunia headquarters, this state of affairs is confirmed. “In theory Monuc could supervise the gold traffic,” says Karin Volkner, the mission’s political affairs officer, “but in reality we don’t have the means to carry out that kind of control. There’s only one military contingent in Mongbwalu. We’re thinking of sending a group of civilians but so far we’ve only carried out exploratory missions.” The Monuc forces are occasionally called in for heavy operations and to support the elections that should end to the transition period (7), but they scarcely bother with the gold smuggling that goes on under their very noses.

In broad daylight
In Bunia gold dust is sold in broad daylight. In this village, ravaged by war and poverty where thousands of refugees are crowded into a camp by the airport, the gold trade is the only commercial activity possible. Almost everyone seems to be at it, in one or other of the two markets.

According to the new DRC mining code established in 2002, government authorisation is required for wholesale gold purchasing (8) but nobody bothers about that in a region where the state is totally absent. “Ituri suffers from government failure,” says Volkner. “The Kinshasa government is very far away and has never bothered much about the people to the east. On top of that, some ministers are directly involved in raw materials trafficking and have no interest in establishing peace in the region.”

The entire trade rests on a well-organised network of small-scale miners, buyers and intermediaries. The town’s traders sell the gold to a handful of middlemen, who smuggle it to Kampala. They use a variety of vehicles (trucks, jeeps, motorbikes), or canoes to cross Lake Albert, making the most of a total absence of controls at the Congolese border. As the process advances, the number of people involved is reduced. In Kampala only three companies buy the gold; all are managed by Indian entrepreneurs. The largest company, Uganda Commercial Impex Ltd (UCI) (9), has its headquarters in the suburb of Kamutckia.

According to Jamnadas Vasanji Lodhia, the owner of UCI: “We buy approximately 350kg of gold for a total of $5m. Our suppliers are always the same six or seven people, all Congolese from Bunia and Butembo.” The best known of these is Kambala Kisoni, owner of the Congocom Trading House. Kisoni also owns a small Antonov plane that flies between Mongbwalu and Butembo almost daily under the name of Butembo Airlines. According to UN experts, Kisoni has breached the arms embargo many times and has transported arms and FNI personnel to Mongbwalu (10).

When we reached Kisoni by telephone, he denied the accusations. “They consider us accomplices or rebels but, in fact, we’re hostage to the FNI people, who behave as though they run the area. They charge us $60 every time we land at Mongbwalu. We’d like the Congolese army to regain control of the region and establish some order.”

Kisoni did not deny exporting gold without authorisation from the mining ministry in Kinshasa. “It’s become dangerous to export with a licence,” he explained. “Given the level of corruption in the government, we’d risk losing everything. We used to have a licence but our gold cargo was stolen three times. And we know that the thieves were connected to the government.” Kisoni added that Congocom is simply an unofficial bank. “Gold is the currency here. With our clients’ gold we buy merchandise, which they sell in Congo. The Kampala buyers like UCI open lines of credit for the big companies that supply our clients with the products. We restrict ourselves to working as middlemen between the Ugandan companies and the traders in eastern Congo.”

The gold bought by UCI is melted down in the company’s Kampala headquarters. The small ingots are then sent every month to Metalor Technologies SA in Switzerland, a leading European dealer in precious metals. But since June the market has apparently ground to a halt. Following the publication of the HRW report, the Swiss company decided to stop gold imports. The UCI boss, Lodhia, was furious. “This trade has carried on for a century,” he said. “I don’t understand why they are making such a fuss. They accuse us of stealing wealth from Congo, but our suppliers are Congolese. With the money they earn from us they buy goods to sell in their country where there is nothing. They don’t buy arms, but sugar, coffee, blankets and clothes. What’s the point of buying arms anyway? Congo is full of them. That’s what earns the least money.”

Offshore bank accounts
Lodhia said he knew nothing about the supposed links between his suppliers and the armed rebels in Ituri. He confirmed visiting Bunia and Butembo, but denied ever having been to Mongbwalu. “I’ve occasionally been to see clients in the east of the country,” he admits, “but I’ve never visited the mines.” He showed us the company accounts that record transactions with Congolese clients worth millions of dollars. Most of the money is stored in offshore bank accounts in places like Mauritius or Hong Kong. “Our clients don’t trust local banks,” he explained, “so we pay the money into the accounts they choose. Which is totally legal.”

Indeed, the trade is legal. The Ugandan government does not require certificates of origin. It merely levies a 0.5% duty on gold exports and an annual licence fee of $1,200. In theory imported metals should be declared at the border, but it is so easy to cross the Congo-Uganda border that nobody bothers with customs declarations.

The numbers reveal the extent of this vast trade. In 2003 local gold production was worth $23,000. Officially imported gold totalled $2,000 while exported gold reached $45bn. The same data, supplied by the ministry for energy and development in Kampala, reveals that Uganda’s gold production totalled 40kg for that year, yet exports were more than four tonnes. In 2002 official production stood at 2.6kg with exports of 7.6 tonnes (11).

As a result of this vast legalised smuggling operation, gold is the second biggest Ugandan export after coffee. “That’s no secret,” said Lodhia. “Everybody knows that the gold in Kampala comes from Congo. In any case the government is virtually non-existent in former Zaire, especially in the east, and there are no controls. It’s been like that since the Mobutu era.”

Uganda has been the hub for Congolese gold since 1994, when the Kampala government decided to withdraw the central bank’s monopoly in buying precious metals, to scrap high export duties (of between 3% and 5%), and to make the regulations on trading companies more flexible. Previously, gold from Ituri transited through Kenya where the trade had already been liberalised. Lodhia admits to having switched from Nairobi to Kampala. “From a logistical point of view, it’s much easier to work out of Uganda,” explained the Indian entrepreneur. “The country is nearer to the DRC and security is excellent.”

The value of the gold increases as it travels from the Congolese towns to the Ugandan capital. UCI buys at $13.5 per gram. The selling price abroad depends on fluctuations on the international markets. “But we work on the basis of a profit margin of 0.5%,” explained Lodhia. “Gold mining is a living for thousands of people in eastern Congo. Those Human Rights Watch militants are lobbying intensively to stop it, but their ideological thinking will end up hurting the very people they think they’re defending. I’m losing money myself, but I’m not going to starve. If the Swiss stop buying and I don’t find other outlets, then sooner or later I’ll have to stop buying.”

There are thousands of people involved in gold smuggling, from the miners in Mongbwalu to the big traders in Kampala and the middlemen in Bunia and Butembo. Although there is no doubt that gold mining has supported - and continues to support - the rebels in the east of the country, it would be difficult to prevent this through embargoes or other means. UN experts believe that, given the size of the country, a total export ban on natural resources would be an extremely costly measure and hard to enforce (12). For them the ideal solution would be to set up a “traceability” process that would prevent smuggling to Uganda. But a system like the Kimberley process for diamonds (13) has not yet been devised for precious metals.
According to Enrico Carisch, a UN finance expert: “The only way to stop the warlords from making money would be to put pressure on the region’s governments to end this regime of impunity. The Ugandans, in particular, should normalise bilateral trade with Congo. But to do that, the Kinshasa government must regain control over the east of the country with the help of the international community.” In a region where the state is notable for its absence and gold is the only source of revenue for the majority of people, it is hard to imagine how the gold mining business could be changed at one stroke - particularly with the strong international demand for gold.