Banro resumes work program

Toronto-based junior Banro Resource (BNRS-C) has withstood the political sea-Change in the former Zaire and is now preparing to explore its gold properties purchased during the Mobutu regime.

“We’ve sorted out the politics with the Alliance [of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire], and don’t foresee any

trouble,” says Banro President Bernard Van Rooyen, who travelled to eastern Zaire in early May to meet with the rebel authorities.

“The Alliance realizes that these mining conventions are legitimate agreements with what was then a legitimate government of Zaire, subject to international arbitration should there be a dispute,” says Van Rooyen. “They know that any endeavor to repudiate them would do much damage to the foreign investment prospects of Zaire.

He adds, however, that “there may be one or two deals where they may want to renegotiate, if there are certain terms that they regard as unconscionable, but the Banro deal is a straight up-And-down, standard one.” Van Rooyen is now in Banro’s Johannesburg office assembling and mobilizing heavy equipment destined for the company’s properties in the eastern Kivu and Maniema provinces (T.N.M., March 10/97).

The properties are held by Sakima, which is 93%-owned by Banro, with the national government holding the remainder.

The company’s managing-director, Mario Fiocchi, together with consulting geologist Gregory Hawkins and some staff, is now in Goma. They have already visited Banro’s first target, the Twangiza deposit, where the resource estimate was recently boosted to at least 26 million tonnes grading 2.52 grams gold per tonne.

The company expects drills to be turning at Twangiza by mid-July, with the remaining targets along the 180-km-long Namoya-Twangiza trend being explored in a sequential manner.

Banro is deferring a planned airborne geophysical survey of the properties until later on in the drilling campaign. “The enormous amount of exploration data from the previous regime at Twangiza is more than enough for us to position drills and plan a program,” says Van Rooyen.

The airborne surveying of the mountainous Twangiza area will be performed by helicopter, whereas the balance of the survey will make use of fixed-wing aircraft, to be based 70 km southwest of Twangiza at Kamituga, where some damage to vehicles and facilities occurred when Mobutu’s troops retreated from the region.

“The rebels, or rather liberators, have assisted in the return of vehicles and equipment that have gone astray — anything they’ve encountered has been returned to the site and protected,” says Banro’s vice-president, Michael Nikiforuk.

Asked about the fate of Sakima’s 5,000 employees, who were laid off during the civil war, Nikiforuk responded, “They’re scattered. But we envision becoming, once again, a major employer in that region. We’ll have to work to get back to that level with a great deal of pragmatism.”