Mining is such a misunderstoond industry. People love to hate miners, especially when they are big like Barrick. There is an ecosystem of activists who survive by bashing miners. Mining projects, large and small, attract activists the way cow dung attracts flies. If they are not bashing a large miner for purported rape (imagine!), then they are attacking artisanal mining projects for child labour and poor working conditions.
You should be carefull when reading articles from activists.
I feel sorry for Barrick in Tanzania. Their ventures are providing so much opportunity to people (employment), businesses (supply of goods and services) and government (taxes and social development), but Tanzanians just do not seem to see this. Instead, we make a lot of fuss about ownership of the mine, about amount of aid given to the municipal politicians, about the size of the royalty etc.
And in case our point is not clear enough, we go and burn their excavators, invade their mines and accuse them of all sorts of unfounded allegations.
Sometimes I suspect Barrick had to restructure and carve out their Tanzanian operations into the so called "Barrick Africa" so that the rest of the Barrick Group does not get tainted by Tanzania's negative reception of large foreign investments. The horror stories coming out of here are bound to agitate investors at the bourses in which Barrick is traded - better have an Africa version! This sends a very bad message to any serious investor. It puts Tanzania at a disadvantage when an investor is conteplating a project that could employ 4,000 direct FTE's in either Tanzania or, say, Kenya. And you can, most deffinately, and permanently, kiss goodbye any prospect of Toyota putting up an assembly plant in Tanzania.
At this rate, there is no way we will, ever, catch up with the Asian Tigers.