Rubaya, Bahunde, Masisi Territory, North Kivu, DR Congoi

Regional Level Types
Rubaya	Town
Bahunde	Sector
Masisi Territory	Territory
North Kivu	Province
DR Congo	Country

Mining area around the town of Rubaya.

The area is presently plagued by strong ethnic and political tensions, and by the frequent conflicts between SMB (Société Minière de Bisunzu), holder of the mining license, and COOPERAMMA (Coopérative des Exploitants Artisanaux Miniers de Masisi), which provides a legal framework for most of the artisanal diggers working in the Rubaya mining sites.

The Lowowo (or Luwowo) area (with the sites of Muderi, Muchache and Kowete) and the Muvumbuko and Gakombe sites are mainly exploited for coltan and cassiterite.

The Rukaza-Rubaya site, since 2014, produces gemmy crystals of tourmaline with exceptional transparency and a wide variety of colours. The site is characterised by numerous artisanal pits, trenches, and short tunnels dug in laterite, that sometimes reach unaltered portions of the pegmatite dyke. According to Laurs et al. (2017), the tourmalines studied from this site appear to be elbaite with a modest liddicoatite component and with Fe and Mn as main chromophores. The site essentially yields loose tourmaline crystals, up to 15 cm in length, rarely associated with minor crystals of quartz, albite var. cleavelandite, lepidolite, microlite, and cassiterite. Unfortunately, many crystals are damaged directly on the excavation face by the miners, who are focused only on the extraction of tourmaline gem rough.

The Rukaza-Rubaya site in the IPIS report (2016) is erroneously identified with the Rwangara/Shakubangwa site, located ca. 20 km to the south of Rubaya at an elevation of 2719 m. According to Pezzotta & Tarditi (2020), the latter site, as well as the nearby Numbi locality, is an alluvial deposit essentially exploited for coltan and cassiterite, in which coloured tourmalines are also present but with low gemmological properties.

Note: the locality usually indicated in the past years by mineral dealers for the high-quality tourmalines from Rukaza-Rubaya is Goma, the capital of North Kivu. Goma is practically the confluence point of all tourmaline gem rough mined in both North and South Kivu, from where it is generally illegally exported through Uganda.

Fossils

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References