One important link is Billy Rautenbach, a Zimbabwean citizen who South African authorities want on South African soil. On Sunday, sources in Harare confirmed that Rautenbach would be leaving the city on Monday, for Lubumbashi, in the Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It is understood that Rautenbach may be leaving Harare for good, given the recent filing in Harare of extradition papers by South African authorities.

It is no secret that following a deal in February last year, Rautenbach holds around 17% of Camec's shares. The issue that's likely to burn some tender parts in investment circles is the presence of Georges Forrest, the "old King of the Congo", and a standing 22% shareholder in Katanga Mining. Of all the projects in the fabulously copper-cobalt rich Katanga province, some with dubious pedigrees, few have cleaner papers than Katanga Mining, Nikanor (LSE:NKR, £6.19) and Tenké Mining Corp (TSX: TNK, C$25.01), owned 57.75% by copper giant Freeport McMoRan (NY:FCX, $71.63).

However, of these three mega projects, there is no question that Katanga Mining will be first in production. Nikanor is battling with cost overruns and an intractable flooding problem, while the Tenké Fungurumé project may only come on stream early in 2009. At Katanga Mining, operational cost over the life of mining is likely to be around $0.45/lb, amongst the lowest in the world. First copper production is anticipated in December 2007.

While Camec is known not least for executives Phil Edmonds, who once played cricket for England, and Andrew Groves, a young wheeler dealer, Katanga Mining is characterised by a small army of professional mining executives, not least Robert Buchan and Arthur Ditto, who each own around 7.5% of the company.

The background to the past week's power outbreak in Katanga can be most conveniently traced back to February last year, when Camec bought Rautenbach's apparent rights to mining concessions 467, 469 (previously named C19 & C21) in Katanga province, and 50% of the cobalt-rich Mukondo concession. The other half of Mukondo was sold in June for around $60m by John Bredenkamp, also a Zimbabwean, to Dan Gertler, known as the "new King of the Congo". Gertler is a 14% shareholder in cash-strapped Nikanor, which last week announced that it was involved in negotiations over a possible change of control.

Gertler, the foreigner closest to the ear of DRC president Joseph Kabila, immediately ordered a halt to activities on Mukondo, and nobody appears to be clear about what happened next. Rautenbach's intractable attitude has played a part, along with his contract with Camec to run Mukondo.

Camec has fiercely denied any problems with ore supplies; on the contrary, on March 1, it stated that it's on target to produce 40,000 tonnes of copper cathode and 6,000 tonnes of cobalt cathode and concentrate for the 2007-8 financial year. Camec's DRC metallurgical facility, moreover, has targeted annual production template capacity of 100,000 tonnes a year of copper cathode, according to Camec, and 12,000 tonnes a year of cobalt cathode by 2008-9.

Rautenbach has had squabbles in and around the Katanga copper-cobalt belts for years. In November 1998, he was named the MD of state-owned copper-cobalt miner La Générale des Carrières et des Mines (Gécamines) during a visit to Harare by then-DRC president Laurent-Désiré Kabila. Some of Gécamines' best cobalt-producing areas were transferred to a joint venture between Rautenbach's Ridgepointe International and the Central Mining Group, a Congolese company controlled by Pierre-Victor Mpoyo, then DRC minister of state. Rautenbach, who had no mining experience, was also made MD of the joint venture. Rautenbach's business practices saw Kabila replace him with Forrest in March 2000.

Rautenbach was stripped of all connections to Katanga, including the Kambove and Kakanda processing plants, and the large parcel of deposits known as the Kababancola Concessions, including Mukondo. These assets were officially transferred to Bredenkamp's Tremalt, which established a new joint venture, Kababancola Mining Company (KMC).

It was thus that Bredenkamp held rights to exploit six Gécamines concessions containing at least 2.7m tonnes of copper and 325,000 tonnes of cobalt over 25 years, all for a piffling payment of just $400,000. Put another way, Bredenkamp continued where Rautenbach left off, but split the profits as to 34% for the DRC government, 34% for the Zimbabwe government, and 32% for Tremalt, after generous gratuity payments to senior political and military figures in the DRC and Zimbabwe.

Kabila was assassinated in January 2001, and replaced by his son Joseph and it was another year before Rautenbach's name cropped up again. This time he emerged as one of the largest exporters of heterogenite (cobalt ore) from the DRC, via Congo Cobalt Company, known as CoCoCo.

But then Rautenbach's name was also linked to another DRC entity, Boss Mining which, it was said, had acquired two lucrative mining concessions, C19 and C21, as well as 50% of Mukondo. These were, of course, part of the same portfolio of assets once stripped from Rautenbach and dealt to Bredenkamp.

Early last year, in an affidavit submitted to the British Virgin Islands High Court by a Rautenbach ex-partner, Geneva-based lawyer James Anthony Tidmarsh, Rautenbach was allegedly offered an opportunity as a "sleeping partner" in KMC, but refused and launched an international arbitration action to challenge his being stripped of the concessions.

In April 2002, Rautenbach withdrew the application following a settlement with the government of the DRC. KMC was apparently simply presented with an instruction from the DRC government to transfer its most valuable assets to Rautenbach's Boss Mining, or face losing the lot.

Camec has played the Mukondo issue right down. In its interim results notice on December 5 2006, shareholders were told that Camec's "joint venture partners at Mukondo were taken over and the new owners gave us formal notice to terminate operations until a new operational agreement was effected". In other words, Gertler wanted a fair deal.

Discussions were continuing, but, Camec added, as Camec's Luita processing plant comes on stream, Mukondo operations "become of less relevance". Concessions C19 and C21, Camec stated, "host numerous significant copper cobalt deposits, which are already being developed to feed Luita to maximum capacity".

The DRC recently appointed a Commission under the authority of the Minister of Mines to review various mining agreements entered into by the DRC government, or by state bodies such as Gécamines, within a period prior to mid-July 2007. Some 60 mining agreements fell for review starting on May 15, with a decision expected after mid-July 2007.

Katanga Mining's Kamoto agreement was ratified by presidential decree on August 4 2005; Nikanor's titles were similarly ratified on October 13 2005, and the Tenké Fungurumé agreements on October 27 2005. However, presidential decrees are not everything, and even these contracts may be scrutinized for fairness and equity. In Camec's case, by contrast, objections may be raised over more fundamental issues, not least how the contracts were first obtained during the DRC's 1997-2003 war, under the Zimbabwe military's Operation Sovereign Legitimacy (Osleg).