Congolese People Proclaim: The Congo is Not For Sale!
Soulèvement populaire et souveraineté (‘Popular Uprising and Sovereignty’), piece by Jardy Ndombasi via Tricontinental Institute for Social Research
The people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo continue to face paramilitary attacks against refugee camps and health centers, as the extraction of Congolese natural resources continues to produce unfettered conflict. Paramilitary conflict in the country has resulted in the displacement of seven million Congolese people, with more constantly forced to flee.
In light of the ongoing violence in the DRC, the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research has published new dossier entitled, “The Congolese Fight for Their Own Wealth,” in recognition of the need for a better understanding of the colonial and imperial roots of resource extraction in the DRC, and the current fight against imperialism in the region.
For this analysis, Tricontinental collaborated with the Centre Culturel Andrée Blouin, the Centre for Research on the Congo-Kinshasa (CERECK), and Likambo Ya Mabele (Land Sovereignty Movement). Contributions were provided by Dr. Eyamba Bokamba, Dr. Georges Nzongola Ntalaja, Marie Claire Faray, Muadi Mukenge, Patricia Lokwa Servant, Lubangi Muniania, Kambale Musavuli, and Professor John Higginson.
Peoples Dispatch has interviewed Congolese human rights activists such as Kambale Musavuli, who in a 2022 interview outlined the connections between armed groups, backed by Rwanda, Uganda, and the West, to the extraction of the DRC’s mineral wealth. In describing M23, one of the paramilitary groups which has wreaked havoc across the country, “It is the same rebel force over twenty years, with the same soldiers and the same commanders, to serve the interests of Rwanda, which itself is a strong US ally in the so-called War on Terror. And what are Rwanda’s interests in the Congo—its land and its resources,” he said.
Early colonial plunder sets the stage
The new dossier by the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research traces the current plight of the Congolese people back to the roots of colonialism, beginning with the 1876 Brussels Geographical Conference held by King Leopold II of Belgium, which was established with the true aim of creating the Comité d’études du Haut-Congo (‘Committee for Studies of the Upper Congo’) in 1878 and later the Association internationale du Congo (‘International Association of the Congo’ or AIC) in 1879. At the infamous Berlin Conference which took place only a few years later, the entire continent of Africa was divided up between the European powers, with Leopold forming the “Congo Free State” or CFS.
The early colonial history of the Congo is written in blood, as Congolese people were massacred and mutilated in the name of resource extraction for Belgium.
“Millions of Africans in the Congo across a broad spectrum of ethnic groups endured a sustained attack on their previous way of life alongside a state of violence animated by the CFS’s demands for rubber and other commodities needed to fuel the Industrial Revolution,” details the dossier. “Many had their hands and feet severed (with 1,308 severed hands brought to the colonial commissioner in one day alone), were killed by more advanced weaponry (such as the Maxim gun), and suffered systematic raids and village burnings.”
In the span of decades, the Congolese people were brutalized in the name of groundnuts, palm oil, rubber, and ore.
Congolese people resist colonialism
The dossier details not only the horror of the Western colonial regime, but also the resistance of the Congolese. “From 1900 to 1905, local groups launched attacks on colonial stations and plantations and seized Luebo, the rubber-rich capital of the Kasai region, from the colonizing forces,” writes the Tricontinental. “In 1915, a grassroots spiritual movement led by Maria N’koi combined traditional medicine and armed upheaval to oppose colonial taxation and refuse forced labor in the southern Congo.”
Into the 20th century, an African working class began to emerge, which brought a new terrain of struggle. In 1941, African mining workers went on strike across the Katanga province. One strike leader reflected the heightened class consciousness of the workers, saying, “We have the right to eat eggs and own automobiles just like the whites. Let us break into the store and divide up the stock. It belongs to us anyway, since the Union Minière has bought these goods with our labor.” The wave of strikes eventually spread to Congolese soldiers, escalating the struggle into a mutiny.
Although the colonial government cracked down on this groundswell of resistance, the struggles of the Congolese people fed into the demise of colonialism in the region. “Frustration with their unrealized demands fed into a stream of discontent that washed over the entire Congolese population during the closing years of World War II,” outlines the dossier. “The Belgian colonial state lost control of the countryside by 1957, and the mass urban uprisings on 4 January 1959 underscored Belgium’s waning grip on power over the urban working class.”
It was around this time that Patrice Lumumba emerged as a leader of the Congolese National Movement (MNC), at a time when the entire continent was in upheaval against its shackles of Western imperialism and resource extraction. In December 1958, Ghana’s Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah hosted the All-African People’s Conference in Accra, which brought together leaders from throughout the continent.
Lumumba said at the conference, “The fundamental aim of our movement is to free the Congolese people from the colonialist regime and earn them their independence… [W]e have the same awareness, the same soul plunged day and night in anguish, the same anxious desire to make this continent a free and happy continent that has rid itself of unrest and of fear and of any sort of colonialist domination.”
The saga of Lumumba’s rise to the position of prime minister, the Belgian conceding of independence to the Congo in 1960, Lumumba’s downfall at the hands of the West and its puppets, and the creation of the Mobutu puppet regime are well-documented. Throughout this time of triumph and then defeat of the forces of decolonization, the Congolese people continued their resistance.
“During the uprisings against the Mobutu dictatorship in the 1960s led by Pierre Mulele, the rebels seized industrial towns like Kolwezi and then invited workers to form tribunals and identify managers and foremen who had brutalized them,” the dossier writes.
Neo-colonial plunder drives violence
The modern reality of the DRC continues to be one of violence resulting from unfettered resource extraction, exacerbated by the technological revolution. “By 2018, the DRC produced 71% of the cobalt used in cell phones, computers, and electric cars across the globe,” writes Tricontinental. Congolese miners as young as eight years old, barely compensated for their labor, dig with their hands in the earth of open-face mines to power the world’s electronics.
What is the vision of the Congolese people in the face of such violent extractivism? The dossier closes with words derived from young Congolese activists who highlight eight categories to building a path towards freedom.
Land, developing economic autonomy, society, state justice, dignity, critical thinking, the production and dissemination of culture, and citizenship collectives are the eight categories that are uplifted. In doing so, these young activists echo the spirit of Congolese decolonial resistance that has reverberated across decades.
“Congolese land must be protected and used with the best interests of the Congolese people in mind,” the dossier details. “Congolese resources must be controlled by the Congolese people with the aim of strengthening society and resisting the pressure of international financial institutions.”
The War in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Will End
The Twenty-Seventh Newsletter (2024)
Jardy Ndombasi (DRC), Soulèvement populaire et souveraineté (‘Popular Uprising and Sovereignty’), 2024.
On 20 June, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) condemned the attacks on civilians in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) ‘in the strongest terms’. In its press statement, the UNSC wrote that these attacks – by both the DRC’s armed forces and various rebel groups supported by neighbouring countries such as Rwanda and Uganda – ‘are worsening the volatile security and stability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in the region and further exacerbating the current humanitarian situation’. Five days later, on 25 June, the United Nations peacekeeping force in eastern DRC withdrew, in accordance with a December 2023 UNSC resolution that pledged both to provide security for the DRC’s general elections on 20 December and to begin to gradually withdraw the peacekeeping force from the country.
Meanwhile, the Rwandan-backed M23 rebels continue to push steadily into the eastern provinces of the DRC, where there has been an active conflict since the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Over the course of three decades, there has rarely been lasting peace despite several peace accords (most notably the 1999 Lusaka Agreement, the 2002 Pretoria Agreement, the 2002 Luanda Agreement, and the 2003 Sun City Agreement). The total death toll is very poorly recorded, but by all indications, over six million people have been killed. The intractability of the violence in the eastern DRC has led to a sense of hopelessness about the possibility of permanently ending the carnage. This is accompanied by an ignorance of the politics of this conflict and its deep roots both in the colonial history of the Great Lakes region and the fight over raw materials that are key for the electronic age.
Monsembula Nzaaba Richard or ‘Monzari’ (DRC), L’Aube de la résistance Congolaise (‘Dawn of the Congolese Resistance’), 2024.
To make sense of this conflict, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research partnered with the Centre Culturel Andrée Blouin, the Centre for Research on the Congo-Kinshasa (CERECK), and Likambo Ya Mabele (‘Land Sovereignty Movement’) to produce a powerful new dossier, The Congolese Fight For Their Own Wealth. Eight years ago, we assembled a team to study the ongoing war, with a particular emphasis on imperialism and the resource theft that has plagued this part of Africa for the past century. The colonisation of the Congo came alongside the theft of the region’s labour, rubber, ivory, and minerals in the 1800s under the rule of Belgium’s King Leopold II. Multinational corporations continue this criminal legacy today by stealing minerals and metals that are essential to the growing digital and ‘green’ economy. This resource wealth is what draws the war into the country. As we show in the dossier, the DRC is one of the richest countries in the world, its untapped mineral reserves alone worth $24 trillion. Yet, at the same time, 74.6% of the population lives on less than $2.15 a day, with one in six Congolese people living in extreme poverty. What accounts for this poverty in a country with so much wealth?
Drawing from archival research and interviews with miners, the dossier shows that the core problem is that the Congolese people do not control their wealth. They have been fighting against rampant theft not only since the 1958 formation of the Mouvement National Congolais (‘Congolese National Movement’), which sought freedom from Belgium and control over the Congo’s extensive natural resources, but even earlier, through working-class resistance between the 1930s and 1950s. This fight has not been easy, nor has it succeeded: the DRC continues to be dominated by exploitation and oppression at the hands of a powerful Congolese oligarchy and multinational corporations that operate with the permission of the former. Furthermore, the country suffers, on the one hand, from wars of aggression by its neighbours Rwanda and Uganda, aided by proxy militia groups, and, on the other, from interference by multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) that enforce neoliberal policies as a requirement for receiving loans.
Just days before the DRC’s elections in December 2023, the IMF provided a $202.1 million disbursement because it felt confident that whoever won the election would preserve ‘programme objectives, including limiting macroeconomic slippages and continuing implementing the economic reform agenda’. In other words, the IMF believed that it could continue to privatise electricity and draft mining codes that have been overly ‘generous’ to multinational corporations – irrespective of the election results (the word ‘generous’ is from the IMF’s own mission chief for the DRC, Norbert Toé). A pittance from the IMF is able to muffle the call for sovereignty over the DRC’s considerable resources.
M Kadima (DRC), Congo Is Not for Sale, 2024. Reference photograph by John Behets.
The Great Lakes region of Africa has been prevented, on several fronts, from solving the problems that plague it: entrenched neocolonial structures have prevented the construction of well-funded social infrastructure; the extraordinary power of mining companies, until recently largely Australian, European, and North American in origin, have derailed efforts to achieve resource sovereignty; imperial powers have used their money and military power to subordinate the local ruling classes to foreign interests; the weakness of these local ruling classes and their inability to forge a strong patriotic project, such as those attempted by Louis Rwagasore of Burundi and Patrice Lumumba of the DRC (both assassinated by imperial powers in 1961), has hindered regional progress; there is an urgent desire for the creation of such a project that would bring people together around the shared interests of the majority instead of falling prey to ethnic divisions (there are four hundred different ethnic groups in the DRC alone) and tribalism that tear communities apart and weaken their ability to fight for their destiny.
Such a project thrived following the independence of DRC in 1960. In 1966, the government passed a law that allowed it to control all unoccupied land and its attendant minerals. Then in 1973, the DRC’s General Property Law allowed government officials to expropriate land at will. Establishing a project that uses material resources for the betterment of all peoples, rather than stoking ethnic divisions, must again become the central focus. Yet the idea of citizenship in the region remains entangled with ideas of ethnicity that have provoked conflicts along ethnic lines. It was these ideas that led to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. The absence of a common project has allowed the enemies of the masses to creep through the cracks and exploit the weaknesses of the people.
Monsembula Nzaaba Richard or ‘Monzari’ (DRC), Aurore Africaine (‘African Aurora’), 2024.
An alphabet soup of political and military fronts – such as the ADFL, FDLR, RCD, and MLC – catapulted the region into resource wars. Reserves of coltan, copper, and gold as well as control over the border roads between the DRC and Uganda that link the eastern DRC to the Kenyan port of Mombasa made these armed groups and a few powerful people very rich. The war was no longer only about the post-colonial consensus, but also about the wealth that could be siphoned off to benefit an international capitalist class that lives far away from Africa’s Great Lakes.
Fascinatingly, it was only when Chinese capital began to contest the companies domiciled in Australia, Europe, and North America that the question of labour rights in the DRC became a great concern for the ‘international community’. Human rights organisations that formerly turned a blind eye to exploitation began to take a great interest in these matters, coining new phrases such as ‘blood coltan’ and ‘blood gold’ to refer to the primary commodities mined by the Chinese and Russian companies that have set up shop in several African countries. Yet, as our dossier – as well as the Wenhua Zongheng issue ‘China-Africa Relations in the Belt and Road Era’ – show, Chinese policy and interests stand in stark contrast to the IMF-driven agenda for the DRC as China seeks to ‘kee[p] mineral and metal processing within the DRC and buil[d] an industrial base for the country’. Furthermore, Chinese firms produce goods that are often made for Global North consumers, an irony that is conveniently ignored in the Western narrative. The international community purports to be concerned with human rights violations but has no interest in the African people’s hopes and dreams; it is driven instead by the interests of the Global North and by the US-led New Cold War.
Young, talented artists spent weeks in the studio coming up with the illustrations featured in the dossier and in this newsletter, the result of a collaboration between our art department and the artists’ collective of the Centre Culturel Andrée Blouin in Kinshasa. Please read our fourth Tricontinental Art Bulletin to learn more about their creative process and watch the video on Artists for Congolese Sovereignty, made by André Ndambi, which introduces the artists’ work.
Monsembula Nzaaba Richard or ‘Monzari’ (DRC), Le peuple a gagné (‘The People Have Won’), 2024.
Reference photograph: Congopresse via Wikimedia.
Our dossier ends with the words of Congolese youth who yearn for land, for a patriotic culture, for critical thinking. These young people were born in war, they were raised in war, and they live in war. And yet, they know that the DRC has enough wealth to let them imagine a world without war, a world of peace and social development that surpasses narrow divisions and unending bloodshed.
Warmly,
Vijay
Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. Prashad is the author of twenty-five books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. Read other articles by Vijay, or visit Vijay's website.
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