By Robby LaBurne
U.S. President Donald Trump is extending a deal to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, providing protection to the government and suppression of rebel groups in exchange for access to the country’s vast mineral resources.
The greatest consequences of this deal will fall on the working masses of the Congo. Would it were passed, it can only be expected that their labor and mineral wealth would be further exploited by international finance capital. Swiss mining firm Glencore, which supplies many U.S. technological firms, has been sued over using child labor in the Congo.
In my 35 years as a human rights lawyer, I’ve never seen such extreme abuse of innocent children on a large scale,” said the plaintiffs’ lead counsel, Terry Collingsworth, when presenting the claim in a statement. “This astounding cruelty and greed need to stop.”
The case marks the first time that the tech industry confronts legal action jointly over its cobalt sourcing.
The plaintiffs’ lawyer claims that Apple, Alphabet, Dell, Microsoft, and Tesla “knew or reasonably should have known that the cobalt supply chain ventures operated by Glencore/Umicore and Huayou Cobalt were using forced child labour.” [Source]
It’s estimated that the Congo has a total of $24 trillion in mineral wealth. The implications of who owns this wealth, whether it be the Congolese people or American capitalists, are massive.
Yet nobody is to personally blame President Felix Tshesekedi for seeking security and tranquility in his war-torn nation. It is what any good leader would want for his people. In a time where hundreds of women were raped and burned to death in Eastern Goma, wanting a stop to the violence is the natural human reaction. Instead, the real culprit here is the neocolonial system that stipulated that African countries have two choices, be subject to either mineral exploitation or chaos. It is similar in essence to the Belgian colonial regime a century ago that subjected the Congolese to fulfill their rubber quota at risk of amputation.
It need not be emphasized more that the chaos ensuing in the Congo is not a consequence of internal ruptures but imperialist aggression. Though their enemies may want you to think that the Congolese are too “savage” or “barbaric” to want peace, as recently as 1960 the masses were united under the Congolese National Movement and Prime Minister Patrice Lumbumba to build an independent, democratic, and prosperous nation from within. A year later, the CIA helped assasinate him. They themselves admit to doing so in a report released decades later.
CIA’s program initially focused on removing Lumumba, not only through assassination if necessary but also with an array of nonlethal undertakings that showed the Agency’s clear understanding of the Congo’s political dynamics.” [Source]
Later on, they supported the regime of Mobutu Sese Seko, who, in their words, “drove his country into economic ruin and, ultimately, political chaos.” While Zaire, as it was then known, struggled to combat poverty and improve education, Mobutu took day-long shopping trips on the expensive Concorde jet to Paris, where he mingled with the European elite.
Once he was overthrown in 1997, foreign weapons manufacturers rushed to arm both sides in the First and Second Congo Wars. A UN panel in 2002 implicated 40 international companies for war profiteering in Congo.
The Security Council has failed to act on previous reports from the panel showing the link between the activities of multinational corporations and armed groups guilty of massacres and other atrocities. The war in the DRC is estimated to have caused the deaths of more than three million people, the highest death toll in terms of civilian lives since World War II.” [Source]
It would be reasonable to assume that given the lack of action upon the panel’s discovery, these same corporations have continued to fund the bloodshed up to today.
All and all, it can be concluded that the human rights crisis in the Congo can be attributed principally to imperialism. And while the West bears the greatest responsibility, Chinese capital is not clean on this matter either, as they have majority stakes in the nation’s cobalt.
Without organized resistance from the Congolese masses against all foreign oppressors, their minerals will continue to be stolen and the violence they have endured for over 65 years will continue. Yet under the leadership of an anti-imperialist United Front, the country will be finally realize Lumumba’s vision of a free and prosperous nation for its own people.
If you’d like to learn more or do more to help the DRC, visit and support Friends Of The Congo.