Kat Gale’s Reviews > Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives > Status Update

The Congolese government directly contributed to the crisis by auctioning off massive parcels of land for billions of dollars & collecting concession fees, royalties, & taxes....So long as the political elite were content to continue the tradition of government-as-theft established by their colonial antecedents, the people of the Congo would continue to suffer.

What else could the purpose of this kind of remote night marketplace be, other than to launder artisanally mined cobalt into the formal supply chain completely out of view, beyond any tracing or auditing of cobalt supply chains that were purportedly taking place? Can any company at the top of the chain legitimately suggest that the cobalt in their devices or cars did not pass through a village marketplace like this?

The Belgians sold a 75,000 square-kilometer concession of rainforest filled with palm oil trees to the Lever brothers [on April 14, 1911], whose new soap recipe required palm oil. Following Leopold’s model, the Lever brothers used forced labor in the extraction of palm oil under a quota system. The riches they generated helped build the multinational powerhouse Unilever.

Imagine that on a remote hill deep in the Congo’s mining provinces, a child can be found digging for cobalt, wearing a muddy shirt with the logo of the behemoth American financial services company that had to be bailed out for $180 billion during the 2008 financial crisis. Imagine what even 1% of that money could do if it were spent on the people who needed it, not stolen by those who exploited them.

Joseph Conrad, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, and Booker T. Washington were among the many supporters of the Congo Reform Association...bringing an end to the most brazen system of slavery in the history of Africa. Or so it seemed...More than a century after Morel & Casement’s extraordinary campaign to end slavery in the Congo, a new system of “legalized robbery enforced by violence” thrives in the mining provinces.

The dividends of an education were too theoretical&too far into the future for those who survived day-to-day, especially when schools lacked support. It was no wonder that impoverished families across the Congo’s mining provinces relied on child labor to survive. It felt like cobalt stakeholders up the chain counted on it. Why help build schools or fund education when children could dig up cobalt for pennies instead?

Far removed from any signs of civilization, there was something akin to an ant colony of humans who tunneled, excavated, washed, packed, &fed cobalt up the chain to the companies that produced the world’s rechargeable devices &cars. I never in all my trips to the Congo saw or heard of any of these companies or their downstream suppliers monitoring this part of the supply chain, or any of the countless places like it.

The original Belgian copper mines were run by Gécamines, and most of the men who lived in Likasi and Kambove worked at them. After Gécamines closed the mines, people started digging for themselves...Solange said that everything changed in 2012. They made it seem like a blessing. They said we should dig cobalt and get rich. Everyone started to dig, but no one became rich. We do not earn enough to meet our needs.”

After a trip to the Congo, the world back home no longer makes sense. It is difficult to reconcile how it even inhabits the same planet. Neatly arranged mountains of vegetables at grocery stores seem vulgar. Clean air and water feel like a crime. The markers of wealth and consumption appear violent. Most of it was built on violence, neatly tucked away in history books that sanitize the truth.

There is an agenda to promote a false picture of the conditions here. The mining companies claim there are not any problems here. They say they maintain international standards. Everyone believes them, so nothing changes.