When we say coltan and cobalt are at the center of the colonial mode of production, the bourgeoisie media obscures this reality by saying “the curse of coltan or cobalt or diamond.” It is not a curse; it is the colonial mode of production.
Climate change and the so-called “green economy” to save the planet makes the front page news all over the world. Mobile phones are necessary devices to reach out to all corners of the globe.
According to statista.com, in 2021, the number of mobile devices operating worldwide stood at almost 15 billion, up from just over 14 billion in the previous year. The number of mobile devices is expected to reach 18.22 billion by 2025, an increase of 4.2 billion devices compared to 2020 levels.
But very few people know about the process that brings mobile phones to all people around the world. The production of phones, laptops, and other electronic devices begins in the daily horror that occurs in DR Congo.
Leopold II’s devastation in the Congo
When genocide is mentioned in the Congo, many times people refer to Leopold II’s rubber massacres that murdered over 10 million people in ten years by cutting ears, hands, and penises off of African peasants in Congo over 120 years ago. The genocide in Congo is not a curse nor an ethnic conflict but a concrete manifestation of the colonial mode of production.
It is not just about the genocide carried out by Belgium, but the continuity of the genocide of the colonial mode of production that started in 1415; this includes brutal kidnapping and sales of African people, the killing and expelling of indigenous people in the Americas, the invasion of Libya and the overthrow and murder of Gaddafi, and more.
Under Belgian colonialism, we had white officers, leading a colonial army whose essential composition was black from Congo and elsewhere in Africa. The Belgian colonial State’s role was to force us to extract rubber and ivory for the development of the global colonial economy for the happiness of the colonizers.
On an international level, we no longer have King Leopold II, but we do have U.S. presidents Bill Clinton to Joe Biden, the UK and Belgian prime ministers, French presidents, etc.
The will of the white colonial leaders is to loot through genocide the DR Congo and provide the necessary military, political, diplomatic, and mediatic means to maintain the indirect genocidal rule of Rwanda and Uganda in DR Congo.
Monusco, the UN army of occupation in Congo
Since 1999 the United Nations deployed Monusco, a strong military force with roughly 20,000 soldiers led by multinational officers and a budget of $1.3 billion every year, and funded by dominating nations such as the U.S., Germany, and China, with a mission to “carry out offensive operations to bring peace in Congo.”
But this isn’t the case. The summation of the UN army by the people is bitter and ultra-negative, it is an army occupation, part and parcel of the war to destroy DR Congo.
Over 10 million people are dead in the ongoing genocide. Where is Monusco?
The Rwanda and Uganda armies are financed and trained by the U.S., UK, and the EU. There are also the Burundi, Kenya, and South Sudan neocolonial armies in the Congo, with plans to bring in South Africa’s army.
By checking the policies of these neocolonial African countries in Congo, you will quickly understand that the role of these colonial states in black faces is not to end genocide in Congo, but to advance and secure the interests and ambitions of the colonizer and the sellout African petty bourgeoisie.
Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda, wants power over the Congo’s ruling elite and parts of Eastern Congo with coltan and other strategic minerals to be given to Rwanda. Yoweri Museveni, president of Uganda, wants Eastern Congo, particularly Ituyri, with its massive gold deposits, to be under the economic control of Kampala. Kenya doesn’t want to miss out on the scramble for Congo amongst the African petty bourgeoisie also.
The ongoing silent genocide in Congo today is a policy of giant media colonial corporations to secure the looting of key minerals, particularly coltan, cobalt, and gold–commodities essential for the development of the entire global colonial economy and profits of the big colonial corporations which dominate electronic high-tech innovation.
According to a BBC article by Matt Murphy, “A UN investigation in December 2022 has found that at least 131 civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo died in a November attack by the M23 rebel group.” The UN report said the massacre took place in two villages: Kishishe and Bambo-in the Rutshuru district of the eastern North Kivu province. Investigators said the attack appeared to be a reprisal for a current government offensive on the rebels.
But the UN’s Monusco’s peacekeeping mission in the country said 102 men, 17 women, and 12 children were “arbitrarily executed” by the rebel group “as part of reprisals against the civilian population.” At least 22 women and five girls were also raped, and the report said, “This violence was carried out as part of a campaign of murders, rapes, kidnappings, and looting against two villages in the Rutshuru territory as reprisals for the clashes between the M23 and other armed groups, including the FDLR,” adding that the true number of those killed could be even higher.
M23 is not a rebel group from Congo, but a detachment of Rwanda’s army in Congo; for permanent counter-insurgency warfare, to pursue colonial goals defined by white rulers in alliance with a sector of the Rwanda Tutsi ethnic petty-bourgeois leadership from exile in Uganda.
Wars in Africa always funded by colonizers
What the UN and the BBC article do not say is that this war is supported by the UN, U.S., EU, and the UK government. Tony Blair is a special adviser to Paul Kagame. The over 20 years of Rwanda’s war is to depopulate parts of Congo and transfer Rwanda’s Tutsi population to the rich land of Kivu. This colonial project is supported by the colonial white leaders. Nicolas Sarkozy, when he was president of France in 2009, talked of “a new approach” and a “sharing of space and wealth of the immense Congo with small Rwanda.”
At the time, this caused an outcry in Kinshasa. Nicolas Sarkozy is not a socialist; he was simply pursuing these aims at the expense of African people in the Congo. There is also a policy of reconciliation with Kagame’s Rwanda since France lost influence in Rwanda to the U.S. after the overthrow of Juvénal Habyarimana and the genocide in 1994 financed by the U.S.
The rapprochement between France and Rwanda means that today France’s oil and gas interests in Mozambique are protected by Kagame’s Rwanda troops. The struggle for national liberation requires an African Internationalist analysis and solution that recognizes that the strategic goal of every genuine African revolutionary is to end the global colonial mode of production.
Everything must include this truth in our daily work as we fight in the Central Africa region.
Build the African Socialist International!
Hands Off Congo!
Hands Off Africa!
