By Robert Cosgrave
Since January, the March 23 Movement (M23), with the support of the Rwandan State, have made deep advances in the eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where they have been in conflict with the state since resurfacing in 2022. Goma and Bukavu, the two largest cities in the east, have been taken over.
Already, more than six million people have been internally displaced within the DRC, while over one million are estimated to have been forced to flee as refugees, on top of the six million who have been killed in civil wars and foreign interventions since 1996. Most alarming is the warning made at the UN’s Human Rights Council earlier this month that without an end in sight, “the worst may be yet to come” in the DRC with the real threat of regional spillover.
Imperialist exploitation
The current crisis in the DRC is linked to a push for control of the vast natural resources in the east of the country. As a key regional ally of Western imperialism, Rwanda is given the green light to support groups like M23’s campaign, with the hope it will guarantee control of the resources here. An estimated 70% of the world’s supply of cobalt – a key component of electric vehicle batteries – is found here, as well as large quantities of Colton – essential to the working of modern smartphones – and diamonds, gold, tin and tungsten.
This enormous mineral wealth, however, lies almost exclusively in the hands of imperialist multinationals – both from the West and China. For the people of the DRC, it has meant extreme environmental destruction and the forced removal of entire villages to facilitate the expansion of these mines. For workers within them, including a large number of children, particularly in artisanal mines, conditions resemble hell on earth. For the multinationals in control of these mines, however, it means massive profits, so the devastation they leave in their wake is not much of a concern.
HIstory of colonial plunder
This is the latest stage of a long history of the most vicious and horrific domination of imperialist powers in Congo, among the bloodiest in the sordid history of capitalism. Since European imperialists set their sights on the Congo, they have wrought apocalyptic damage. At the turn of the 20th century, today’s DRC was the personal property of King Leopold of Belgium, and a de facto slave system was put in place to supply the rubber plantations of the colony. The regime there was so violent – mutilation of workers as punishment being commonplace – that roughly half the population was estimated to be killed over 20 years. Later, the uranium that supplied the Manhattan Project and the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was mined here in a secret deal between US, British and Belgian imperialists.
In the wake of the post-WW2 anti-colonial struggles, US imperialism worked overtime to ensure that independence would not mean an end to Western economic domination in the Congo. They set about the overthrow and murder of the first post-independence President, Patrice Lumumba, whose desire for real national liberation was at odds with the plans of the US. As was common throughout the neocolonial world, the US, in alliance with Belgium, would install pliant dictators like Mobutu, who would facilitate the imperialist plunder of the Congo in return for the personal enrichment and indulgence of his clique.
Hypocrisy exposed
Just as in the 20th century, the struggle between imperialist powers for a greater share of the plunder had disastrous consequences for the masses across Africa. Some of the most developed forms of technologies are based on minerals extracted at enormous cost for its people and eco-system. This has been the story of colonial plunder on the continent from the outset of colonialism; it is no different today. The DRC is at the sharpest point of this crisis, but as long as the rule of imperialism continues across the continent, nowhere is safe from its rapacious appetite.
Like with the genocide in Palestine, the horror facing the peoples of the DRC lays bare the bankrupt assertions by capitalism of moral legitimacy. This is having a radicalising impact on the peoples of Africa and in other parts of the neo-colonial world; these countries’ working class and poor must be organised as a powerful force to overthrow imperialist and capitalist rule and begin to organise society in the interests of all.
