Damodar Dahal
The underdevelopment of the Congolese
Sun 12 January 2025
The underdevelopment of the Congolese.
Before the Belgians came to loot from the Congolese – roughly speaking, the Kongo, the Mai Miombi, the Mongo, the Bangala, the Lulua, the Baluba, the Snilotique, and the Soudani peoples – around the end of the 19th century, it was not a nation-state, unlike the Westphalian “nation among nations” architecture of today’s geopolitics. After the genocide of half of the natives, which was used to propel the automobile revolution in the White metropols,1 the Belgians were forcibly evicted in 1960 upon the first real African chance, similar to how most colonized peoples across the world who were brutally suppressed, with their lives and cultures destroyed, reacted. However, the White people need not fear an end to their domination, even to this day after more than half a century of Congolese independence, because the educated Congolese – little as they are in population – all speak French, and work hand-in-hand as plumbers in the colonial extraction of the entire spectrum of Congolese minerals; an industry dominated by foreign capital, a minority African burgeoise, and plenty of workers working in slave-like conditions.
Some may mistakenly believe that European colonialism over Congo is over. Despite standing atop vast quantities of minerals covered by the lushed greenery of fields where everything grows, the Congolese remain one of the poorest populations in the world. A straight line of colonial oppression continued post-independence. First, the Belgians and the CIA murdered Lubumba – the first prime minister of Congo and a shining glimmer of hope for Africans and colonized people worldwide – in cold blood by dissolving him in acid. Then, they installed a ruthless dictator who would only disappear after a genocide in a neighboring country, whose genocideers were armed to the teeth by yet another European colonial power.2 Two world wars broke down in Africa, and after a little glimmer of hope with Laurent Kabila – and the death of this glimmer in just a few years – yet another dictator emerged to facilitate Africa-to-Europe value extraction. This time, the Chinese entered too, smartly, foreseeing the future potential of cobalt, the soon-to-be black gold and the pivotal mineral of “green transition,” showing little sign of their support for decolonization.
It is evident that just like the genocideer-in-chief Leopold II of Belgium butchered the life of the Congolese as they produced the raw materials for the tires of shiny cars that went on to fuel the automobile revolution, today’s Mr. Musk and the likewise capitalist bourgeoise class who trade in New York are stealing the value of Congolese cobalt and copper, indispensable minerals that together form the soul of the Katanga region. The underdevelopment of the Congolese is not a mere defect of past colonial exploitation but remains a result of ongoing colonial exploitation whereby the colonizers like Mr. Musk claim upon the values of products made using minerals mined in the Congo – sometimes mined by slaves without a choice, indifferentiable in pain to that of the colonized Congolese of a hundred years ago (but with respect to the changes in the global conditions imposed in their times). In the name of ending “human rights exploitations,” they construct big, fortified walls to secure properties so that physical apartheid prevents the contamination of the cobalt by the tears of the Congolese living in extreme hunger, extreme poverty, or undereducation, and who might just make meager attempts to “steal” their own wealth to survive.
Fighting against neocolonialism and imperialism not just in the Burkina Faso, the land of the upright people, but in all of Africa, Captain Ibrahim Traoré confirms: “A slave who cannot assume his own revolt does not deserve to be pitied.” Relying on foreign aid such as Bretton Woods’ neoliberalism and Chinese loans will not work unless the Congolese are ready to assume their own fight. For the thousands of artisanal miners who mine malachite and the heterogenite in Katanga – continuing in the tradition of their pre-colonial ancestors – the state-owned Enterprise Générale du Cobalt, which in principle seeks to establish a higher price for their blood and sweat, is in a possible state of being hijacked by foreign interests, like that of Trafigura. It must be the creuseurs who must be empowered to take this into their own hands, to fight for their rights and their livelihoods.
Through the forced production of rubber.
It is a known fact that the French armed the Interahamwe during the Rwandan genocide.
Originally published on Substack at https://penguing.substack.com/p/the-underdevelopment-of-the-congolese.