The history of the Democratic Republic of Congo since the country was granted its independence has been one of ruthless imposition of neo-colonialism. Traditionally a neo-colonial set-up assumed a bribed native ruling class organising imperialism’s looting of their country in return for imperialism safeguarding their local power. In Congo this was the case after Congo’s first post-liberation prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was murdered at the instance of US, French and Belgian imperialism, eventually, after six years of war against Lumumba supporters, being replaced long-term by the renowned kleptocrat, Mobutu. The stability of this system gets upset, however, by the fact that imperialist demands for loot become more and more oppressive.
Marx showed how over time the rate of profit in relation to the amount of capital investment inevitably falls, since the only source of new wealth is new labour, but capitalism to maximise profits is forever displacing the labour of people with machines. It cannot help itself from killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. The imperialists try to make up for falling rates of profit by increased looting of colonies and neo-colonies that inevitably provokes the resistance of the downtrodden masses who increasingly have nothing to lose. They rise up against the puppet regimes that serve imperialism, replacing them with patriotic regimes that imperialism has to either overthrow or bring under its control if the looting is to continue.
Subversion is the name of the game. Some officials of a patriotic government can undoubtedly be bribed, but the economic weapons of choice are the carrot and the stick – the carrot being loans and the stick being sanctions. Indebtedness is the basis of the imperialist stranglehold over exploited and oppressed countries, and it has the merit that, however many times the government is changed, the debt remains and so does the power of imperialism to blackmail whatever regime is in charge. All uprisings against the various governments tend to be diverted to struggles against local corruption, while the imperialist corrupters remain hidden out of sight, often being appealed to by insurgents for support!
The Congo is a classic example of this neo-colonial oppression. It is a country extremely rich in mineral resources, but its very wealth is the cause of its misfortunes: “While the DRC is one of the richest countries in the world in terms of its resources, it has one of the poorest populations. The UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) estimates that the DRC has untapped mineral reserves worth US$24 trillion as well as half of Africa’s water resources, half of Africa’s forest cover, and 80 million hectares of arable land that have the capacity to feed the entire continent” but “the people of the DRC struggle to survive. In [2022] , the World Bank found that around 74.6% of the DRC’s population lives on less than US$2.15 a day, and about one in six Congolese live in extreme poverty.
“The gap between the country’s national wealth and the extreme poverty experienced by the majority is stunning.
“The DRC ranks 180 out of 193 countries on the 2022 Human Development Index” (‘The Congolese fight for their own wealth’, Tricontinental, 25 June 2024).
What is truly stunning is how the imperialist countries have continued for years to siphon off so much of the Congo’s wealth at the expense of its population, how they are able to secure essential minerals such as coltan, copper and cobalt at very low cost, while to a considerable extent limiting the access of their commercial rivals to these minerals. We shall examine below how this has been achieved.
Independence and the installation of classic neo-colonialism
After years of hard and determined struggle against Belgian colonial rule, “On 30 June 1960, the Belgian government was compelled to concede independence to the Congo. The mineral-rich province of Katanga was the exception that proved the rule, insofar as Belgian power expressed itself through secessionist Moïse Tshombe and his more sinister Minister of the Interior Godefroid Munongo. In Katanga, real economic and civil power continued to reside in the [Belgian – British] Union Minière du Haut-Katanga [Mining Union of Upper Katanga] and its security forces, with the latter doubling as the officer corps for the military forces of the independent State of Katanga.
“Lumumba sought to put an end to this charade during his first speech as prime minister, which he began by cataloguing the eighty years of abuse that the Congolese people had endured under Belgian colonial rule. The closing portions of Lumumba’s speech, made in the presence of Belgian King Baudouin I, sent chills through the crowd as well as the throngs of Congolese who were listening on the radio. ‘We have seen our lands seized in the name of ostensibly just laws, which gave recognition only to the right of might. … Together, we [the Congolese people] shall establish social justice and ensure for every man just remuneration for his labour’, Lumumba declared. ‘We are no longer your monkeys’” (Tricontinental, op.cit).
Not long afterwards Lumumba was murdered, the assassination organised by US, French and Belgian imperialism.
The assassination opened a period of six years of war, after which Western imperialism was able to secure the power of its most willing puppet, the kleptocrat Joseph Sese Seko Mobutu, and these Western imperialist countries, especially Belgium, France and the United States, continued to support him with investment and military aid. Zaïre (as Mobutu renamed the country) was the world’s primary exporter of cobalt and sourced 60% of the global supply. The country also exported 7% of world copper and 33% of industrial diamonds. Many of the mines for these resources were in Katanga, and the copper mines in the area provided 65–75% of the country’s overall wealth from imports. The wealth they supplied to the imperialists was undoubtedly far greater!
Overthrow of Mobutu
Mobutu, kept in power with the assistance of imperialism who intervened to give heavy support to eliminate the anti-imperialist opposition’s armed struggle centred in Katanga in the south of the country, was able to rule Congo with an iron fist for over three decades. He was a key pro-imperialist leader during the Cold war and formed, together with apartheid South Africa, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Kingdom of Morocco, part of the US and French imperialist organisation they nicknamed the ‘Safari club’, for the suppression of revolutionary movements throughout Africa, the Middle East and central Asia.
However, Mobutu fell out of favour with US imperialism after more than three decades of untiring efforts on behalf of his imperialist masters. As Lalkar of March/April 1997 explained, “with the downfall of the Soviet Union, the common enemy of all imperialist powers, the need to maintain an imperialist united front in Africa and other super-exploited areas of the world has gone. On top of that the imperialist economic crisis has deepened, making each imperialist power desperate to secure for itself sources of huge profitability. The result of this has been what the ‘Observer’ of 19 January 1997 referred to as ‘a latter-day scramble for the mineral wealth of Africa’. US imperialism is no longer willing to assist French imperialism to maintain an unpopular regime in Zaïre, whose only function, other than self-enrichment, is to safeguard Zaïre’s mineral wealth for exploitation by French companies. As a consequence, the Mobutu regime is finding itself for the first time without the resources to suppress a major rebellion”.
US imperialism was covertly supporting Kabila’s Front National pour la Libération du Congo, which also had the support of the neighbouring Rwandan Patriotic Front. The expectation was that once in power Kabila would, in gratitude for their support during the rebellion, surrender his country’s wealth to US multinationals. Kabila, however, unlike his Rwandan allies, turned out to be an anti-imperialist not just in rhetoric but also in deeds, and his government set about devolving power to the people.
Volte face
In overthrowing Mobutu, Kabila had the support of the Congolese Tutsis of Rwandan ethnicity and the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front government. Their interest was two-fold. On the one hand, Mobutu had given asylum to some 2 million Hutus fleeing Rwanda after the Rwandan Patriotic Front, then based in Uganda and composed of expatriate Tutsis, invaded Rwanda to overthrow the genocidal Hutu regime. The now-Tutsi Rwandan government led by Paul Kagame wanted revenge against these Hutus who they claimed were responsible for the genocide and posed a threat to Rwanda. In actual fact, the overwhelming majority of them were innocent civilians, including many thousands of little children. Those Hutus who were in fact blameworthy were too small in number to pose any great threat. It seems that what Kagame was really interested in was securing his control over some of Congo’s richest mineral wealth. A rift between Kabila and Kagame therefore inevitably arose when Kabila, now installed as President, asked Rwanda to withdraw its troops – and Rwanda refused.
Imperialism, realising that Kabila was serious about giving priority to the needs of the Congolese population over the profits of multinationals, was only too happy to encourage Rwanda and Uganda to invade for the purpose of separating off the mineral-rich eastern provinces, taking them out of the control of the Congolese government, facilitating the looting of these minerals via Rwanda.
Unending civil war – literally called ‘la Guerre sans fin’, or ‘the war without end’ by the longsuffering Congolese people – has ensued, as the Congolese government tried in vain to seize back control. Tutsi militias have destroyed villages whose populations were potentially supportive of the Congolese government; and government forces and militias supporting them have attacked villages that supported the Rwandan invasion. In this conflict, millions of civilians (estimates range from 7 to 10 million) were killed and millions more were driven from their homes and means of earning a living. War, on top of the loss of income from eastern mineral sales, plunged the country further into debt, with new loans from international institutions constantly needed even to be able to pay the wages of soldiers. In the midst of it all, on 16 January 2001, Kabila was murdered – the assassination again orchestrated by the very same alliance of imperialist forces who assassinated Patrice Lamumba.
Essentially the war has continued ever since along the same lines, despite a peace treaty in 2002 that exacted concessions from the government, which was forced to integrate those who had been fighting for its overthrow into the country’s army and administration in return for a much-needed respite from the horrendous sufferings to the people caused by war.
Notwithstanding the concessions made by the Congolese government in pursuit of peace, peace has never lasted long. Imperialism has seen to it, mainly by mobilising its stooges in Rwanda and among the communities of Rwandan origin in Congo.
In fact, the war in Congo was dubbed the ‘Playstation War’, as the launch of Sony’s PS2 caused such a steep rise in global demand for rare minerals that monopolists scouring the globe for cheap supplies hit upon the idea of using Rwanda to loot the Congo. So profitable was the policy to imperialism that it has continued to the present day.]
The civil war situation in which the minerals keep coming, and keep coming cheap, suits imperialism down to the ground. “Several of the most important components of modern global infrastructure rely on minerals and metals mined in the DRC, such as coltan, cobalt, copper, diamonds, gold, tungsten, and uranium. For instance, the building blocks of the digitised global economy are extracted from places like the DRC at very low costs. Militia groups secure labour power through force, resulting in no or low wages for miners and other workers in industrial mining areas. Due to these working conditions, the rate of exploitation of workers who produce the iPhone – a ubiquitous symbol of the end product of mineral ore – is twenty-five times higher than the rate of exploitation of textile workers in nineteenth century England.
“The price of digital commodities is further cheapened by the low revenues earned by the Congolese state. To take the example of one [US commodity broker, political donor of the Clintons, and] multinational corporation [whose rapacious history can be glimpsed in the book The world for sale] that is key to the extraction of resources from the DRC, Glencore posted market-adjusted earnings of US$3.5 billion for 2023 (before interest and taxes).
“It is the ‘subsidy’ of suppressed wages (partly facilitated by coerced and forced labour) and lowered state revenue that provide this company with such high earnings. Without the blood, sweat, and misery of the Congolese portion of the ‘bottom billion’ and the raw materials they produce, companies in the Global North would not be able to extract such high profits” (Tricontinental, op.cit.).
The Rwandans have not ceased trying to expand the mining areas under their control. Less than a year ago the Rwandan-backed M23 seized yet another coltan mine, Rubaya:
“In April 2024, Rwandan-backed armed group M23 seized one of the world’s most productive coltan concessions, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Since then, a UN report estimates that 120 tonnes of the precious mineral are mined every month and then exported to Rwanda.
“By taking control of Rubaya in North Kivu, the M23 now has its hands on one of the richest coltan deposits in the world, whose production is estimated to account for 15% of the world’s supply and half of Congolese exports” (Marie Toulemonde, ‘The conflict in eastern DRC’, The Africa Report, 6 February 2025). Who Rwanda sells to is of course entirely under US control.
Rwanda itself has little mining capacity and yet minerals constitute its biggest export – mostly looted from the Congo. Although Rwanda, of course, denies the looting, the facts speak rather too loudly for themselves. From the start of Rwanda’s occupation of eastern Congo, its own exports began to soar: “According to a 2005 report on the Rwandan economy by the South African Institute for Security Studies, Rwanda’s officially recorded coltan production soared nearly tenfold between 1999 and 2001, from 147 tons to 1,300 tons, surpassing revenues from the country’s main traditional exports, tea and coffee, for the first time. ‘Part of the increase in production is due to the opening of new mines in Rwanda,’ the report said. ‘However, the increase is primarily due to the fraudulent re-export of coltan of Congolese origin’” (Howard French, ‘Kagame’s hidden war in Congo’, New York Review of Books, September 2009). Since M23 captured the Rubaya coltan mine last year, Rwanda’s mineral exports have risen to $1 billion a year, double what they were two years previously. Even the BBC has admitted recently: “DR Congo and multiple UN reports have accused Rwanda of using the conflict as a way of looting Congolese minerals, such as gold and coltan, which is used to make mobile phones and other electronic items such as cameras and inside cars.
“In recent years, the M23 has seized several lucrative mining areas and a report by UN experts last December said that around 120 tonnes of coltan was being sent by the M23 to Rwanda every four weeks.
“They also noted a huge rise in Rwanda’s mineral exports in recent years, most of which is believed to come from DR Congo” (‘What’s the fighting all about?’, 27 January 2025).
Debt trap
Both the war and the looting of its wealth contributed to the debt trap in which imperialism had caught the Congolese government and people. The debts began to accumulate under Mobutu who spent “32 years plundering the country, backed by his western allies. Between 1970 and 1997, under the dictatorship of General Mobutu, Zaire’s external government debt increased from around 5 per cent of GDP to 150 per cent. Through the 1970s and 1980s loans were given by the IMF, World Bank and directly from governments to support Mobutu as an ally in the Cold War” (Debtjustice.org.uk, 2017). These debts were inherited by the anti-imperialist government that replaced Mobutu, but they were a crushing restraint on its freedom of action.
Because of war the debts kept increasing, but following the Luanda peace accords in 2002, imperialism offered Congo debt relief as part of the HIPC initiative:
“…the Congo entered the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative in 2003. To do so it had to both take out new loans and start making payments on its debt. Perversely, in order to qualify for debt relief, both Congo’s debt payments and total debt increased.
“An IMF and World Bank condition for completing HIPC was passing a new Mining Code, which set royalty rates of just 0.5 per cent for ferrous metals, 2 per cent for non-ferrous metals and 2.5 per cent for precious metals.
“It subsequently took a further eight years for Congo to actually receive debt cancellation, in which time it paid over $2 billion servicing its debts” (ibid.).
At one point, debt servicing was costing Congo 20% of its GDP.
What imperialism achieved through its ‘debt relief’ was the right to loot Congolese wealth on a grand scale: “In 2009, the Congolese government received just $155 million in revenue from the entire mining sector. In contrast, the IMF says that the Congo’s mining and oil exports were worth $4.2 billion. The Congolese state therefore received less than 4 per cent of the minerals’ value in tax receipts” (ibid.).
By the end of December 2020, Congo’s debt had reached 98% of GDP and subsequently rose to 110%.
The China connection
The only thing that saved the country from having to surrender yet more of its life blood to imperialism in return for the restructuring of loans that were impossible to pay was the willingness of China to acquire its minerals on far better terms than those offered by imperialism, in particular ensuring that the Congo was supplied with modern infrastructure (such as roads and hospitals). In other words, China stepped in to stop Western imperialism from intensifying its already ruinous exploitation of Congo. China made a deal with the Congo “that attributed mining rights to China in exchange for substantial investment into the DRC’s war-torn infrastructure. In late 2007, a joint venture was set up to execute the terms of the agreement. It was named Sino Congolaise des Mines (Sicomines) and established with a Chinese majority shareholding of 68%…
“Undoubtedly, the Sicomines deal has stimulated the entry of Chinese investors into the Congolese mining sector, injecting capital into the economy and providing much-needed work for the region’s millions of mostly impoverished residents. In 2013, six years after the signing of the deal, as many as 15 out of 143 firms reporting to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) were Chinese; copper production increased from 200,000 mt/y in 2007 to 1.2 million mt/y in 2018, while cobalt production increased from 30,000 to 90,000 mt/y over the same period. Due to this development, the DRC’s macroeconomic performance has improved drastically, with total world trade balance in goods evolving from a deficit of US$783 million in 2007 to a surplus of US$208 million in 2017” (‘The Chinese power grab in the DRC’, Global Business Reports, 28 June 2019. Chinese companies ended up taking control of 15 of the DRC’s 17 mining complexes.
The Western imperialist countries naturally reacted with fury to growing Chinese influence in the Congo, asserting that it is China that is creating a debt trap for the countries that it helps. President Tshisekedi disagrees: “Tshisekedi refuted the claims that China-Africa cooperation is a ‘debt trap,’ saying ‘These descriptions do not match the reality of Chinese-African cooperation as we experience it in the DRC.’
“Rather than being traps, these investments have allowed the DRC to develop its critical infrastructure and strengthen its ability to integrate into the global economy,’ he said.
“He said that the principles of sincerity, real results, amity, and good faith in China’s policy towards Africa, put forward in 2013 by Chinese President Xi Jinping, are rooted in Chinese-Congolese cooperation, demonstrating ‘China’s sincerity in addressing the Congolese people’s needs and its commitment to achieving tangible results’.
“Tshisekedi said his visits to several Chinese cities reinforced his belief that the DRC could benefit greatly from Chinese expertise in accelerating industrialisation and developing technological infrastructure”.
In return for substantial development of essential infrastructure, China has been able to gain guaranteed access to important minerals from the DRC, in particular cobalt – much to the dismay of US imperialism:
“China’s dominance in the cobalt market has direct and indirect implications for American national security and our military procurement process. In 2023, the Department of Defense identified cobalt as a ‘component of multiple munitions and high-temperature aerospace alloys used by [the Department of Defense]’ and noted cobalt ‘has critical applications in high-capacity batteries for military and commercial electric vehicles.’ Beyond its direct military applications, cobalt is integral to many advanced consumer technologies, particularly lithium-ion batteries. Given the increasing importance of electric cars, by 2030, cobalt demand is expected to grow to four times its 2020 levels. China’s involvement in the DRC cobalt supply chain could present a possible national security issue and put American companies at a disadvantage in the race to make more efficient and affordable electric vehicles. By failing to secure its cobalt supply chain, the United States runs the risk of losing access to an essential component of several ubiquitous technologies. Although cobalt’s military applications may be fewer than its commercial uses, insecure cobalt supply chains still represent a substantial national security threat (Farrell Gregory and Paul J Milas, ‘China in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: a new dynamic in critical mineral procurement’, Strategic Studies Institute, 17 October 2024).
It seems probable that what lies behind the Rwandan present sudden attack dog offensive against Congo is an attempt by imperialism to eliminate Chinese influence in the region that is preventing it from increasing still further its looting of the country. All of a sudden, we see the Rwandan puppets, not content with their pilfering of the resources of eastern Congo, mounting an offensive which has seen them capture the country’s second city, Goma, in the east as well as Bukavu in the south, and threatening to advance on the capital, Kinshasa, over a thousand miles away. With the Congolese army infiltrated by Rwanda loyalists thanks to the peace accords, and starved of financial support, it remains to be seen to what extent the M23 advance can be resisted.
What is certain is that the Congolese masses are likely to mount a vigorous resistance the Rwandan invasion. They are fully aware of the fact that it is imperialist looting that is the main factor behind the Congo’s troubles, and protest demonstrations against imperialism have been taking place regularly. Like the Israeli Zionists operating against a ‘sea of Arabism’, the Rwandan government and its supporters have been acting like Ulster protestants pitched against a ‘sea of Catholicism’. All of them are loyal promoters of imperialist interests, in the case of Rwanda defending those interests in a ‘sea of Africanism’. It is time for the seas to overwhelm all of them and wash them away.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.