By Ivan Bonsell
The people of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) continue to pay a heavy price for their country’s natural riches. Fighting between the Congolese army and soldiers of the M23 militia, backed by neighbouring Rwanda, left 7,000 dead and displaced hundreds of thousands in January and February alone. The M23 surged westwards into the DRC, capturing Goma, the largest city in North Kivu in late January, and continue to capture territory.
M23 claim their objective is to safeguard the interests of the Congolese Tutsi and other minorities, protecting them from Hutu rebel groups that escaped to the DRC from Rwanda after taking part in genocide in the 1990s. What is really at stake, however, is control of a mineral-rich mining area in the eastern region of DRC.
Imperialism hungry for minerals
Whilst one of the largest but poorest countries in the world, DRC is also rich in natural resources. It is a major producer of cobalt, essential in the production of lithium ion batteries used to power electric vehicles, as well as copper and diamonds. Yet the working class and poor see very little of this wealth.
Centuries of colonial oppression, wars and instability have kept most Congolese people in severe poverty with one million refugees living in neighbouring countries, seven million people displaced and the severe risk of starvation for millions of children. War has unleashed gender-based violence on a mass scale. Multiple warring groups have committed crimes against civilian populations.
Belgium relinquished control of Congo in 1960, and it became the Democratic Republic whilst the neighbouring former French colony was named the Republic of Congo. Its first President, the radical nationalist Patrice Lumumba, was assassinated with the connivance of the Belgian state.
In his place came the CIA-installed dictator Mobutu. The struggle between the major Cold War powers – the US and the Soviet Union – to assert influence and power, encouraged instability, corruption and oppression of the population. Until the collapse of Stalinism in the early 1990s, Mobuto, then leader of what was renamed Zaire, was wined and dined by various US Presidents, all while he embezzled government funds and international aid.
No unity on the basis of capitalism
The presence of the ruling elites in central Africa, who acted as mere agents for imperialism, meant that development to establish unified nation states with stable capitalist rulers and some form of capitalist democracy, was not fully realised. The extreme poverty as a result of exploitation, the many different groups, speaking multiple languages and with different religions and tribal loyalties, under conditions of foreign capitalist domination, prevented an easy path to stability.
The Rwandan Civil War and genocide of the early 1990s left a legacy across the whole region. Rwandan and Ugandan armies invaded Zaire, and Laurent-Desire Kabila defeated Mobutu to become president of the new Democratic Republic of Congo. After his assassination, power passed to his son, Joseph Kabila, who used brutal force against several mass protests.
The M23 rebellion is just one aspect of the situation where different elites have exploited ethnic divisions for localised gains. In a vast nation made up of many different groups, each army acts to defend the interests of a particular warlord.
There are hundreds of mining companies in Congo, from large multinationals to smaller ‘illegal’ ones, with Chinese companies dominating. However, there is also small scale mining taking place using primitive methods, which is dangerous and leaves the working population poverty-stricken and with little choice but to extract minerals with picks and shovels, as if mechanised methods have not yet been developed.
What greater example of human suffering as a result of imperialism-created ethnic conflict holding back development in favour of short-term profits, realised in the boardrooms of capitalism?
Rival imperialist powers
Geopolitical instability, exacerbated by the first few weeks of Trump’s second presidency, is reverberating around the planet. Rwandan elites, battling it out for the rights to exploit natural resources and populations, are all too aware of US imperialism’s desire to unleash the wealth beneath the ground in Ukraine, and dream of the same for DRC. Rwanda already exports huge amounts of gold from Congolese mines.
As Chinese capitalism has strengthened its influence across parts of Africa, there’s an urgency for competing world capitalist powers to get in on the act, especially where essential minerals are to be found.
It is easy to despair at the plight of the Congolese people and those of the wider region, whose lives continue to be affected by war, disease and starvation. But socialists have a duty to point the way forward for all those suffering from the effects of capitalism and imperialism, however difficult it may seem.
For independent workers’ organisations
Self-defence groups, organised democratically and straddling ethnic and religious divisions, is a practical starting point. This should include appeals to workers in neighbouring countries and internationally.
For these to then link up, aiming to form a mass party of workers and poor farmers, would dramatically transform the fortunes of the Congolese people. A workers’ party based on respect for different national and ethnic groupings and defending the rights of all minorities is key to challenge the power of the capitalist leaders and elite warlords, both locally and regionally.
A new party would need to develop a programme based on public ownership of the economy, with genuine democratic workers’ control of the region’s wealth. This would lay the basis for a planned economy, allowing mineral extraction where agreed, which is safe and starts to repair the centuries of environmental destruction and degradation as a result of the pursuit of private profit.
This won’t happen in isolation. Workers’ organisations across the planet have a duty to support each other, with organisations such as International Socialist Alternative assisting to build workers’ democratic organisations across Africa.
Workers and the poor need to rely on their own organisations and adopt a principled approach to the rights of all ethnic and tribal groups, and point to the real enemy – the capitalist exploiters and those who whip up hatred for their own ends. The struggle of the Congolese people to free themselves from imperialist exploitation, ethnic war and all that goes with it, is the same struggle as that faced by working people across the planet.
Doing what we can here to confine capitalism to the history books and replace it with a genuinely democratic socialist society, is the best way of supporting workers in the DRC and across the world, but we also support all genuine attempts to build workers’ organisations, fighting to advance the cause of Congolese working people across ethnic divisions.
