IMPERIALISM AND THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE CONGO

Neither Léopold II nor Trump  ever set foot in the DRC, but they deserve credit for having successfully seized Congo's strategic resources to ensure and secure their economic progress, all at the expense of the DRC.

Industrial revolution in the West, crimes to be repressed in the DRC: this is the perfect opportunity to dispossess Congo of its strategic wealth.

In the name of assisting a country in danger, they are abusing the same vulnerable country.

140 years after the Berlin Conference, the actors may have changed names and even races, but the logic remains the same, with an almost identical resemblance.

In the following lines, we attempt to uncover the mask.
 

1. The stakes of the game: To seize control of Congo's resources in order to propel the industrial revolution in the West.

In the early 19th century, the invention of the pneumatic tire, replacing the metal wheel in the automotive industry, made rubber a strategic resource. Leopold II then seized the opportunity to monopolize Congolese rubber, thus becoming the world's largest supplier.

In the early 21st century, the replacement of fuel by electric batteries made cobalt a strategic resource. Donald Trump II also saw this as an opportunity to monopolize Congolese cobalt and become the world's leading supplier.

 

2. False Empathy: The Holy Alibi

To disguise his barbarity, Leopold II found a clever trick. He proclaimed that his main mission in the Congo was to fight slavery and open the Congo to civilization.

Donald Trump II, too, disguised his barbarity under the guise of a naive humanism: fighting the Rwandan invasion in eastern Congo.

Presented in this way, these missions managed to hook a few naive people who gave them carte blanche.

 

3. Stanley and Tshisekedi: The two middlemen

These two monarchs, driven mad by ungrateful greed, needed intermediaries, henchmen whose mission was to map out the spoils to be extracted, manipulate the indigenous populations, and wrest from them, by force or trickery, a supposed consent dangled before the sovereigns in order to legitimize and legalize the confiscation of lands and concessions for the benefit of the sovereigns.

 

Thus, Stanley sometimes made indigenous chiefs sign treaties they couldn't read, and where there was resistance, he didn't hesitate to resort to beheading the inconvenient witness. Félix Tshisekedi, like Stanley, chose to bypass parliament, circumventing the constitutional safeguard of Article 214, to formalize the deal. And to silence anyone who opposes this sell-off, the strategy of decapitation is so well devised: "You're playing into Rwanda's hands; you're against ending the war." These simple phrases are enough to brand as unpatriotic anyone who coughs and expresses indignation against this so-called Strategic Partnership.

 

4. Trade Monopoly

By his decree of September 21, 1891, Leopold II forced the Congolese indigenous population to sell their rubber exclusively to the State, and therefore to the Belgian King.

 

And by Article XI, 2 (a), Trump II compelled the Congo to sell the products resulting from the sequestration of Congolese concessions exclusively to American companies and individuals, or those affiliated or allied with them.

 

5. Channel for the Spoils

Leopold II further exacted a heavy toll on the indigenous population by enslaving them on the construction of the railway intended to transport their rubber to the ocean. Trump II, too, would indebt the DRC without internal debate for the construction/rehabilitation of the Lobito railway, the almost exclusive corridor for the transport of his spoils to the ocean (see Article XI, 2 (b)).

 

 6. A Skillfully Orchestrated Expropriation

Previously, the land and its produce belonged to the indigenous people, until, by a simple royal decree of July 1, 1885, so-called vacant lands were deemed to belong to the State and therefore to the King, thus maliciously transforming the local populations into mere laborers of the King, without any rights whatsoever to these lands and their produce.

 

With the 2018 mining code, the Congo succeeded in regaining control over its mineral resources in order to play a real role in the challenges of the future; after paying the heavy conséquences of the Mining code imposed by the IMF in 2002.

 

And now, through a sleight of hand, the so-called Strategic Partnership is subtly dispossessing the DRC of its strategic minerals for the benefit of the USA by:

- Requiring states' companies to hold only minority stakes in partnerships; (Article XIII, 3)

 

- Granting majority control of the board of directors and veto power in strategic decisions exclusively to American shareholders; (Annex 1, 1, ii (a))

 

- Progressively and systematically reducing Congolese participation in the share capital of mining projects to a ceiling of 40% in the first year and no more than 10% in 20 years; (Annex 1, 1, b)

 

- Providing guarantees for the removal of strategic minerals constituting the so-called strategic reserve to American parties; (Appendix 1, 1, ii (b)) .

 

The struggle for a second independence.

Since this is the case, it only remains to be asked whether all our founding fathers and national heroes would have fought at their own risk so that we, their descendants, would find another colonial sovereign on whose altar we would go, sacrificing our resources, as Abel and Abraham did, in order to obtain a favorable gaze!

We therefore call upon the youth and the working class, who are the first to pay the price for this irresponsible deal, to rise up and demand its cancellation, a deal that parliament has just shamefully and cowardly approved.

This is our  struggle for a second independence.