Kam Reads and Recs

At an 1884 conference of colonial powers, Leopold used philanthropic language to hoodwink the other European nations into allowing him to annex Congo as private property. His aim, of course, was not philanthropy but profit. To that end, in 1886, Thys created the very first of the corporate entities that would be used to cloak Leopold’s barbarism in the guise of a business venture. Such companies would proliferate during Leopold’s possession of Congo; they insulated the king and his fellow investors, mainly well-heeled Anglo-Saxons, from direct responsibility for the crimes that were being committed in the territory. They would be the first international firms to plunder Congo—a practice that, as we have seen, continued well into the twenty-first century.

“There is corruption, there is lack of the rule of law, which gives you more autonomy to be entrepreneurial,” Peter Zhou, the Chinese mining banker, said of the way that some Chinese think about working in Congo.

Although European nations had forbidden slavery early in the nineteenth century and used antislavery campaigns as pretexts for creating colonies in Africa, they often treated the Africans they had supposedly liberated from bondage as little more than slaves.

As we motored past piles of coal stacked on barges—raw material to be burned in IMIP’s furnaces—and watched IMIP’s smokestacks puff out fumes, I noticed a handful of canoes like ours making their way to the front of the site. In one, a lady named Neni told us that she used to fish but now just collected scrap with her daughter from the edge of the mine site, as the water had become too befouled for fishing. “Our livelihood has been taken away from us,” she said. Another problem was the toxic slurry that resulted from the HPAL. Initially, IMIP had planned to get rid of tailings at sea, which would have been harmful to wildlife. After environmental groups kicked up a stink, the application for aquatic dispersal was withdrawn. Still, as Winwin, an activist with JATAM, told me, “When we talk about mining, you have people who will have to be displaced from their homeland.” She went on to explain the downstream effects: “People are displaced to the shore, and it is not the answer, because when mining operates, waste runs into the river, and that ends up in the sea. And those people who live at the seashore, they have to struggle. And it means their income, everything that comes from the sea, is also affected. The ecosystem is destroyed.”

I wondered if something else had percolated into the loam of Congolese society with China’s famously no-strings-attached, no-questions-asked investments. Was the entire notion of personal freedom—admittedly never particularly strong in a place that had endured seventy-five years of colonialism, almost four decades of dictatorship, and three rigged elections—being forgotten altogether?

Almost without exception, people mentioned that the mining operations had turned the sea “reddish” and that it had become almost impossible to fish in the vicinity. “The fish don’t come near here anymore,” said Lisman Musahati, a twenty-seven-year-old fisherman in the village of Soligi, which is around four miles from the main mine site on Obi. His grievances echoed what I had heard in Sulawesi. “The waste from the mines is destroying the coral reefs, and we can’t fish in this area anymore. We have to go farther out to catch anything—twenty miles out and further in small boats.”

Aris, the professor whom I met in Ternate, said that he had approached Harita in 2010 about doing an environmental study near the Obi mine site. After nine years, Harita finally allowed him to start taking water samples from the area, although his access to many sites, including the main mine, was severely limited and, in some cases, prohibited. Nevertheless, Aris was able to examine water, fish, and fluted giant clams, and he prepared three academic studies to present his findings. In one paper, he wrote that his research had found “degeneration and cell necrosis” in the fluted giant clams, which are listed as a “conservation-dependent” species because their natural habitat has been impacted by humans. “This change is thought to be influenced by heavy metals,” he continued. “Heavy metal content in liquids exceeds the quality standard threshold.” In another paper, he noted the degradation of fish tissues. His sampling detected levels of ammonia, nitrate, dissolved oxygen, nickel, and iron that exceeded water-quality standards set by the government. In the conclusion to his paper on fish, he described it as “a reference for warning of heavy metal pollution in Obi Island waters.” When it came time for Aris to publish his results, Harita contacted him. “They asked me to change the data,” he told me. When he refused, the company tried to prevent the study from appearing. “They sent a letter to the university,” he said, “and the rector spoke to me directly and told me not to publish that the water pollution level was over the limit.” (Khairun University did not respond to multiple emails seeking comment.) Aris decided to publish his work despite the pressure, and he has not received funding to conduct another study in the Obi area since. A separate water sample tested in 2022 by The Guardian, the British newspaper, revealed that the cancer-causing chemical hexavalent chromium, of Erin Brockovich fame, was present in worryingly high levels in water near the mine site.

Signal then storm [from Aeon]