#workers day

You can't keep the workers down MAYDAY Workers Rise Up

Just compare this poster with the more recent one below. The first was pasted on walls, the second is a digital banner for a website, although the spirit of pride and struggle is the same!

the value in zambian minerals does not come from the minerals alone.

it comes from the people.

from the man at the chama pit in lufwanyama who knows the tri-junction geology well enough to spot emerald rough in unpromising rock. from the smelter operator at nkana who manages the furnace temperatures that determine whether copper concentrate becomes good cathode or loses value in the process. from the geologist at kansanshi who reads the drill core and marks the boundaries of the orebody. from the artisanal miner in mumbwa who pans the same gravel bar every dry season because he knows — not from a report but from years of physical knowledge of that specific ground — where the gold concentrates.

from the surface workers who sort and process. from the maintenance crews who keep the equipment running. from the laboratory technicians who assay the samples. from the truck drivers who move the ore from pit to plant. from the security guards who protect billion-dollar operations through the night. from the cleaners and caterers and administrators whose work makes it possible for everyone else to do theirs.

the 1935 strike happened because men being exploited decided they would not accept it anymore. what they were asserting — at the cost of six lives and twenty-two injuries and the sustained violence of colonial repression — was their dignity. their worth. their right to be compensated fairly for the value that their bodies and their knowledge and their courage were creating.

lawrence katilungu spent his life building the institution that gave that assertion organisational form. that turned individual courage into collective power. that made the mining companies negotiate rather than simply dictate.

the workers of the copperbelt built this province. the towns. the roads. the schools and hospitals the copper revenues funded. the skills base and institutional knowledge that makes the copperbelt, ninety years after the first strike, still one of the most technically capable mining regions on the african continent.

on workers' day 2026, as we think about value addition and downstream processing — let us be clear about what the foundation of any future value addition industry will be.

not the policy frameworks. not the investment agreements. not the trade partnerships with the united states or the european union.

the workers.

the same workers whose great-grandparents went on strike in 1935. the same workers who go underground every day and come back up.

they are the foundation. they have always been the foundation.

happy workers' day, zambia.

the future that this country's minerals deserve will be built by the people who have always built it.

Happy? Yes. Combative and on the brink of a world crisis, changing the international balance of power (struggles that we will suffer the same, as always), but we must create and feel sexy, both things are life and you need encouragement and energy to oppose oppression.

Feliz? Sí. Combativo y al borde de crisis mundial cambiando equilibrio de poder internacional (estragos que sufriremos más los mismos, como siempre), pero debemos crear y sentirnos sexy, ambas cosas son vida y necesitas aliento y energía para oponerte a la opresión.

The sobriety and sadness of a pop left is a mistake, it seems to make smiles and love unfair if we are crushed again and again, being aware and learning from defeats is not being defeated, that sadness is cancer that desolates admissions.

La sobriedad y la tristeza de una izquierda pop es un error, parece hacer injusta la sonrisa y al amor si somos machacados una y otra vez, ser conscientes y aprender de las derrotas no es estar vencidos, esa tristeza es cáncer que devasta.

born february 1914. northern province of northern rhodesia. grandson of a minor bemba chief. trained as a mission teacher. then, in 1936, he went underground at the nkana mine in kitwe.

he first came to prominence in 1940 — as a leader of striking african mineworkers at nkana. the same strike in which thirteen of his fellow workers were killed by police. he was not deterred.

in february 1948, he was elected president of the newly formed nkana african mineworkers' union. in march 1949, all the african miners' unions in northern rhodesia amalgamated in a single historic meeting. they formed the african mineworkers' union. they elected katilungu as their first president.

what katilungu built was one of the most powerful and sophisticated trade union organisations in colonial africa. he understood that the power of the union lay in its unity — in its ability to speak with one voice on behalf of every african worker on the copperbelt, regardless of tribe, regardless of which mine they worked, regardless of the divisions the colonial mining companies attempted to exploit. under his leadership, the AMU became the organisation the mining companies had to negotiate with. not tolerate. negotiate with. as equals.

the colour bar paid the average white mineworker almost ten times the average african mineworker in 1960. african workers, however skilled, however experienced, could not be promoted to positions reserved for white workers. katilungu and the AMU fought this system with strikes, with negotiations, with submissions to commissions of inquiry, and with the moral force of the argument that a man should be paid for what he can do, not for the colour of his skin.

in 1952, he led a successful strike that won african workers a wage increase of half a crown per day. proof that organised african labour could win at the negotiating table.

lawrence katilungu died on 9 november 1961. aged 47. three years before zambian independence. before he could see the country that his generation's struggle helped to make possible.

his name is not on enough streets. not in enough school curricula. not in enough of zambia's public memory.

on workers' day 2026 — let his name be spoken.