Connections

Do you own a cell-phone? How about a Playstation, laptop, digital camera, or DVD player? High-tech electronics have become so entrenched in our culture that people often express shock over the fact that I don’t own a cell-phone, computer, television, or iPod. There is much current media coverage about the “video-game console war” between Xbox 360, the Nintendo Wii, and Playstation 3. However, completely lacking from most news media is the real-life war raging in the Congo over the mining rights to a metal that goes into each and every one of these consoles.

Coltan is a mineral essential to storing the electrical charge of digital devices and 80% of the world’s coltan reserves are found in the Democratic Republic of Congo in central Africa. The Congo is the site of some of the world’s most appalling social and environmental atrocities. The nation was once a Belgian colony exploited for rubber produced by slave labor. Belgian King Leopold II is known to have ordered the severing of slaves’ hands, noses, or ears if production was not up to par. When the nation, formerly known as Zaire, became independent in the 1960’s the fascist dictator Mobutu rose to power by publicly executing dissidents and (with the support of the United States C.I.A. of the McCarthy era) assassinated the former radical leftist leader Patrice Lamumba.

Mobutu’s reign came to an end in 1997 with a rebellion led by Jospeh Kabila. The region has been teeming with civil war and anguish ever since. Nearly four million people have died from the violence, making it the most deadly conflict since World War II, and 1,000 people continue to be killed every day. Much of this blood is spilled over the millions of dollars to be had from mining coltan, diamonds, cobalt, copper, and tin in the eastern mountains.

There is more to this story. The mountain forests that are being destroyed as a result of mining pressures are among the most biologically diverse and unique ecosystems on the continent. These forests are home to the last remaining eastern mountain gorillas, just one of the millions of species endangered by the current mass extinction caused by human civilization.

Think about the tremendous increase in cell-phone use that has occurred in the last decade. Think about the implications of this enormous demand for coltan. Think about the dollar signs in the eyes of those who rape and murder to smite their enemies. There is no way to know for sure whether or not the circuit board in your electronic gadget has its origin in the Congo. Just like the spinach e-coli outbreak, there is no way to track the complex network of exchange that occurs from economic source to sink.

Your connection to the Congo is an excellent example of how everything is interrelated. These fancy electronics do not appear out of thin air, they are made possible by the exploitation of human beings and the Earth. Complex technology is the material wealth of those at the top of a system of gross inequality. This is the global system of hierarchy, the translocation and concentration of resources from the oppressed to those in power. Peace will never be possible within the framework of the existing power structure.