Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

by Siddharth Kara

“The Chinese companies bring their workers from China because they do not trust African people,” Gilbert explained. “They think we will cheat them, yet they are in our country making money for themselves.” I asked why Congolese construction companies weren’t doing the road work instead of the Chinese. “Chinese companies make a bid lower than anyone else to get the contract. They will pay their workers small wages to complete the project. The Chinese have no constraints on human rights, so other companies cannot compete with them.”

“Now you understand how people like us work?” “I believe so.” “Tell me.” “You work in horrible conditions and—” “No! We work in our graves.”

This was the final truth of cobalt mining in the Congo: the life of a child buried alive while digging for cobalt counted for nothing. All the dead here counted for nothing. The loot is all.

It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there’ll be any fruit. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result. —Mahatma Gandhi

How can a sustainable future be built through sacrificing the very bearers of that future, through depriving children’s well-being, and worse even, through depriving children the right to be?

We would not accept blanket press statements about how those children were being treated without independently verifying it, so why don’t we do it in the Congo? We would not treat our hometowns like toxic dumping grounds, so why do we allow it in the Congo?

The dead here still don’t count.