Impacted people in the Democratic Republic of Congo / credit: Akilimali Saleh Chomachoma
Editor’s Note: This report was originally published via email by Friends of the Congo.
BUSHUSHU, South Kivu Province, Democratic Republic of Congo—On Thursday, May 4, under the effect of heavy rain, the Nyamukubi and Chishova rivers burst their banks, causing major mudslides and landslides. In the affected areas, the damage is enormous: Entire villages have been devastated by the waters and the assessments are still provisional.
#URGENT: Quand l'inondation de Kalehe est en cours. Plusieurs sources locales à Bisunzu, près de Rubaya indiquent qu'un éboulement de terre a touché cette région ce lundi 08 mai. Le bilan n'est pas encore connu mais c'est près d'une dizaine de creuseurs artisanaux. #RDCpic.twitter.com/tmhdZXQ6bc
— Akilimali Saleh Chomachoma (@akilimalisaleh) May 8, 2023
On Saturday, the territory’s administrator put the number of bodies found at 203. On Sunday, he mentioned at least 394, 120 of whom were found floating on the lake at the level of Idjwi island, the others having been found in Nyamukubi and in the neighbouring village of Bushushu. More than 200 bodies were buried on Saturday, May 6, in Bushushu and Nyamukubi.
At least 400 people are reported dead, according to a local official, and many are missing. The civil society of Kalehe says that nearly 4,500 people are still missing, as the chances of finding survivors are diminishing.
“The situation is bitter! We came to bury our brothers while the state should anticipate things by creating a special commission for the prevention of natural disasters. Whether in Uvira, Kamituga or here in Kalehe, these events are repeated, so a commission is needed,” says Benjamin Kasindi, head of the political party Alliance des Nationalistes pour un Congo Émergent in South Kivu, who traveled to bring aid to the victims.
Teams are still digging for bodies with their hands and some shovels. They wrap the bodies in blankets or sheets before burying them in mass graves. On the shore of the lake float pieces of wood, metal sheets, furniture and other materials carried by the raging rivers. Young people are trying to salvage what they can from the sunken houses: Metal sheets, metal structures, boards, etc. The Red Cross and the government are continuing to register the families who have lost their loved ones, as well as other victims.
Initial assistance in the form of medicines, tarpaulins and food from the provincial government of South Kivu arrived on the spot on the same Saturday. This aid is still insufficient in view of the number of victims, according to the administrator of Kalehe territory, Archimède Karebwa. He continues to call on the central government and other humanitarians to intervene because the situation is so deplorable.
Akilimali Saleh Chomachoma is an independent journalist in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Follow him on Twitter for updates and reports.
Zachariah Mokhothu inside the home he shares with his mother in the South African township of Kutlwanong. In his 15-year mining career, he got injured and developed tuberculosis before his paralysis / credit: Ihsaan Haffejee / New Frame
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by New Frame.
Zachariah Mokhothu, 49, was excited when he got his first job in mining. He is the eldest son and was the only breadwinner. He never imagined that working underground would change his life. As he gets into the car to head home to Kutlwanong township outside Odendaalsrus in the Free State, pieces of his wheelchair keep falling off.
“Is there anyone who used to work in mining who has a scrap of a wheelchair like this?” he asks casually as he sits in the car.
According to Statistics South Africa, the mining industry generated Rand 527.5 billion ($36 billion USD) in sales in 2019, with 16 commodities ranked in the top 10 internationally. South Africa is currently ranked fifth in the world for mining’s contribution to GDP and in the top three globally in terms of production.
While the industry continues to thrive, there are plenty of men like Mokhothu who pay for its success. During his 15-year career in mining, he got injured and contracted tuberculosis (TB) before his paralysis.
Mokhothu says he was pushing a wheelbarrow at work when he realised that his left arm had gone numb and he couldn’t move it. He went to the site manager and asked for his medical aid documents so he could go to the doctor. He was told his documents were missing and that he possibly didn’t sign for medical aid. “It is impossible that I didn’t sign for my medical aid when I know that anything can happen underground. Mining is dangerous,” he says.
Mokhothu’s relationship with his employer, Redpath Mining, deteriorated from the moment he walked to the hospital after being denied a company car to take him. He was alone there and a few days after a stroke had caused the numbness in his arm, the rest of his body followed.
Former mineworker Zachariah Mokhothu / credit: Ihsaan Haffejee / New Frame
Trickery and Denial
His mother Regina Mokhothu says it was difficult when he couldn’t move at all. “We got no support from the mine, not even a check-up. Luckily Zacharia still had medical aid from his former employer, so he went to a couple of physiotherapy sessions before it expired.
“My heart breaks when I see his situation and how the mine has treated him. He was the only breadwinner when he was working. The family didn’t want for anything. I’ve become too old to work. I used to be a domestic worker in the city.”
A Redpath mining representative said Mokhothu wasn’t injured on duty and that he wasn’t an employee yet when he had the stroke. “If he was injured on duty, the process would be to complete forms, send them to [insurance company] Rand Mutual, observe how severe the situation is and pay accordingly. Rand Mutual makes that decision.”
Mokhothu says he was tricked into signing a voluntary termination agreement and that he has a document to this effect. He also has a letter from Rand Mutual notifying him about his payments towards medical aid.
Thabani Tsokodibane, 56, had worked in the mining industry for over 10 years. In 2010, he was diagnosed with drug-resistant tuberculosis / credit: Ihsaan Haffejee / New Frame
Mining Fatalities
More than 11,000 mineworkers died in South Africa between 1984 and 2005, according to the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy. The death toll from mining accidents was about 270 in 2003 and the department, Minerals Council South Africa and other industry stakeholders reached an agreement to reduce mining fatalities by 20 percent a year. There was an improvement from 2010 onwards, but fatalities have increased again in recent years.
Those who survive mining accidents, such as Thabani Tsokodibane, 56, tell of the lack of care and blatant disregard they experience at the hands of managers and employers when they are injured or fall ill. Tsokodibane had been working in the mining industry for more than a decade when he contracted TB at Harmony Gold’s Bambanani mine in Welkom in 2010.
He went to the clinic and was told he had drug-resistant TB. “I took my medicine every day. I was at the clinic daily for almost a year. At work, nobody said much to me or called to check. I thought everything was still in order. But when I went back to work, they said, ‘We have put somebody else in your shift, go home.’”
Disappointed and worried about providing for his wife and seven children, he applied for a job at another mine. But the human resources (HR) department told him in the final stages of the process that the mine could not employ him because his health tests had shown he was not fit to work underground. The TB had affected his lungs, leaving him with chronic breathing problems.
“My body has never been the same. I can build and do plumbing, which I used to do for extra income, but now I work slower because I just get weak,” says Tsokodibane. He says it is more difficult to breathe and he comes down with flu-like symptoms, including coughing every five minutes, that sometimes last for weeks. “I go to the clinic, get cough mixture and that’s all.”
Thabani Tsokodibane worked in a mine in Welkom in South Africa’s Free State / credit: Ihsaan Haffejee / New Frame
‘Some Sort of Justice’
Mokhothu and Tsokodibane hope to receive compensation from their respective former employers through the Tshiamiso Trust. They are hopeful that, after a long wait, they will get some sort of justice for the effects of mining on their bodies and would like more than monetary compensation.
Mokhothu says he is most frustrated with how his employer treated him. “I was tricked. After years, I got a letter from [medical insurance company] Discovery about the payments that were deducted from my salary, which means they hid my medical aid from me. I think it’s because they wanted to deny that I had the stroke at work. Mines are very good at denying responsibility. Even with TB, you will be asked if you have proof that you got it from work.
“I have a diploma in secretarial services from Standford college. I thought I could do admin at the mine and the HR person came and said he can give me light duty, I should just sign. But when I read the document, it was a voluntary termination agreement. I refused to sign and was very angry that they tried to trick me like that.”
Mokhothu wants to run his own business one day. He lives with his mother, apart from his wife and children who live in another township, because the roads in Kutlwanong are easier to navigate in a wheelchair; it doesn’t get stuck in the mud. He takes taxies to the hospital, to collect his grant or to submit documents at the Tshiamiso Trust offices and it is hard.
“I never wanted to be a miner. I wasn’t finding a job with my diploma and the opportunity came up. I regret being part of this industry where people see you get hurt in the line of duty, on their premises, and refuse to take responsibility. It’s as if I put myself in this wheelchair.”
Harmony Gold spokesperson Moeketsi Maloeli said: “All employees have a choice on whether to take medical aid or not. If they happen to fall sick without medical aid, there are health hubs with state-of-the-art equipment, some are even better than government hospitals. A miner can go there until they get well.”
Left to right: French President Emmanuel Macron, U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Background: Sudanese protest in July 2022 / Photo illustration: Toward Freedom
Editor’s Note: This analysis originally appeared in NewsGhana.
Several geopolitical powers are seeking to enhance their influence and cooperation with the continent of Africa.
United States President Joe Biden announced during July that he would host a summit with African leaders at the White House in December. This announcement by Biden comes in the aftermath of several important political developments which have exposed the ineffective foreign policy orientation of the world’s leading capitalist country. Within the United Nations, many African states abstained from two resolutions which condemned the Russian Federation during the early phase of Moscow’s special military operation in neighboring Ukraine.
In addition, most African governments have not made pronouncements in favor of the war program of the U.S. Compounding these complicated relationships is the reliance by several AU states on Russian and Ukrainian agricultural products and inputs. The imposition of unprecedented sanctions by the Biden administration and the European Union (EU) has hampered the flow of goods and services.
The two leading officials of the AU, President Macky Sall of Senegal, who is the chair of the continental organization and Commissioner Chair, Moussa Faki Mahamat, traveled to Sochi in June to hold high-level discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The AU statement issued in the aftermath of the meeting reiterated the position of the organization that the conflict in Ukraine should be resolved diplomatically through negotiations. This is a position at variance with the Biden presidency which has openly declared that the administration wants to remove Putin from power and weaken Russia as a world power.
Also, the talks between Putin and the AU resulted in the reconvening of the Russia-Africa Summit which will meet towards the end of the year in Ethiopia. In fact, during late July, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov embarked upon a tour to several African countries including Egypt, Uganda and Ethiopia.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said in a press conference with Lavrov that the enemies of the U.S. were not the adversaries of his government. He noted that Uganda wants to trade with the U.S., Russia and any other country which respects its independence and sovereignty.
The Russian envoy emphasized that Moscow has always supported Africa in the struggle against colonialism. Museveni exclaimed during the press conference held at Entebbe: “How can we be against somebody who has never harmed us? If Russia makes mistakes, we tell them. When they have not made mistakes, we can’t be against them.”
A report published by the Tass News Agency said of the Kremlin’s chief envoy’s trip to Africa emphasizing: “Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov arrived on Tuesday (July 26) in Ethiopia on a working visit, TASS reports from the site. On Wednesday, Lavrov is expected to hold talks with his Ethiopian counterpart Demeke Mekonnen. The top diplomat visits Ethiopia on the last leg of his tour of Africa. From Ethiopia, he will travel to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s Council of Foreign Ministers.”
Lavrov visited four African states during his tour. These countries were Egypt, Congo-Brazzaville, Uganda and Ethiopia, where the AU headquarters is located in the capital of Addis Ababa. The Russian foreign minister denied the allegations made by the U.S. and the EU that Moscow is responsible for the global food crisis.
According to Ahram online, published in Cairo, Egypt, Lavrov said: “There is a very loud campaign around this, but our African friends understand their root cause. They are not related to what is happening within the special military operation.”
France Attempting to Recover Lost Credibility
French President Emmanuel Macron started an African trip at the same time as Lavrov’s visit across the continent. France has come under fire in recent months for its military presence in several countries including the Central African Republic, Mali and Burkina Faso. The CAR and Malian governments are utilizing Russian military consultants from the Wagner Group, which Moscow has denied is an arm of its foreign policy.
Nonetheless, the burgeoning hostility towards Paris within its former colonies on the continent has proved to be worrisome for the Macron government. French military and diplomatic personnel in Mali were requested to leave the country immediately. France has maintained a military presence in many of its former colonies since the 1960s. These forces have intervened in internal political struggles in a manner which benefits France and not necessarily the African states involved.
Although Macron is obviously seeking to counter the heightened scrutiny being placed on France’s involvement in Africa, it is by no means clear what Paris has to offer countries such as Cameroon, Mali, Guinea-Conakry, the CAR, Ivory Coast, among others. In recent years, France has attempted to bolster its CFA zone domination over currencies in various African states even to the point of proposing a new monetary system which would maintain links to Paris.
Even the U.S. State Department-funded Voice of America (VOA), wrote on the mission of the French president while he visited Cameroon noting that: “Macron said European economic sanctions on Russia, which are having an indirect effect on Africa, are intended to stop Russia’s attack on Ukraine’s sovereignty and not to punish Africans. He said France is interested in the well-being of civilians in both African countries and Ukraine. The visiting French president did not say how much France would invest to boost agricultural production in Africa, but said Cameroon is one of the countries chosen for agricultural investments. The U.N. says that Africa depends on Russia and Ukraine for more than 50 percent of its wheat imports.”
Such an admission by the VOA utilizing United Nations data raises the question of why have African governments turned to Russia to meet their domestic consumption demands? France’s foreign policy orientation has heavily relied on military force to advance its strategic interests in Africa.
Moreover, in recent months since the expulsion of French diplomatic and military personnel from Mali, it has become necessary for Macron to advance a new and ostensibly more “compassionate” approach towards various African states. Such a superficial policy shift conflicts with statements made by Macron leading up to the 60th anniversary of Algerian independence when the French leader suggested that atrocities committed by its colonial officials have been exaggerated by successive administrations in Algiers. France controlled Algeria as a colonial outpost for 132 years. Millions of Algerians lost their lives to French forces through massacres dating back to the 19th century notwithstanding the counter-insurgency operations during the war of independence between 1954-1962, when Paris withdrew its military from the North African state.
Biden Maintains Same Imperialist Policy Towards Africa
Mike Hammer, the U.S. Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa, began a tour to Ethiopia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates on July 24. Supposedly the purpose of Hammer’s trip was to facilitate a settlement surrounding the dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over the status of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) project.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has opposed the GERD saying it will redirect water from the Blue Nile jeopardizing the well-being of its people. The current demarcations for usage from the strategic waterway was instituted by Britain during its colonial domination over Egypt in late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ethiopia maintains that GERD utilizing its full capacity would be beneficial to the entire regions of North and East Africa.
What is significant about the U.S. posture as a mediator in this dispute is that the previous administration of President Donald Trump sided openly with Egypt in 2020, even encouraging Cairo to “blow up” the GERD project. The Biden administration, similarly to Trump’s, has worked to either weaken or overthrow the Ethiopian government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
Biden and many members of the Democratic Party in Congress have imposed a ban on Ethiopia’s participation in the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) program which has been in operation since the concluding days of the administration of former President Bill Clinton. In addition to the purging of Ethiopia from AGOA, the Congress had threatened to pass legislative measures designed to implement even more draconian sanctions on the Horn of Africa state which houses the headquarters of the AU.
As a result of Washington’s posture towards Ethiopia, many women garment workers have had their plants closed due to lack of demand from the U.S. Hammer claims that the Biden administration is concerned about the equitable and efficient distribution of aid to Ethiopia where the government has battled the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in the north of the country. Successive U.S. administrations have supported the TPLF during its period in power from 1991-2018, when their government collapsed as a result of a national uprising in Ethiopia.
These factors must be taken into consideration when evaluating the diplomatic competition taking place between Washington, Paris and Moscow. If recent events are any indication, the African people along with their governments will struggle to make decisions which benefit the continent as opposed to the western imperialist states.
Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire, an international electronic press service designed to foster intelligent discussion on the affairs of African people throughout the continent and the world. The press agency was founded in January of 1998 and has published thousands of articles and dispatches in newspapers, magazines, journals, research reports, blogs and websites throughout the world. The PANW represents the only daily international news source on pan-african and global affairs.
Attendees of the January 28 launch event held at the People’s Forum in New York City for the International People’s Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism: Sanctions, Blockades, and Economic Coercive Measures
If you had missed it, don’t worry.
On January 28, the International People’s Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism: Sanctions, Blockades, and Coercive Economic Measures launched at the People’s Forum in New York City.
In the two-and-a-half months since then, the tribunal has held four virtual hearings across multiple time zones. Each hearing has zoomed in on a country that has faced Western sanctions. Experts provide testimony in a couple of hours’ time. So far, the impact of sanctions has been examined in hearings held on Zimbabwe, Syria, Korea and Libya.
Not only do the hearings intend to expose the effects of U.S. sanctions and blockades on targeted countries. The goal is to create strategies for legal accountability. Hearings will take place until June on a total of 15 countries in the Americas, Africa and Asia.
The tribunal’s website states:
People’s Tribunals capture the ethos of self-determination and internationalism that was expressed through twentieth century anti-colonial struggles and was institutionalized in the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Cuba. They bring together movement lawyers, scholars, and organizers from around the world and are designed by and accountable to the social movements and communities in which they are rooted. Operating outside of the logics and institutions of capitalist and imperialist law, People’s Tribunals make decisions that may not be binding and do not have the force of law, but their achievements in a political and discursive register inspire and provide the tools necessary for present and future organizing. People’s Tribunals allow the oppressed to judge the powerful, defining the content as well as the scope of the procedures, which reverses the norm of the powerful creating and implementing the law.
There is a long tradition of radical organizers and lawyers using the law to put capitalism and imperialism on trial. Organized by the Civil Rights Congress, and supported by the Communist Party as well as a host of Black leftist luminaries, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Claudia Jones, and Paul Robeson, We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief of a Crime of the United States against the Negro People, indicted the political-economic system of capitalism and white supremacy for inflicting numerous forms of structural and physical violence on Black people in the U.S. as well as drawing parallels to U.S. imperialist violence abroad. The Russell Tribunal was set up in 1966 to judge U.S. military intervention and war crimes in Vietnam. The same format reemerged in later Russell Tribunals dealing with the U.S.-backed Brazilian and Argentinian military dictatorships (1964 and 1976, respectively), the U.S.-backed coup in Chile (1973), and the U.S.-European interventions against Iraq (1990, 2003). The 2016 International Tribunal for Democracy in Brazil critically examined the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and the role of the U.S. government. Organized in Brussels by both Philippine and international groups, the 2018 International People’s Tribunal on the Philippines exposed and condemned the multiple forms of state violence visited on the people of the Philippines since Rodrigo Duterte became president in 2016. And finally, the U.S. government was put directly on trial by a pair of innovative People’s Tribunals, including the 2007 International Tribunal on Katrina and Rita and the 2018 International Tribunal on U.S. Colonial Crimes Against Puerto Rico.
Check out the video of the tribunal’s launch.
The launch event featured jurists, scholars and activists, including:
Nina Farnia, Co-chair of the Tribunal Steering Committee & Professor of Law, Albany Law School
Niloufer Bhagwat, Confederation of Lawyers of Asia and the Pacific
Brian Becker, ANSWER Coalition
Mireille Fanon Mendès-France, The Frantz Fanon Foundation
Booker Omole, Communist Party of Kenya
Carlos Ron, Vice Minister of Foreign Relations for North America
Suzanne Adely, President National Lawyers Guild & Tribunal Steering Committee
Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, Former United Nations Independent Expert
Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, Historian & Scholar
Claudia De La Cruz, People’s Forum
Sara Flounders, Sanctions Kill
Helyeh Doutaghi, Co-chair of the Tribunal Steering Committee & Adjunct Professor, Carleton University