At the age of 84, sometimes a wave of despondency washes over me. Having spent more years than I can remember fighting against, and shouting about, the insanity and savage brutality of this economic system that controls or lives, a quick glance tells me things are worse than ever. The opulence of the few grows ever greater, the poverty and misery for the many persists and keeps growing.
Take the Democratic Republic of Congo avast country sitting on incalculable wealth but for the people of Congo unimaginable poverty, disease and bloodshed. The reason the people of Congo suffer so much is because of the countries vast wealth, surely a sign of greed and insanity.
Four years ago I wrote a piece on the Congo, then, 2014, the so called First African World War, had been shedding the blood of the poor for 17 years. Today the bloodshed, poverty and death continues.From The Guardian:
The humanitarian situation is dire. More than 13 million Congolese need humanitarian aid, twice as many as last year, and 7.7 million face severe food insecurity, up 30% from a year ago, the United Nations said in March. Many humanitarian officials complain that global attention has been diverted to more heavily reported crises in the Middle East.
More than 4.5 million people are displaced, the highest number in the DRC for more than 20 years, latest figures show. There are outbreaks of cholera. The fighting is, as Kapitu feared, getting worse.
Yes, our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, has a basket of dire world crises from which to cherry-pick.
The article I wrote four years ago, the only change has been an increase in poverty, bloodshed and death, for the ordinary people, and increase in the wealth of the corporations milking the natural resources:
It says a lot about our present economic system when you look around the world and find that countries with the richest natural resources have some of the poorest people on our earth. The Middle East is a wash with oil, which transfers into unbelievable wealth, but you can't say its people are all very rich. This pattern is repeated across the planet, another example is the Democratic Republic of Congo. A vast country, the second largest in Africa, the 11th largest in the world. As well as having coal, oil and diamonds, it is also the richest source of cobalt in the world. That rather dull looking material produces unimaginable wealth for the corporate world, but little for the people of the that country. In fact it is the opposite, this immeasurable wealth is probably the main cause of the suffering of the people.
Because of the economic system that prevails today, blood will be shed to get control of that wealth. Sadly that blood is shed for the end product of things like mobile phones and laptops, and these are products that the vast majority of the people who produce that raw material will never see.
If it was just dreadful working conditions and poor pay, that would be bad enough, but we are talking about millions dying and millions more suffering unimaginable violence. Since its bitter struggle to be free from the Western colonialists, the country has been blighted by violence, and at the root of that, is the fact that it is very rich in raw materials like cobalt.
The Second Congo War, sometimes referred to as the “African World War”, as it involved around twenty armed groups and nine other African countries started in 1998. No doubt all eager to get a slice of that wealth. Although “Peace Accords” were signed in 2003, fighting continued in the east of the country through 2007. In this region the prevalence of all manner of sexual violence and rape is often described as the worst in the world. Since 1998 this conflict has claimed the lives of more than 5.4 million people. Though this was a brutal conflict, more than 90% were not killed in combat, they died from such things as malaria, pneumonia, diarrhoea, and malnutrition, brought about by the usual companions of war, displaced populations ending up living in unsanitary, over crowed conditions, combined with lack of shelter, clean water, food and medical care. What is even more tragic, 47% of those deaths were children under five.
The country also has great agricultural potential but this is being stifled by this conflict, which still continues. It is the struggle to control those vast mineral resources that drives this most brutal and savage conflict. Is your mobile phone worth it?
Surely we have the imagination and the ability to devise a economic system whereby natural resources do not equate with misery, poverty, deprivation and bloodshed for the many, and unbelievable opulence for the few.
