Black History Month series: Black History, Not White Lies – Congo – by Korrine Sky

 Find Korrine on LinkedIN and Substack.

 


Right now, Congolese children are digging cobalt with their bare hands, so the world can call Teslas and iPhones “clean.”

A Congolese father once sat on a porch staring at his daughter’s severed hand and foot.
She was five.
She was mutilated because her village missed its rubber quota.

That rubber lined bicycles in Paris.
Car tires in London.
Factory belts in America.

Leopold II of Belgium called it civilisation.
It was genocide.

Ten million Congolese lives traded for European modernity.

1960: Patrice Lumumba stood on independence day and refused to play polite.

He told the truth: independence was won... not gifted.

That Congo’s wealth should serve Congolese families.

And for that, Belgium, the CIA, and local collaborators marked him for death.

He was beaten.
Humiliated.
Flown to Katanga.
Shot by a firing squad with Belgian officers watching.
His body dug back up, hacked apart, dissolved in acid.
His teeth stolen as trophies.

That’s what happens when an African leader dares to speak the truth out loud.

Mobutu followed.

Leopard hats.
Swiss bank accounts.
Kleptocracy dressed as “authenticity.”
Billions stolen.
Hospitals empty.
Children hungry.

1998–2007: Africa’s deadliest war since WWII.
Five million dead.
Nine foreign armies fighting on Congolese soil.
Minerals kept leaving.
Corporations kept buying.
Headlines called it “Africa’s world war.”

The truth? It was a resource war.

And today?

Congo supplies 70% of the world’s cobalt... the metal inside Teslas, iPhones, “green” energy.

Children dig with bare hands in toxic pits.
Families are displaced by militias.
Girls are pulled out of school to carry loads of ore.
Boys as young as 7 lowered into tunnels that collapse on their bodies.
Mothers burying sons while companies call it a “supply chain.”

This is not “informal labour.”

It is slavery.

Child slavery... repackaged as development.
The 21st-century version of the same chains.

Boardrooms in Silicon Valley and Shanghai sign ESG reports.

Meanwhile, graves are being filled in silence.
Slavery hasn’t ended in Congo. It has been rebranded for the clean energy transition.

Congo has never lacked resources, courage, or vision.

It has only been denied justice.
— Justice for Leopold’s genocide.
— Justice for Lumumba’s execution.
— Justice for wars engineered to keep it chained.
— Justice for today’s children digging for cobalt instead of holding books.

So let’s stop lying.

Congo is not “unstable.” It has been stabilised for extraction.
Congo is not “chaotic.” It has been ordered for profit.
And the question is not whether Congo is free.
The question is whether we will keep pretending our lives aren’t powered by child slavery.

This is Day 2 of my Black History Month series: Black History, Not White Lies.

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