Cobalt from the Congo: the flaw of e-mobility | Africa | '
Christophe Kabwita strides across the flat-trimmed clay soil of his property. With his wife and eight children, the 59-year-old lives in a simple brick hut. Nobody is rich in Ruashi, the district on the edge of the metropolis Lubumbashi in the south of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The settlement adjoins an open-pit mine, where a treasure is lifted, which is the main target of the world's automotive companies: cobalt, the controversial raw material without which e-mobility is currently not possible.
Normally, Kabwita looks grandfatherly prudent with his white beard. However, when he comes to the responsibility of the automotive industry, he squints his eyes. Groll leans on his voice: "The mining companies they shop for commit serious human rights violations, but carmakers do not care."
Doubtful promise
The sustainable reputation of e-mobility has been damaged since reports of child labor in the mining of cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo became known. But they have nothing to do with that, the automakers mostly assert. After all, they would oblige their suppliers to only shop at industrial mines where large machines are digging for raw materials – and not people.
Activist Christophe Kabwita accuses the operators of the Ruashi mine of human rights violations
In fact, there is no child labor in major mines like Ruashi. However, a visit to Christophe Kabwita's district teaches that people around the industrial mines are not much better off doing so. Pollution is a big problem in Ruashi. Ruthless dismantling practices, which activists sometimes have fatal consequences, are different.
Impact-heavy commodity deal
Kabwita provides for his family with the modest salary he earns in the community center townhouse. He calls himself an activist. In his spare time he documents the grievances around the once neglected state mine in Ruashi, which the South African mining company Metorex took over in 2002 and today operates together with the Chinese company Jinchuan.
Kabwita leaves his property and steps out into narrow streets. "All houses are cracking all around my house," he says. Sometimes it's only fine patterns that can be seen on the walls, sometimes finger-thick gaps. He blames the mine for that. Up to three times a week, the operator would break up new rock layers with such force that the earth would shake. "We are at least 400 meters away from the mine," says Kabwita. "Imagine, as it is with those who are less than 200 meters away, where it collapses."
A child fetching water on the outskirts of Ruashi – the cobalt mine is only a few hundred meters away
The mine is adjacent to the residential area
Only a wild green strip and a ditch separates the housing estate from the cobalt open pit. 4753 tonnes of cobalt were mined here last year. Overall, the Democratic Republic of the Congo raises 58 percent of the world's cobalt production. The raw material is mainly used for lithium-ion batteries, which are currently the most common in e-cars, smartphones or laptops.
Kabwita directs the driver of a motorcycle taxi to the other end of the district. Most of the approximately 230,000 inhabitants live here without running water, beat themselves with odd jobs or are unemployed. Kabwita stops in front of the house of Stéphanie Kayambi, a 47-year-old who lived for a long time in the immediate vicinity of the mine. But since November 14, 2017, she just wanted to leave, she tells today. That day, her child, the eleven-year-old Kathy, was on her way home from school.
Again and again stones fly like bullets from the mine in the direction of the residential buildings
Hit by a stony bullet
A siren sounded, as usual, when blown up. Because rocks can be thrown out of the open pit hundreds of meters, residents are not allowed to be near the mine. When the noise stopped, the girl probably continued on her way home, the mother suspects. But then the siren went off again. "But my daughter did not have the time to move to safety," she says. "At that moment, she was hit by a rock." She died just a few meters from the house.
Kayambi sits upright on a chair in the sparsely furnished living room of the new house, where she lives with her husband and eleven children. No picture of her daughter can be seen. In sober words, she speaks about the disappointed hope for proper compensation and a lawsuit she lost. "Ruashi-Mining has not taken responsibility," she accuses the company.
Stéphanie Kayambi tells how her daughter was killed due to mines
Yes, in the end they gave her some money for the move, she says. However, this was not an admission of guilt, the company had emphasized to her. On request, the operator today says: Kathy had been illegally on the mine site.
At night on the mine site
Kathy had nothing to do with the young men who actually enter the mine site regularly, especially at night. There they dig deep shafts into the earth with a simple tool. The cobalt-beaten cobalt carry them back to the neighborhood and sell it on the black market.
Of the risks in the illegal mining can Remi Tshanda tell, a slender 19-year-old. The tunnels could collapse and bury one, he says. In addition, there are the security forces. "They let dogs on us and shoot us". Friends have already been killed. Christophe Kabwita and other illegal miners from the area also confirm such deaths. The spokeswoman for Ruashi Mining, on the other hand, explains on request that she has never heard shots or seen dogs.
Like many others in Ruashi, Remi has not learned a profession. What else would be left to bring some money home, he asks. "We do not steal," says Remi. "We only take what we are entitled to."
No cobalt is not a solution either
It was this form of illegal small-scale mining that put e-mobility in a bad light several years ago. In total, there are hundreds of thousands who seek their luck on poorly guarded large mines or directly dig holes in their own backyard. In particular, when washing and crushing the stones and children and pregnant women are active. This is what the 2016 Amnesty International report says.
For Remi Tshanda, illegal mining is the only source of revenue
The reference to the supposedly clean industrial mines has since become a popular defense strategy for carmakers. Rarely does it happen that automobile companies pull the rip cord completely. In March, BMW announced that it would completely relinquish Cobalt from Congo from 2020/21. But a sustainable solution is not, says Matthias Buchert, Head of Resources and Mobility at the Ökoinstitut in Freiburg: "If the example makes school and no kilogram of cobalt would be sourced from the Congo – I'm not sure if the supply then would still be guaranteed, "he says.
Only together is change possible
He referred to a study by his institute: If cobalt demand for e-mobility was 20,000 tonnes in 2016, it could increase twentyfold by 2030. A complete embargo would therefore only lead to massive smuggling, fears Buchert. Instead, he calls for the implementation of minimum standards. But: "The largest buyers of the automotive industry would have to join forces as much as possible."
But even if the situation improves in the near future, for many, that would be too late. If you follow a sandy track next to the main gate of the Ruashi mine out of town, you'll find housing estates on the River Lwano. "The river is the source of life," says Kabwita. Today, however, the water is polluted, the fish would die and the harvest in the fields is miserable. Measurements prove poor soil values. The mine operators do not deny that. Only the declaration of pollution mentioned by Kabwita rejects it: that in heavy rain the sewage tanks of the mine would overflow. For the activist, however, it is clear: "Ruashi sows death."
The research was funded and supported by Netzwerk Recherche and the Olin Foundation.
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