Simon Marijsse, Robert Carrubba, and Lutula Kaminkya

The intermittent hum of the outboard motor propelling the packed wooden sloop laden with people and products masks the ever-present gurgling of the river. The current has carried the boat with its passengers and packages for 4 hours along a tributary of the Congo River in the eastern Kivu province. Many traveled by moto- or van- taxi and on foot for at least three days from Bukavu, the border town on Lake Kivu between Rwanda and DR Congo, about 200 kilometers as the crow flies. Most are either merchants or miners.

A splash of blue tents appears in the rainforest. Then echoes of voices and machines resonate around a bend. The din increases. A grouping of two 3-by-6-meter pontoons made of wood cut from the rainforest appears. Characteristic blue barrels, once used for water or fuel, have been repurposed to hold air to buoy the pontoons. The pontoons are cabled to dense rainforest trees, moored atop the pull of the slowly eroding river – over alluvial mineral deposits. The churning menace roars.

Kazabula, on travaille avec le temps, Kazabula, we work with time, the director of one pontoon calls to the workers from the sloop. “Kazabula oyée!” the kazabuleurs shout back.

Over 16 million people in over 80 countries are involved in artisanal and small-scale mining. Half consists of gold mining, which comprises about one fifth of the global gold production¹. 70-80 percent takes place without government recognition. Currently, roughly 250.000-350.000 miners work informally in North- and South-Kivu. Although figures on gold production in Eastern DRC are notably unreliable, it is estimated that at least five tons of gold are smuggled out of South-Kivu province every year; the largest share coming from this region². Kazabuleurs arrived in this eastern rural hinterland during the still fledgling aftermath of the Congo Wars (1996–1997 and 1998–2003). In DR Congo, artisanal mining was already present, first illegally alongside colonial mining and surged after independence when president Mobutu liberalized mining and allowed access to the subsoil in 1982.

Not far from here, the Lubimbe River flows into the Lugulu River, both part of the Eastern Congo river basin, which bisects the sedimentary plateau bordering the Kahuzi Biega National Park. The neighboring villages that formed on opposite sides of the river and this improvised mining camp are named after a dangerous and often fatal whirlpool.

Floating on the river, the sandsucking “machine” consists of pumps, air compressors, washing chutes, and its crew. The busy crew members are constituent parts of this mining organism, one that sifts gravel for traces of gold or 3T minerals: tin, tantalum, tungsten. Divers, plongeurs, put on their wetsuits and prepare to descend for their 2 hour shifts. Machinists inspect and maintain the clanging engines and oscillating pumps, adding dabs of grease or oil, and pouring diesel into the fuel tanks. Sluicers and air hose guiders, mwetists, survey the sluice box and control the air hose and communication between pontoon, machinist, and diver. Every function and movement serves the sifting machine.

The machine relies on a system of hoses and fluids, kept alive organically by the kazabuleurs’ know-how; they feed it a continuous supply of diesel, cool it with river water, and suck-up a seemingly endless river bed. Only when the machine breaks down, do the mechanical cacophony and the work pause. The kazabuleurs’ “iron”, “sand suckers”, or “Congolese dredges” have come to rollick, inspire, and vibrate their way in search of a future – away from the city – away from unemployment.

Since the late 1990s, kazabuleurs have been riding the up- and down- stream flow of rivers in the eastern provinces of DR Congo. Kazabula means “navigating a river with an oar” in Kikongo, the language spoken in Congo-Central – about 1,500 kilometers to the west of this camp. In international discourse about the region, their presence is mainly obfuscated by talk of rebel groups, protracted conflict, and an international narrative focused on ‘blood minerals’ and ‘child labor’. How do kazabuleurs iterate their own history and crafts? 

Kazabula, on travaille avec le temps!,  ‘Kazabula, we work with time and we make ‘our’ times work, they say of themselves. But what is ‘time’ to them, what sort of ‘time’ matters? Wearily, they keep their heads (and those of their families) above water in post-colonial times, times of turmoil on turbulent rivers, unstable times with precarious futures.

Researcher Lutula Kaminkya, a former kazabuleur, supplies a précis of their itinerary. He joins us in the rainforest. From this riverine landscape, kazabuleurs retrace their story west from Kongo Central – Kasai, to the Kwango border region of Angola and then upstream to Bandundu and Kisangani, and presently into the east – the region of Kivu.

À suivre

1. Seccatore, Jacopo, Marcello Veiga, Chiara Origliasso, Tatiane Marin, and Giorgio De Tomi. “An estimation of the artisanal small-scale production of gold in the world.” Science of the Total Environment 496 (2014): 662-667. ↩︎
2. Geenen, Sara, and Simon Marijsse. “The Democratic Republic of Congo: From Stones in the River to Diving for Dollars.” Global Gold Production Touching Ground: Expansion, Informalization, and Technological Innovation (2020): 263-281. ↩︎