Simon Marijsse, Robert Carrubba, and Lutula Kaminkya

The current has carried the motored dinghy for 4 hours along a tributary of the Congo River in the eastern South Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The journey is arduous and unpredictable, one measured by travelers in days rather than kilometers. To reach the boat, miners and merchants first have ridden moto- or van- taxis and gone on foot for at least three days from Bukavu, the border city on Lake Kivu between Rwanda and DRC. The hum of the outboard motor mixes with the ever-present gurgling of the river. The man next to us balances a sack of something unsteadily on his knee. He does not want to set it down in the open hull of the boat, which reeks of fuel mixed with river and rain water that sloshes around between boxes of freight – machine parts, chickens, bottled water, tinned sardines, toothpaste – and up over people’s feet and ankles.

The boat captain (chauffeur) smokes standing in this slosh at the stern as he operates the outboard motor, while a young navigator (pagayeur), confidently perched at the bow, sends hand signals to the captain over the piles of freight and the heads of passengers, guiding the boat around half-submerged trees and snags in the river. The river cuts a serpentine route through the rainforest and the route of the boat through the river is even more circuitous.

In this forest landscape, tributaries of the Lualaba river, headstream of the Congo River, drain the western Central African Rift slopes. Theoretically one could travel by boat from the edge of the Kahuzi Biega National Park, not so distant from Bukavu, to our present location but the waters and shores are unsafe. The young pagayeur hand-signals. The chauffeur changes course. The outboard hums. Tributaries mix and flow. We glimpse a splash of blue tents doting the rainforest. Hand signal, course change, outboard. Now voices echo and machines resonate around a bend.

We come upon two 3-by-6-meter pontoons moored to dense rainforest trees, floating atop the constant pull of the erosional river. They are made of wood cut from the rainforest and characteristic plastic blue barrels, once used for water or fuel, have been repurposed, to buoy the pontoons. The pontoons have been carefully positioned over alluvial mineral deposits. The gurgle of the churning water mixes with the clanging mechanical cadence on the pontoons. We have arrived to meet kazabuleurs – miners who specialize in extracting whatever is of value from riverbeds.

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 production². 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 region³. 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.

The chauffeur steers cautiously. An often fatal whirlpool gave its name to the neighboring villages that formed on each side of the river, and now also to this improvised mining camp. The director of one pontoon calls to the miners on the boat: Kazabula, on travaille avec le temps, Kazabula, we work with time. “Kazabula oyée!” the kazabuleurs shout back. Kazabuleurs’ work their “iron”, “sand suckers”, or “Congolese dredges” to rollick, inspire, and vibrate their way in search of a future – away from the city – away from unemployment.

Everything about the journey so far, the mining camp, and the pontoons eschews any sense of infrastructural permanence. The kazabuleur crew operate their pontoons with the knowledge that all camps and alluvial mineral deposits are temporaneous. They will work hard and exuberantly until they drop, and eventually when a deposit runs dry – “the money” dries up – they will depart with their pontoon for a more profitable site.

The Pontoons – “iron” and “sand-suckers”

The kazabuleurs’ pontoon – a dredge – a “sand-sucking machine” – consists of pumps, air compressors, washing chutes, and crew. The crew members work the pontoon in unison with the machines to sift gravel for traces of gold or 3T minerals: tin, tantalum, tungsten. The machines power a system of hoses and fluids, kept alive by the kazabuleurs’ know-how. They feed this mining organism a continuous supply of diesel and cool it with buckets of river water to tame it into suctioning-up the seemingly endless supply of river bed. Only when an engine or turbine breaks down, do the mechanical cacophony and the work pause.

Divers, plongeurs, put on their wetsuits and descend. They work the suction ‘beak’ blind in the silt-thick river. Machinists maintain the clanging engines and oscillating pumps. They check for leaks, make adjustments, dab grease or squirt oil onto the ball bearings of rotating parts, pour diesel into the fuel tanks, and water into the coolant tanks of the air pump and turbine engines. 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 on the pontoon serves the motile sifting machine.

Since the late 1990s, kazabuleurs have been riding the flow of rivers in the eastern provinces of DR Congo – at times up- and at times down- stream. Kazabula means “navigating a river with an oar” in Kikongo, the language spoken in Congo Central downstream from this camp, about 1,500 kilometers to the west. In international discourse about the region, the kazabuleurs 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? Energetically and 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. In the articles to follow, from this riverine landscape kazabuleurs retrace their story for us – west from Congo 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.

To be continued..

1. Carrubba, Robert. Photographs and Films. ↩︎
2. 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. ↩︎
3. 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. ↩︎