Mine collapse — Over 100 African workers died recently in a horrific artisanal mine collapse at the illicit Zamboye mine. The riverside Zamboye mine borders between western Central African Republic (CAR) and eastern Cameroon.
Red Cross volunteer Gervais Ganagoroh, involved in the relief effort, told AP news agency that more than 100 bodies had been recovered from the mine collapse. City official Bertrand Be Yangue said the toll is expected to rise, with several people still missing or trapped beneath the rubble. He told AP:
Finding them alive would be a miracle … We are saddened and heartbroken to see young men and women perish after coming to the mines to save their families from despair.
Cedric Mbango, one artisanal miner working at the site, described the incident as “catastrophic”. Sadly, such catastrophes are grimly familiar to insecure mine workers and families, many on miserably low wages.
Al Jazeera recalls such horrific events as a repeat occurrence. In this year alone, they report:
In June, a collapse killed dozens of people at the Be-Mbari gold mining site, also on the Cameroon border.
In mid-March, a landslide killed seven people at a mine in the village of Ngourroum, in the west of CAR.
Another 20 were killed in February in Gordi, in the northeast.
Meanwhile in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), some 200 miners were wiped out in a horrifically similar January mine collapse. That disaster occurred in a coltan mine on the Congo-Rwanda border, controlled by rebel group M23. United Nations officials accuse Rwanda’s government of materially backing M23, which aims to overthrow the DRC government, to plunder its neighbouring country.
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Mine collapse — UAE’s bloody sub-imperialism
The reasons to suspect UAE involvement in chains of extraction from Zamboye and similar mines are many. As a key Western client state and political ally in the Arab Gulf, it is effectively a sub-imperialist state.
An investigation into mining in Cameroon earlier this year uncovered over 200 illegal artisanal gold mining companies. Most are foreign-owned, although illegal mine ownership is predictably opaque.
The probe came after vast balance sheets discrepancies were detected. Other countries, especially the United Arab Emirates (UAE), declare much higher import figures than official gold exports suggested. By many accounts, the UAE was importing sometimes 700 times Cameroon’s official export weight.
Circuits of gold and mineral extraction from Africa to the UAE often do not end there. Dubai’s vast gold reserves are collateral for Euro-American governments and corporations. Likewise, weapons flows from Britain or America to the UAE frequently find their way into African militias’ hands. An instructive case of these sub-imperial circuits is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, namely Sudan’s conflict.
Sudanese civil war
In the opening move of Sudan’s 2023 civil war, the UAE commissioned commercial and military cargo planes alike for a 1.5 tonne gold heist. The genocidal Rapid Support Forces (RSF), considered a paramilitary proxy of the MbZ regime, carried out the heist in return for funding and weapons from Dubai. That civil war has now cost upwards of 150,000 Sudanese lives and displaced millions regionally.
The Gulf’s bloody plundering and militia-backing of Africa is not limited to the UAE. In fact, it’s often made more intense and atrocious as a direct result of competition with regional rival Saudi Arabia. Bloody proxy battles between the dominant Gulf regimes span from DRC to Yemen, Sudan to Ethiopia.
Amidst this, notorious war-criminal, UAE-based CIA asset Erik Prince, owner of private militia Blackwater, expanded his involvement alongside the increased DRC-UAE cooperation:
expanded his involvement alongside the increased DRC-UAE cooperation.
As Critical Threats reports, Prince gains lucrative contracts as hired security for mine extraction:
The Congolese finance ministry hired Prince and his firm, Vectus Global, for a five-year, $700 million contract in late 2024 to help crack down on tax evasion in the DRC’s mining sector and provide covert military support to the FARDC. … Prince was also in discussions with the DRC about deploying Salvadoran mercenaries to help secure Tshisekedi’s presidential palace in Kinshasa.
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UAE or China? Imperial blame games
Quarterly journal African Defense Forum (ADF) attempts to shift blame onto “illegal Chinese gold mining.” By way of evidence, it cites Chinese mine owners invited to a ministerial conference about new crackdowns on illegal mining. ADF is funded and published by US Africa Command (AFRICOM) to
provide an international forum for African security professionals.
AFRICOM is the US Department of War’s imperial command centre for the entire African continent. ADF at least acknowledged the gold’s suspected destination, which is the UAE by best guesses.
Similar reporting by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) completely ignored the gold’s destination, instead blaming “Chinese operators.” (Notably, conflict-complicit European diamond mining monopolist De Beers founded the ISS in the 1990s. De Beers is notorious for its global dominion of “blood diamonds.” That same corporation recently reported record losses, owing largely to Chinese lab-grown diamonds. The labs lowered productive costs — and the notorious deadliness — related with artisanal diamond mining.)
Many illicit mining companies in Cameroon are run by Chinese nationals, according to Cameroonian research. However, these demonstrably compromised outlets overlook the fact that most gold is neither headed to China, nor is the mining backed by the Chinese state. It’s a neat sleight of hand.
Their reporting of “Chinese-run sites” or “Chinese operatives” implicitly suggests state involvement. In reality, it’s a case of opportunistic, unscrupulous and likely exploitative private companies. Chinese state mining companies hold many contracts across Africa, but they’re legally above-board. (Even if we find them exploitative or extractive, Jason Hickel outlines how they’re not “colonial,” as some have commented.)
The same cannot be said for the UAE, run by aristocratic sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed. There are no borders between private capital and the autocratic military regime which runs the UAE. Even the level-headed FT flatly labels the UAE’s bloody extractivism across the continent an “imperial push into Africa.”
Featured image via the Canary
