Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

As previously noted, Cobalt Red is structured as a “journey” through Congolese cobalt country. In Chapters 6 and 7, Kara comes to the end of the road in Kolwezi and neighboring Kamilombe. As in the other cities and mining towns he has visited, Kara interviews miners and their families and observes activity at the mines. In these chapters, Kara focuses particularly on The Exploitation in Artisanal Mines.

Although Kara’s primary organizing principle in the text is the journey, he also uses nonlinear chronologies to connect the beginning of his narration with the end. The Introduction began with a description of a child who had been killed in a mining accident at the Kamilombe mine outside of Kolwezi. In Chapter 7, he interviews a woman named Bisette, whose young son died years before in a mining accident. In the interview, he learns that her nephew had died the day before in a tunnel collapse at the same mine. He ends the chapter with a description of what he observed that day: “Two men lifted a child out of the dirt and laid him gently on the ocher gravel” (239). The dead child Kara describes at the beginning of the Introduction is the same dead child he witnessed at the end of Chapter 7. In this way, the narrative starts and ends at the same place. This structure gives the text a logical cohesion.

As elsewhere in the text, Kara interviews miners and their families to learn about their working conditions. In these chapters, he focuses largely on tunnel collapses and their dangers. These interviews are described in colorful detail to raise awareness and invite pathos for those injured or killed. For instance, Kara describes one of his interview subjects thusly: “Both of [Lucien’s] legs were shattered, feebly held together by metal rods […] Blood pumped in quick pulses through a bulging vein in his forehead” (231). Rather than just providing their name and retelling the details revealed in the interviews, Kara paints a portrait of the interview subjects and their circumstances with an emphasis on the tragic. His descriptions attempt to make his subjects appear more immediate and memorable instead of generic abstractions.

In this section of the text, Kara does his most thorough evaluation and criticism of the policies proposed to improve mining conditions and reduce the use of child labor. Kara observes conditions at two model mining sites, CHEMAF and CDM. He also evaluates the impacts of the creation of a regulated depot to standardize cobalt prices for artisanal miners and a new fence around a Glencore mining site to keep out artisanal miners. In each of these examples, he finds many loopholes that prevent these policies from being effective. For instance, he notes that artisanal miners at the Glencore site simply climb over the barrier fence. He argues that these policies are designed simply to create the appearance of policy change while not actually addressing any of the conditions on the ground.

Some of Kara’s local interview subjects are openly pessimistic about the prospects for meaningful change, making comments such as, “Every day people are dying because of the cobalt. Describing this will not change anything” (164) and demand to know “What good will [describing mining injuries] do?” (231). However, Kara believes that raising awareness about conditions will spur governments and business leaders to act. He reinforces this view with a quote from the Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi that serves as the epigraph for the Epilogue. He then ends the book with an extended and uplifting quote from Patrice Lumumba, “the nation’s greatest freedom fighter” (248), that expresses optimism and hope for Congo’s future. Ending the book on a hopeful note is Kara’s method for tempering the sadness and frustration the facts about the Congolese mines may provoke, suggesting that there is hope for a better future in Congo.