By Robrecht Declercq & Duncan Money

7 January 1968 was a day of celebration across the Congolese Copperbelt, marked with marches and festivities in the mining towns, bonuses for mineworkers and medals for those who had labored many years in the industry. All this marked the one-year anniversary of the foundation of G茅camines, the state-owned company that was established when the Congolese government nationalized the operations of Union Mini猫re du Haut Katanga (UMHK).

Early in 1967, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) had decided to nationalize the largest and most powerful colonial company that still operated on its soil, after a dispute about where the headquarters of the company should reside. But deeper concerns stemmed from the fact that a former colonial business still controlled the most important natural treasures of the newly independent Congo. The Congolese had high hopes that the new company would propel economic growth through significant expansion of production. Ultimately, these hopes met with bitter disappointment.

It was not only Congolese people who entertained such hopes, however. What happened in Congo was part of what we term a post-colonial world of copper (1960-1980) in our edited collection . The book is a history of the global production of copper, its labour relations, technologies and the international political economy across the 19^th and 20^th century. The transition, and ultimately, failure of this unique albeit brief episode of postcolonial control is one of the focuses of the book. We assert that the national fragmentation of copper production in the postcolonial world, was in fact deeply intertwined with transnational influences and exchanges. It expressed an agenda that was shared in the Global South: to straighten out the huge economic imbalances with the Global North.

The nationalization of UMHK was contagious. Zambia nationalized the mines in 1969, Chile did so in 1971 while the military junta of Peru nationalized the mines of Cerro de Pasco in 1973. Within a span of a few years, control over the industry in the world鈥檚 four-largest copper exporters had passed from American and European multinationals to newly-assertive states. The postcolonial world of copper  embodied economic sovereignty, state-led national development schemes and international co-operation. It was pursued by military juntas, dictators and socialist-inspired leaders alike. In all these countries, the red metal symbolized the national treasury, the material of progress. As Zambia鈥檚 President Kenneth Kaunda remarked, Zambians were 鈥渂orn with a copper spoon in our mouths.鈥�

The nationalizations were celebrated in the copper states as a re-birth of the nation, an expression of true 鈥榠ndependence鈥�. After political sovereignty, countries established economic sovereignty. In Chile, stamps, postcards, paintings celebrated the nationalization of the copper seams as a major achievement. Songs were made. One remarkable postcard equaled the control over copper with the coming-of-age of Chile as a modern and developed state, no longer in a state of dependency: 鈥淐hile se pone pantalones largos (鈥�) ahora el cobre es chileno鈥�.  These vivid expressions were no less different than the carefully orchestrated celebrations held in Congo.

This was no less than a revolutionary overhaul of an older world of copper, one we term in our book the 鈥楢merican world of copper鈥� that endured from the late 19^th to the mid-20^th centuries. The international copper industry was not only dominated by American firms (with some notable exceptions) in these years but also by American-born ideas of company structures, technologies and labor practices.

American dominance over the copper industry emerged alongside an enormous increase in demand for copper during the Second Industrial Revolution. Electrification required copper to generate and distribute power, and output rose enormously. World copper production was about 55,000 tons in 1850 and almost 900,000 tons in 1910.

Over the late 19^th century, the American world of copper spawned huge multinational companies that developed a firm grip over new copper mines in Latin America and Central Africa. How these companies operated in different places was remarkably similar: an oppressive paternalistic control that sought control over virtually all the aspects of workers lives and an unhealthy influence of (domestic) politics. Copper companies controlled the entire chain: from mine to consumer was the slogan of the notorious Anaconda copper company that operated in Montana and Chile.

But in the 1960 and 1970s copper states took their place. Importantly, copper states were aware of the fact that domestic control did not suffice. On the initiative of Zambia, copper states established an international cartel in 1967: CIPEC (Conseil intergouvernemental des pays exportateurs de cuivre). The acronym was an obvious reference to the oil cartel OPEC that had upended the global oil industry.

Much like its more famous counterpart, the CIPEC aimed to control the price of copper by coordinating production between the major exporters. This was part of broader efforts by producer nations to contest the structure of the world economy and take advantage that industrialized economies had on raw materials from elsewhere. European economies in particular were heavily dependent on copper imported from CIPEC members.

CIPEC鈥檚 membership soon expanded too. In 1975, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia together with Yugoslavia and even Australia joined CIPEC. The control over commodities like copper seemed to offer a tangible way to actually reform the global economy. Indeed, industries could ill-afford to be cut from metals and energy sources like oil.

CIPEC also showed remarkable continuities. Mining multinationals during the American world of copper had endeavored to control global copper production to support prices and revenues. Yet they had found this an extremely difficult task, an inauspicious legacy for CIPEC.

By the late 1970s, the bid for state-controlled and internationally coordinated growth based on copper tragically failed. Unlike OPEC, CIPEC controlled an insufficient portion of global production and couldn鈥檛 discipline member states to stick to planned production cuts. Moreover, once the world economy went into decline after the Oil Crisis of 1973, international copper prices slid into the abyss, causing massive problems in the copper-producing states.

G茅camines still exists today, but in a very different form. Its demise encapsulated the end of post-colonial world of copper. After two decades of low copper prices, its operations were privatized under a World Bank program in the early 2000s. Congo鈥檚 mines today are owned and operated by large multinational corporations (plus some state-owned Chinese companies).

Born with a Copper Spoon describes this moment of postcolonial world of copper, both its intense feelings of nationalism and the international cooperation it entailed. Ultimately what happened in the copper mines in Africa and Latin America was salient in the important bid of the Global South to straighten out the huge imbalances of the world economy, which culminated in a program of action called the New International Economic Order (NIEO).

The underlying ambitions and ideas of the postcolonial world of copper have far from disappeared. The sovereignty of natural resources has become much more widely accepted. Furthermore, the situation of today demonstrates important parallels with historical periods in the copper industry: an energy transition that will require enormous quantities of copper, wide anticipation of prolonged high copper prices and states around the world taking a greater role in the industry. A new world of copper is in the making?

Robrecht Declercq is a historian, writer, and lecturer at the UCL-Saint Louis de Bruxelles.

听is a freelance historian and consultant and his work focuses on the mining industry.

In the 1960s, newly independent African governments asserted sovereignty over their metal and mineral resources, in a reversal of their prior colonial exploitation by European mining corporations. In this excerpt from his new book , Ben Radley shows how transnational corporations have once again become the dominant force assuming ownership and management of industrial mining projects. Radley argues this latest reversal has taken place through a three-stage process grounded in a misguided reading of African economic stagnation from the mid-1970s onwards. Recent mining code revisions in several countries have been heralded by some as marking a new era of resource nationalism. Yet the new codes remain a far cry from the earlier period of resource sovereignty. The first three chapters of the book can be downloaded for free .

Stage one: Blame the African state

The first wave of political independence in Africa, beginning in the mid-1950s, ushered in a period of resource sovereignty, including the pursuit of African socialism in several countries. This was based on the recognition that during the colonial period, Africa鈥檚 natural resources had been exploited by European mining corporations to the benefit of the colonizing countries. For these resources to serve the interest of African countries, economies, and peoples, it was held that external control and ownership had to be reduced. Buoyed by the long commodity boom of the 1950s, and the spirit of events such as the 1955 Bandung Conference and the 1958 All African People鈥檚 Conference, there was a general commitment by newly independent African governments to wrest the control and management of their natural resource wealth back from the hands of their former colonizers.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the first step was taken under the presidency of Joseph-D茅sir茅 Mobutu with the Bakajika Law of June 1966. This law was an explicit attack on the contentious 1960 Belgian law giving colonial Congolese corporations Belgian nationality just a few weeks before Independence. It required all foreign-based companies whose main activities were in the DRC to establish their headquarters in the DRC by the end of the year.

The government failed to reach an agreement on the nationality of the largest, Belgian-owned colonial mining subsidiary, Union mini猫re de Haut Katanga. So, on 31 December 1966, the Mobutu administration announced its decision to expropriate the firm and transfer its assets to a new company, Soci茅t茅 g茅n茅rale Congolaise des minerais (G茅camines), which was to eventually become 100 per cent state-owned. The policy of increasing state participation in the productive economy continued in other sectors. By 1970, the Congolese public sector controlled 40 per cent of national value added.

Efforts elsewhere were similarly ambitious, such as Kenneth Kaunda鈥檚 Zambian-led initiative of the Intergovernmental Council of Copper Exporting Countries (CIPEC) and Julius Nyerere鈥檚 nationalist ban on extractives, 鈥樷��. Early results were impressive. In the DRC and Zambia, copper production increased steadily between 1960 and 1974鈥攁cross the inaugural years of CIPEC鈥攆rom around 300,000 to 500,000 tonnes and 500,000 to 700,000 tonnes, respectively.

In the DRC, greater sovereign control of value added contributed to a tripling of state revenue from $190 million in 1967 to $630 million in 1970, based in part on a 50 percent profit tax in the mining sector. A national health system numbering 500,000 employees was established, seen as a model for primary health care in the global South. The education system was nationalized, achieving 92 per cent primary school enrolment and increased access to the secondary and tertiary sectors.

The period culminated in May 1974 with the United Nations adoption of a Declaration and Programme of Action on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order. This declaration and programme 鈥樷��. Rather than usher in a new international economic order, however, the period during which this declaration was signed was to prove a stark reminder of the solidity of the old order.

The declaration was inaugurated at a time when the oil price was beginning to rise and demand for African exports beginning to diminish due to recession in the global North, leading to a decrease in commodity prices. In the DRC and Zambia, the copper price crashed from $1.40 per pound in April 1974 to $0.53 per pound in early 1975 and stagnated thereafter. Around the same time, from 1973 to 1977, the cost of oil imports quadrupled. Coupled with rising inflation globally during this period, the effect of these price shifts on government revenue would have been even greater in real terms. In addition, as African government loan repayments became due, interest rates on the loans began to rise as the United States sought to control inflation through monetary policy.

Previously rising mining production levels stagnated or dropped, growth slowed, and debt grew across the continent, reducing the foreign exchange available to purchase the imports needed to further industrialization. Between 1980 and 1988, 25 African countries rescheduled their debts 105 times. In the DRC, copper and cobalt exports decreased sharply, eventually collapsing by the early 1990s.

Of course, external shocks were not the sole cause of the reversal. Internal dynamics had a critical role to play. In the DRC, external shocks unmasked the failures and limitations of Mobutu鈥檚 nation state-building project. Nationalization measures undertaken in 1973 and 1974 to provide an emerging politico-commercial class of senior state bureaucrats with access to productive capital鈥攌nown as Zairianization鈥攚ere poorly planned and implemented and went badly awry. Agriculture had been neglected, receiving less than 1 per cent of state expenditure from 1968 to 1972, and the Congolese manufacturing sector was in decline.

Yet, a consideration of the impact of external shocks, alongside recognition of the progress made by newly independent African governments in the short time frame up until this juncture, was largely missing from influential analyses of the 1980s seeking to understand the causes of African economic stagnation from the mid-1970s onwards.

Instead, misguided African state intervention and government corruption were put forward as primary causal explanations, to the exclusion of other factors. Championed largely by Africanists based in North American universities (such as Robert Bates and Eliot Berg, the latter the author of the World Bank鈥檚 1981 report ), this line of thinking was immediately embraced by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

In the DRC, World Bank reports from the 1980s show how ingrained this view was at the time. In one, the Bank argued that the country鈥檚 economic decline was due to 鈥榓 long series of inadequate economic and financial decisions. Nothing in the past decade has had a more lasting and devastating effect on the economy than the Zairianization and Nationalization measures of 1973 and 1974.鈥�

There is no doubting that the ill-conceived nationalization policies of the 1970s held a share of the responsibility for the DRC鈥檚 economic difficulties during this period. Yet, such factors ought to be weighed in consideration with the impact of external shocks鈥� which began for the DRC with the copper price crash in 1974鈥攁nd the achievements made by the Mobutu administration up until this point. Such a weighting exercise is absent from both reports.

Offering a regional perspective, on the causes of the mid-1970s decline in African economic performance is worth citing at length:

Our intention here is not to rationalize, let alone ignore the infamous mismanagement of economies by African governments. Rather, the point is to emphasize that successful adjustment will be elusive unless Africa始s vulnerability to external factors is recognised. Such a recognition will serve in rethinking the form and content of Africa始s structural transformation. Failure to account for such factors, even as one corrects for internal policy errors, can frustrate attempts at change and condemn them to involuntary reversal.

By downplaying the external and foregrounding the internal, the result is an analysis and diagnosis that lays the blame firmly on the state management and ownership structures underpinning national developmentalist ambitions in the 1960s and early 1970s, to the exclusion of external shocks and trends in the global economy.

With governments across the global South in debt distress, and with little or no access to international capital markets during this period, the IMF and the Bank grew significantly in influence, formulating a neoliberal set of now infamous policies that came to be known as the Washington Consensus. The policy doctrine of privatization, liberalization, and deregulation was implemented across Africa by World Bank and IMF-financed structural adjustment programmes (SAPs). Crucially, most SAPs had a focus on increasing primary commodity exports, but this time around鈥攖o correct for the perceived failures of the recent past鈥攗nder new management.

Stage two: Liberalize and privatize

It was in this neoliberal political and ideological context that, as Hormeku-Ajei and Goetz have summarized, 鈥樷��. Between 1980 and 2021, the Bank provided $1.1 billion in mining sector grants and loans to fifteen of the continent鈥檚 seventeen mineral-rich, low-income countries (LICs) (Table 1).

Table 1 African LIC metal and mineral wealth

Sources: Author classification based on the World Bank鈥檚 fiscal year 2020 country classifications by income level, US Geological Survey country reports, and The Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining Knowledge Sharing Archive.

Prior to the rise of China as an alternative source of resource-linked finance, and with many African countries still unable to access international capital markets, the Bank was able to exert significant influence through these grants and loans to implement its strategic vision for how mining should be organized and managed, as laid out in its 1992 report:

The private sector should take the lead. Private investors should own and operate mines鈥�. Existing state mining companies should be privatized at the earliest opportunity to improve productivity of the operations and to give a clear signal to investors with respect to the government始s intention to follow a private-sector-based strategy.

In the DRC, staff from the Bank worked in close collaboration with a Congolese committee on the drafting of the mining law. Blaming mining-sector decline on poor governance under the Mobutu administration, the eventual 2002 Mining Code moved to privatize state-owned mining enterprises and attract fresh foreign direct investment (FDI) by offering a generously liberal fiscal regime, including tax holidays and exemptions and low royalty rates. This included the eventual privatization of the country鈥檚 two largest SOEs, the copper producer G茅camines and the diamond producer Soci茅t茅 mini猫re de Bakwanga.

Three decades on, the underlying logic of the Bank鈥檚 African mining strategy continues to hold. In 2021, the Bank had ongoing mining reform programmes in the seven mineral-rich, African LICs of Niger ($100 million), Guinea ($65 million), Mozambique ($50 million), Mali ($40 million), Sierra Leone ($20 million), Togo ($15 million), and the Central African Republic ($10 million). Each programme was focused, in whole or in part, on institutional and regulatory change within a general framework giving overall priority to capital-intensive, foreign-owned mining.

With the regulatory framework overhauled, foreign investment was unleashed to seek out fresh opportunities. Mining exploration in Africa increased from 4 per cent of total mineral exploration expenditure worldwide in 1991 to 17.5 per cent in 1998, and overall mining investment in Africa doubled between 1990 and 1997. The start of a commodity supercycle in 1999 gave fresh impetus to this activity. In 2004, the $15 billion invested in mining in Africa represented 15 per cent of the total of mining investment worldwide, up from 5 per cent in the mid-1980s and putting the region third globally, behind Latin America and Oceania. From 2002 to 2012, a period spanning most of the supercycle, mineral exploration spending in Africa rose by more than 700 per cent, reaching $3.1 billion in 2012.

In 2007, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) :

the sweeping changes in African mining policy in the 1980s and 1990s were aimed at attracting FDI and increasing exports, in which they have been successful. Total FDI inflows into African least-developed countries rose fourfold from an annual average of $1.7 billion in the 1990s to $6.8 billion in 2000 to 2005鈥he bulk of which was directed to mineral extractive industries.

In the DRC, FDI inflows focused almost exclusively on mining, increasing by a factor of seventeen between 2002 and 2012, from $188 million to $3.3 billion. Across the same period, FDI stocks rose from $907 million to $22.5 billion or from 10 per cent to 59 per cent of gross domestic product.

Looking at the aggregate level of inward FDI flows to the group of 17 mineral-rich, African LICs from 1970 to 2019 confirms this picture. Total FDI inflows to the group were low and stable during the 1970s and 1980s, at an annual average of just $0.2 billion, increasing only slightly to $0.6 billion in the 1990s. Hereafter, they grew to an annual average of $3.9 billion in the 2000s and $13.9 billion in the 2010s.

At the country level, FDI inflows have grown significantly across all 17 countries from this group, with the sole exception of Eritrea. While countries such as Madagascar, Guinea, Mali, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Togo, and Burkina Faso received the lowest levels of foreign investment across the group, they have nonetheless experienced pronounced increases in these flows since the turn of the century, much of which has been mineral-seeking. And as highlighted earlier, it is in several of these lower-placed countries that, in 2021, the World Bank had active mining sector liberalization and privatization programmes.

The dramatic increase in FDI growth since the 1990s has altered the composition of these economies, which have become increasingly dependent upon FDI as a source of development financing, and this level of dependence is greater today relative to other country groups and regions.

Stage three: Criminalize African miners

One final stage was required before transnational mining corporations could move front and centre. This involved dealing with the on-the-ground reality that, for many incoming transnationals, their prized deposits were already occupied by African miners involved in a wide range of labour-intensive forms of mining. Most commonly associated with gold and diamonds, labour-intensive African mining is also involved in the production of silver, copper, cobalt, tin, tantalum, iron ore, aluminium, tungsten, wolframite, phosphates, precious and semi-precious stones, and rare earth minerals, among others. Globally, labour-intensive mining has been estimated to contribute up to 30 per cent of total cobalt production, 25 per cent for tin, tantalum, and diamonds, 20 per cent for gold, and 80 per cent for sapphires.

Labour-intensive African mining has grown significantly since the 1980s to directly employ millions of workers across the continent, driven by three factors. First, the crisis of African agriculture has led to an increasingly important role for off-farm employment. Second, the decline of state-led national developmentalism and the collapse of welfare provisioning under the weight of structural adjustment during the 1980s exerted significant strain on the productive and reproductive capacity of rural African households. Third, rising commodity prices, especially during the supercycle of 1999鈥�2012, pulled people towards the sector, where there were often higher wages and profits to be made than locally available alternatives.

Despite the sector鈥檚 importance to rural employment, African miners have typically been cast by the World Bank, African governments, and parts of the scholarly literature as 鈥榩rimitive鈥�, 鈥榖asic鈥�, 鈥榠nefficient鈥�, 鈥榬udimentary鈥�, and 鈥榰nproductive鈥� (in contrast to the 鈥榚fficient鈥�, 鈥榤odern鈥�, 鈥榗omplex鈥�,

and 鈥榩roductive鈥� mining corporation). As a result, labour-intensive African mining has been peripheral to mining development strategies on the continent. Criminalized by policy frameworks unless they submit to a set of procedurally complex, bureaucratically burdensome, and financially costly demands to formalize their activities, and cast as illegally encroaching on a concession once it has been assigned to a corporation, African miners have time and time again been forcibly displaced from their sites to make way for the construction of corporate-led industrial mines. Often financed by the incoming corporations themselves, and echoing violent colonial practices of the past, displacement has frequently taken place as government military-led 鈥榮weeps鈥�.

In 2017, 70,000 miners were displaced by Ugandan military and police in Mubende to make way for a Canadian-listed mining corporation. Speaking to local media shortly after the displacement, Edwards Katto, a Director at the Ugandan Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development, :

Those people [Ugandan miners] still joking should style up. Now, I鈥檓 not only a director [in the Ministry] but also a commander of the Minerals Protection Unit of the Uganda Police Force. So, those illegal miners still behaving like those in Mubende [who were evicted], they should pack and vacate the mines, otherwise, my police force will them help to pack.

This statement speaks well to the general regard held for African miners within the process of capital-intensive, foreign-owned mining (re)industrialization. These dynamics recall Marx鈥檚 description of primitive accumulation, or Harvey鈥檚 (2004: 74) reconceptualization of this as a continuous process of accumulation by dispossession, involving 鈥樷��. Forcibly displaced and removed from the best deposits, African miners are restricted to working in less productive areas.

With the African state framed as corrupt and mismanaged, and African miners as inefficient and unproductive criminals, the path was cleared for the en masse arrival of transnational mining corporations, across a far wider group of countries than was the case during the colonial period (when most mineral deposits remained unknown to foreign capital, particularly in West Africa). From Glencore and Pengxin in the DRC and Emirates Global Aluminium in Guineau, to Cluff Minerals and Etruscan Resources in Burkina Faso and Shandong Iron in Sierra Leone, to AngloGold Ashanti and Acacia Mining in Tanzania and Rio Tinto in Madagascar 鈥� the list goes on 鈥� foreign corporations dominate today鈥檚 landscape.

Recent mining code and policy revisions led by African governments such as Tanzania, the DRC, Sierra Leone, and Malawi have begun to push back against this dominance, taking inspiration from the Africa Mining Vision, a framework developed by the African Union in 2009 to deepen the linkages between foreign-owned mining and national economies and strengthen government capacity to negotiate with and leverage developmental benefits from foreign mining corporations.

The mining industry and some scholarship has been quick to herald these revisions as marking a new era of resource nationalism. As proclaimed in 2019, 鈥楾he fight between miners and African governments is just getting started鈥�. Changes to date are yet, however, to provide a fundamental challenge to the dominant model of capital-intensive, foreign-owned mining industrialization on the continent. They remain a far cry from the earlier period of 1960s and 1970s resource sovereignty to which the discourse on resource nationalism alludes.

Ben Radley () is a Lecturer in International Development at the University of Bath. His research interests relate to the political economy of economic transformation in Africa, with a focus on resource-based industrialisation, green transitions, and labour dynamics. He鈥檚 a member of the Editorial Working Group for ROAPE, and an affiliated member of the Centre of Mining Research at the Catholic University of Bukavu, DR Congo.

This excerpt was originally posted on .

It is an uncontroversial observation that the history of capitalist development in South America is characterised by its subsumption to global capital accumulation through the production and export of agricultural and mining commodities for the world market. From this common starting point, however, there emerge divergent ways to account for the reproduction, and development limits, of this mode of insertion into the global economy. For many working in Latin American traditions of political economy it is almost common sense to assume, depending on one鈥檚 political and theoretical tastes, that a combination of centre-periphery power relations such as imperialism, monopoly capital, declining terms of trade and/or super-exploitation are the conceptual tools to understand, analyse, and strategize the overcoming of so-called 鈥榗ommodity dependence鈥� and embark on genuine development. It is noteworthy that in this new book – , edited by Javiera Rojas Cifuentes, Gabriel Rivas Castro, Mauricio Fuentes Salvo, and Juan Kornblihtt, not only are these concepts eschewed but their underlying trade premise 鈥� the transfer of 鈥榮urplus鈥� from periphery to the centre through mechanisms such as 鈥榰nequal exchange鈥� 鈥� is turned on its head. As opposed to structural power relations operating as the barrier to development, this collection opens an internal window onto the impotence of capital to develop the productive forces and, in doing so, offers distinctive strategic implications for the centralised organisation of working-class political action across the region.

The book builds on work that has been developed under the auspices of the in Buenos Aires, following the original contributions of Argentine scholar Juan I帽igo-Carrera to the Marxian critique of political economy. It is I帽igo-Carrera鈥檚 opening chapter that frames the distinguishing features of this Marxian scholarship and the original critique of structuralist and dependency theories of Latin American development. Rather than the pitfalls of international exchange determined by direct power relations between geo-spatial containers, the cause of uneven development in South America is predicated on the valorisation of capital through its position in the international division of labour through production relations. This bears emphasis because, for all the authors, capital is not an asymmetric relation between countries, a factor of production, a social group, or a firm wielding monopoly power but an objectified general social relation of private and independent production (i.e., capitalism), subsumed under the movement of formation of the general rate of profit. Indeed, the antagonistic formation of the general rate profit is the concrete form in which capital organises and reproduces itself as a social relation behind the backs of states, capitalists, labour, and landlords. The crucial category here, and what all the chapters demonstrate, is the extent to which capital valorises in South America, as an aliquot part of the international division of labour of global capitalism, through the appropriation of ground rent.

The specificity of ground rent in South America

The category of 鈥榬ent鈥� has recently gained traction across the social sciences with the emergence of interest in so-called 鈥榬entier capitalism.鈥� However, as can be detected in the enthusiastic outgrowth of this literature, ground rent, and its roots in the Marxian critique of political economy, is still poorly understood and haphazardly applied. Arguably, this is the most important and original contribution of the collection: to centre the quantitative and qualitative modality of ground rent in the Marxian critique of political economy in general and South America in particular. Without claiming to offer a singular characterisation, the collection draws out how ground rent articulates the shared specificity of capital accumulation in six South America countries: Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay. The thread between the chapters can be read along two axes: first, original quantitative estimates of ground rent; second, an identification of the mechanisms through which ground rent is appropriated by social subjects beyond landowners. In what follows, I will proceed by tying these two axes together, pointing readers briefly to the main contributions of each chapter before rounding up with some reflections on how the method and politics of this collective intellectual labour stands apart from the recent revival radical development thinking in Latin America.

Before this, however, when navigating the category of ground rent, readers should keep three principles in mind. First, ground rent is a 鈥渇alse social value鈥� as it encapsulates the payment for the use of a commodity (land) that is not the product of human labour power. Society must pay this false social value because, in mining and agriculture, the market price is regulated by the least favourable conditions that are brought into production to satisfy solvent demand. This gives to a quantitative divergence between the individual magnitude of value of primary commodities produced on non-marginal, i.e., more productive, lands and average regulating prices in the sector. Second, and going against the grain of so-called unequal exchange, the lion鈥檚 share of this 鈥渇alse social value鈥� 鈥� the payment of ground rent in its differential form 鈥� is the transfer of surplus value from the economies that purchase primary commodities to those that produce them. Third, ground rent embodies an insoluble contradiction, because landlords are useless social parasites from the perspective of capital accumulation the state can confiscate a portion of these extraordinary profits and transfer them to other social subjects, but only as long as it does not call into question capitalist social relations rooted in private property.

Along the first axis, all the authors provide original quantitative estimates of the magnitude of ground-rent drawing on the methodology originally formulated by I帽igo Carrera (2007), with each chapter providing methodological appendices detailing the calculations. To oversimplify somewhat, the method derives from the comparison between the rate of profit 鈥� calculated as the relationship between surplus value appropriated and total capital advanced 鈥� in the rent-bearing sector (e.g., agriculture, oil, gas, and mining) with industrial, or economy wide, profit rates. The latter provides the proxy for normal or average profitability within the national space and a higher sectoral rate of profit in the former indicates the existence of surplus profits.

This brings into focus the second axis, the mechanisms through which social subjects other than landlords valorise capital in the domestic market through the appropriation of ground rent. Among these 鈥榦ther鈥� social subjects are industrial capital of domestic and foreign origin who open and close their valorisation cycle in domestic markets and benefit from states policies which capture and transfer ground rent such as: overvalued exchange rates, export and import taxes, and domestic regulation of staple food and raw material prices. The most pervasive, and least confrontational, is the overvaluation of the currency which functions as an indirect 鈥榯ax鈥� on landlords by skimming ground-rent from the export of rent-bearing commodities. While the exploitation of domestic working class forms the quantitative bulk of surplus value appropriated by capital, it is inflows of extraordinary profits paid by capital and workers consuming raw materials in the form of ground rent which is the foundation for the specific qualitative modality taken by the valorisation of capital in South America. An important upshot of this insight is that labour does not need to operate at the world average levels of productivity. The transfer of ground rent from the rent-bearing sector, via state policies, permits the 鈥榥ormal鈥� valorisation of capital at the world average market rate of profit in the otherwise backward spaces of the national economy. As a result, capital does not follow its world historical necessity to develop the forces of production while still valorising at the average rate of profit through the appropriation of ground rent. This is the tragedy of capitalism and development in South America which renders capital impotent, restricting valorisation to the small scale of internal markets and negating the historical potential of the South American working class.

The case studies: agriculture, oil, gas, and mining

Taking aim at ongoing controversies in Agrarian Marxism, chapter 2 by Caligaris, Fitzsimons, Guevara, and Starosta examines the non-resolution of the 鈥榓grarian question.鈥� Using the case of Argentina, the authors unpack how agrarian production in the Argentine Pampas is dominated by 鈥榮mall capitals鈥�, a type of producer internalising the roles of capital, wage-labour, and landowner. The crucial characteristic of 鈥榮mall capitals鈥� is that their reproduction, as a concrete outcome of the unfolding of the 鈥榣aw of value鈥�, does not rely on valorising at the average rate of profit thereby freeing up ground rent as the basis of intersectoral flows of value between agriculture and industry. Between 1993 and 2019 the authors calculate that landowners have appropriated just 30% of the total ground rent and capital, through the type of state policies noted above, has recovered the remaining 70%, permitting domestic capital to valorise at the normal rate of profit without putting into action world average levels of labour productivity. Moreover, because these primary commodities have been exported and consumed overseas, ground rent has constituted the international inflow of social wealth as opposed to its outflow due to the process of equalization of the worldwide rate of profit emphasised in Neo-Marxist dependency traditions.

In chapter 3, Gabriel Rivas Castro and Juan Kornblihtt challenge the common assumption that foreign mining capital has been the principal beneficiary of Chile鈥檚 economic liberalisation and reprimarisation. Given that the violent imposition of neoliberalism is usually taken as evidence of a rupture in the model of capital accumulation, this is an important account showing empirically that what has changed is not Chile鈥檚 national specificity, but the mechanisms of ground rent distribution and appropriation. This is shown to operate in favour of commercial and financial capital in general and the so-called 鈥渆conomic groups鈥� (grupos econ贸micos) in particular. The expansion of imports through economic liberalisation has been sustained by the overvaluation of the exchange rate. This, in turn, has subsidised the apparent rise in real wages which, nevertheless, have fallen in real terms relying on consumer debt and the domestic credit expansion to maintain solvent demand. In a nutshell, what has changed are the mechanisms (debt and currency overvaluation) and recipients (commercial, financial and export orientated capital) of ground rent, not the model itself.

Chapter 4, by Juan Kornblihtt, Mateo Suster y Manuel Casique Herrera offers a detailed quantitative analysis of oil and gas ground rent in Venezuela and Argentina respectively. Not only have both neoclassical and structural approaches tended to underestimate this magnitude, but they also ignore how social subjects other than landowners valorise in the domestic market through the appropriation of ground rent. This chapter brings into focus the crucial role of the state as the mediator of ground rent appropriation by capital in general, operating through its direct ownership of land or through policies such as export taxes, the regulation of prices in the internal market and currency overvaluation. The latter is significant in both countries, especially so in Venezuela where overvaluation and exchange controls mean that the state oil company PDVSA is obliged to sell foreign exchange earned in global markets below the international value of the US dollar, thus losing a fraction of the export price. Curiously, the authors show how the rate of profit of US foreign capital invested in both countries has tended to be above world averages even though the productivity of labour has been significantly lower. The explanation for this chasm, between profit rates and labour productivity, resides in the fact that US capital valorises through the appropriation of ground rent in both countries. Read against 鈥楧utch disease鈥� arguments, this materialist reading of currency overvaluation is the real 鈥榗urse鈥� of natural resources where the valorisation of capital through the appropriation of ground rent systematically produces portion of the population surplus to the requirements of capital.

In chapter 5, Grinberg presents a quantitative analysis of the valorisation of capital in Brazil between 1950 and 2010 where agrarian and mining rents have been substantial. Offering further clarification vis-脿-vis mainstream approaches which seek to measure intersectoral 鈥榠ncome-flow鈥�, Grinberg shows that the task is to measure the effect of state policies on the appropriation by different social subjects of one specific form of social wealth: the extraordinary profits available in the primary sector due to landowners鈥� monopoly over non-reproducible means of production. Grinberg shows how policies usually associated with import-substitution industrialisation (ISI) 鈥� the overvaluation of the national currency, taxes on primary-commodity exports and state control over their domestic and international trade 鈥� have shaped the recovery of a portion of ground-rent during its 鈥榙evelopmentalist鈥� and 鈥榥eoliberal鈥� stages. Indeed, focusing on the quantitative estimation of currency overvaluation, ground rent appropriated by capital in Brazil averaged 12% of total surpluses between 1953 and 2008.

Chapter 6 by Benelli studies the case of Uruguay between 1955 and 2019, showing again how the overvaluation of the currency is a central mechanism through which surplus value in the form of agrarian ground rent, though with up and downs, is appropriated across the economy. Crucially, this compensates capital with low productivity of labour, permitting the cheaper import of foreign technology and the remittance of profits abroad and, overall, negating the planned used of extraordinary profits to develop the forces of production. This should provide pause for thought, Benelli argues, for those accounts still holding to unequal exchange theories of development given that primary commodity specialisation drives inflows of surplus value in the form of ground rent as the very basis of Uruguay鈥檚 rentier characteristics.

Finally, in chapter 7, Mussi and Villar study the intensification of social conflict over the appropriation of agrarian ground rent in Paraguay between 2002 and 2017. The authors show how high prices during the commodity boom increased the rate of profit and ground rent for agrarian producers specialised in monoculture for export. With the largest rural population in South America, this chapter highlights an agrarian bifurcation between a majority rural surplus population with small and labour-intensive farms (20 ha) 鈥� a type of 鈥榮mall capital鈥�, also noted by Caligaris et al, personifying land, labour, geared towards the internal market and self-consumption 鈥� and capital in the production of capital-intensive agro export commodities on large scale farms (100 ha). As the principal appropriators of ground-rent, the latter have increasingly displaced the former by taking advantage of the precarious land titling structure that characterizes Paraguayan rural space.

Working class action: beyond unequal exchange and extractivism

Taken together, the chapters show why the limited development potentialities of these national territories is rooted in the global inflow of extraordinarily large masses of social wealth in the form of differential ground rent. This explains why capital has not had to reckon with landed property (as happened in South Korea, for example) as a barrier for its accumulation. Instead, capital has been able to valorise at the average world market rate of profit by appropriating a portion of ground rent and leaving another portion that reproduces the landlords as a class. So, far from simply being a source of cheap raw materials extracted by global capital 鈥� where the numerous accounts of neo-extractivism start and finish 鈥� these national spaces are determined as sources of ground rent recovery by global industrial capital. Especially when fragments of global industrial capital locate a portion of manufacturing in the domestic market for the valorisation of technologically obsolete capital in world market terms. The extent to which various centre-periphery frameworks have incorporated ground rent in their analysis, as many of the authors show, has been limited in methodological and theoretical terms. Subsumed under nebulous concepts like 鈥榰nequal exchange鈥� or more recently 鈥榚xtractivism鈥�, ground rent is rendered indistinguishable from other forms of 鈥榚conomic rent鈥� extraction through finance, digital platforms, institutional organisation, and the like.

From the perspective of the arguments reviewed here, understanding the limits to development as principally the outcome of unequal power relations between nations and firms is politically and intellectually untenable to inform working class organisation and action. With the return of as a strategic horizon for the contemporary left, these political conclusions may read as counterintuitive, if not outright scandalous 鈥� especially for those who maintain that combatting super-exploitation is imperative for national liberation and anti-imperialist strategies. To avoid confusion, the point is not that economic domination as a set of empirically observable power relations does not exist 鈥� as any will attest 鈥� but that these observations can only remain at the level of surface appearance if the problem of development is extrapolated into the realm of political theory. This can be detected in the current revival of national liberation for autonomous development through appeals to the politics of as the revolutionary basis of leftist projects.

This critical and practical unfolding of the general determinations of capital is based on a commitment to the Marxian critique of political economy. To be clear, this has nothing to do with what Marx did or did not say in Capital but is a political and intellectual project to reproduce the concrete by means of thought from the vantage point of the valorisation of capital in South America. Unequivocally, this requires understanding the accumulation and appropriation of ground rent as the concrete form which reproduces the South American working class.  In other words, this is about method and the necessary relation of theory and practice. Far from a dry mathematical treatise common in the positivist canon of Marxian economics concerned with magnitudes of value, this is a unique dialectical approach which squares the circle between qualitative social form analysis and rigorous quantitative analyses of the formation of the general rate of profit. Indeed, this is a methodologically minded text designed to inform conscious international political action of the working class beyond the confines of leftist national projects restricted to the small scale of domestic markets.

In this sense, it was a shame that the authors did not provide a conclusion to the text drawing the political threads together across the case studies. The collection鈥檚 political message is that revolutionary working-class action carries the necessity to 鈥渓iquidate the material basis of capitalist鈥檚 and landlords鈥� political rights鈥� beyond fragmented national spaces (Cifuentes et al 2023: 19). Yet the overcoming methodological nationalism, as well as capital鈥檚 impotence, will surely require a more fleshed out theory of political action geared towards the regional centralization of capital. While each chapter offers future avenues for research, we are left with no further indication of how to think across the individual cases politically. In this sense, a fuller conclusion would have made the edition more than a collection of essays, perhaps linking up with themes such as the unfolding of the ecological crisis, new 鈥榞reen鈥� industrial strategies, and the seeming terminal moments of neoliberalism, all of which point towards national forms of political and economic retrenchment.

References

Cifuentes, Javiera Rojas, Gabriel Rivas Castro, Mauricio Fuentes Salvo, and Juan Kornblihtt (Eds.) 2023, La Cuantificaci贸n del Desarrollo Hist贸rico de la Valorizaci贸n del Capital en Am茅rica del Sur. Estudios de largo plazo sobre la tasa de ganancia y la renta de la tierra: metodolog铆a y resultados. Santiago de Chile: Ariadna Ediciones, CRANN Editores ISBN: 978-956-6095 -67-5

I帽igo Carrera, J. 2007. La formaci贸n econ贸mica De La Sociedad Argentina, Volumen I, Renta Agraria, Ganancia Industrial Y Deuda Externa 1882鈥�2004. Buenos Aires: Imago Mundi

This post is a review essay of: Javiera Rojas Cifuentes, Gabriel Rivas Castro, Mauricio Fuentes Salvo, and Juan Kornblihtt (Eds.) 2023, Quantifying the Historical Development of the Valorization of Capital in South America: Methodology and Results of Long-Range Studies on the Rate of Profit and Ground Rent [La Cuantificaci贸n del Desarrollo Hist贸rico de la Valorizaci贸n del Capital en Am茅rica del Sur. Estudios de largo plazo sobre la tasa de ganancia y la renta de la tierra: metodolog铆a y resultados]Santiago de Chile: Ariadna Ediciones, CRANN Editores ISBN: 978-956-6095 -67-5

Thomas F. Purcell is Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy at the Department of European & International Studies, Kings College London.听He tweets at .

Photo: Book cover of听

In the first quarter of 2021, amidst the social and economic devastation wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic, the , and subsequently defended, its decision to refrain from increasing the country鈥檚 extensive social grant payments鈥攚hich now reach 18 million impoverished citizens鈥攂eyond the growth in inflation. Treasury officials have argued that a larger increase in social welfare protection is simply not currently feasible given the country鈥檚 rapidly rising public debt鈥攚hich has now breached 80% of the debt/GDP ratio鈥攁nd investor demands for fiscal consolidation. This type of fiscal restraint is unfolding in a context of heightened wealth inequality and an official unemployment rate now above 30%.

Those familiar with the financialization scholarship pertaining to developing countries鈥攖hat strand which portrays the global financial markets as a force that can alter committed policy trajectories on a whim ( 2004), as well as the more nuanced literature ( 2000; 2017; 2014; 2017)鈥攎ay recognize the Treasury鈥檚 framing of South Africa鈥檚 fiscal dilemma. However, as much of the international development literature on industrial upgrading and state policy has noted ( 2018; 2019; 2006), there is a third option available to policy-makers in developing countries beyond the binary of debt build-up vs. austerity; namely, comprehensive, employment generating state-led development.

This is precisely the case I make in my new book, published by Palgrave (2021), . In addition to documenting the onset of a financialized accumulation regime in post-apartheid South Africa since the democratic transition and the ANC鈥檚 adoption of economic liberalization, the monograph also highlights the missed opportunities that could have allowed the country to embark on a self-sustaining path of industrial up-grading, inclusive development, and internal revenue generation. Such missed opportunities include the early rejection by party leaders of the heterodox 鈥淢acro-Economic Research Group鈥� (MERG) policy cluster, the removal of the trade unions from broader macro-policy-making processes, the rejection of a modest reconstruction and wealth tax, and the abandonment of much of the 鈥淩econstruction and Development Program鈥� (RDP) platform in favor of the orthodox 鈥淕rowth, Employment, and Redistribution鈥� (GEAR) package in 1996. Had some of these missed opportunities been pursued, South African state officials would likely be in a much better position to currently adopt expansionary fiscal policies, and perhaps could have lifted their citizens out of poverty via inclusive development instead of cash-transfers.

Yet, as my monograph further documents, since the democratic transition Treasury officials have continued, despite recommendations from other government ministries such as the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), to veto or oppose heterodox policy proposals that could potentially offer South Africa a path away from the current neoliberal quagmire. Such proposed polices include capital controls, export taxes on raw materials, the utilization of foreign exchange reserves to capitalize State-Owned-Enterprises (SOEs), and targeting specific industrial sectors for subsidies and state promotion.

It will of course be argued by some that modern processes of financial globalization have made it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for currently developing nations to replicate the successes of the Newly Industrialized Countries (NIC) in East Asia. However, as several chapters of my book argue, financialization is not a totalizing force that fully constrains state actors; it also creates opportunities, and the manner in which global finance shapes a national economy will in part be determined by the structure and strength of specific domestic institutions. Indeed, as Chapter 2 of the book carefully documents, neoliberalism and financialization in the post-apartheid period unfolded, and gained momentum, in a political environment in which the Treasury was centralizing its control over macro-economic policy-making in the context of a fragmented bureaucratic landscape. As a result, key progressive actors, such as the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP), were excluded from the state channels of policy formulation. Thus, not only has the implementation of economic policies become insulated from democratic pressure, but the post-apartheid bureaucracy has been deprived of the type of centralized economic planning unit that was responsible for much of the regulation and successes of the traditional developmental states. Moreover, this institutional design, which upholds Treasury dominance, exists despite the fact that pockets of technocratic expertise exist in several South African government departments, and could be tapped into for purposes of industrial upgrading if the political will existed.

It is important to stress, however, that the argument here is not that developing countries can simply pull themselves out of poverty and wealth inequality through technocratic problem solving from above. A key theme running throughout the book is that class power and political coalitions are crucial factors that drive the developmental process. State-led development policy would have to contend with the opposition to heterodox programmes from associations such as the Chamber of Mines and Business Leadership South Africa, both of which represent transnational corporate interests, as well the 鈥楳inerals-Energy Complex鈥� ( 1996), and have lobbied vigorously against state interventionism. The 鈥楳inerals Energy Complex鈥� (MEC), which consists of both a set of sectors linked to the mining industry as well as a system of accumulation, would serve as a particularly stubborn obstacle to state-led industrial upgrading. Historically, the MEC has structured the dynamic and pace of industrialization in South Africa, with the large mining firms often directing investment into sectors closely linked to beneficiation, while avoiding the large-scale development and advancement of strategic down-stream manufacturing industries.    

The task of state-directed inclusive development may therefore seem daunting; however, as Chapter 3 fleshes out, grassroots resistance and class struggle outside of the official channels鈥斺�榳ildcat鈥� strikes being one example鈥攈ave begun to slowly lay bare the vulnerability of the governing party and the neoliberal regime. It is thus possible that continued struggle from below will generate a new set of economic and political incentives that compel political elites to begin the process of initiating a new developmental model based on employment generating growth. The alternative鈥攔ising wealth inequality and a public debt fueled by foreign capital inflows in the context of self-imposed austerity鈥攊s unlikely to be sustainable for much longer.

Shaukat Ansari听received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Toronto, Canada.听听听听

By Ben Radley and Sara Geenen

Over the last few decades, African governments have liberalised and privatised their mining industries, attracting significant foreign direct investment. Transnational corporations (TNCs) have become the dominant forces. Their en masse arrival across the continent has been accompanied by the displacement and marginalisation of artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM). This has been a political process not just to create value, but to transfer value to foreign firms. In this same process, particular production modes are devalued. According to Jennifer Bair and Marion Werner (2011), this is a deliberate process linked to 鈥榚veryday practices and struggles over value鈥�, whereby certain forms and logics of value creation are prioritised and asserted over others.

Yet a consideration or even acknowledgement of these everyday practices and struggles is generally absent from the Global Value Chain (GVC) analysis which dominates the African mining literature (especially the more influential  and ). This literature is mainly preoccupied with how African firms can integrate into and 鈥榰pgrade鈥� within TNC-led industrial mining GVCs. It remains largely blind to a consideration of how and from whom value is transferred when recently established TNC-led mines interact with pre-existing and more locally-anchored ASM economies.

Locally driven mechanisation and capital accumulation in the Congo (Sara Geenen).

In our  in ROAPE鈥檚 journal looking at the case of South Kivu Province in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), we redress this imbalance by documenting precisely these 鈥榚veryday practices and struggles over value鈥�. We demonstrate how a coalition between foreign corporate capital and the Congolese state has marginalised and held back locally-led processes of technological assimilation, capital formation and mechanisation in ASM. By so doing, we direct attention towards the developmental potential of domestically embedded networks of African mining production, and how these networks are disrupted by incoming TNCs.

Capital Formation and Mechanisation in Congolese ASM

From at least as early as the 1950s, ASM miners in this region started to operate alongside industrial mining companies 鈥� sometimes literally in the same tunnels. They linked up with master traders based in neighbouring Burundi and Uganda. The Belgian-owned company mining gold and tin in the region (MGL, followed by SOMINKI) initially reacted with fierce repression. But it soon had to ease off as it began to suffer problems of its own, created by the tin price crash of 1985, eventually leading to SOMINKI鈥檚 liquidation in 1997. With the withdrawal of foreign-led industrial mining and the retreat of the Congolese state during the Congo Wars (1996 to 2002), ASM began to operate with more autonomy.

Today, ASM is the most important livelihood activity, after agriculture. Hundreds of thousands of South Kivutians work in the sector, mostly in gold. According to G. Kamundala, S. Marysse and F.M. Iragi  (2015), the province produces . In 2020, this equated to a market value of around US$265 million. But almost all of it is produced informally and smuggled out of the country.

Of this end value, Congolese workers, managers and traders capture around ninety to ninety-five per cent (so, around US$240 to US$250 million based on last year鈥檚 annual value). From this high level of domestic value capture, successful shaft managers and traders can generate relatively significant profits, up to a few thousand dollars per month for managers and several thousand dollars per month for traders. Both we and other researchers (see Ambroise Bulambo, 2002) have observed investments from these profits in agriculture, livestock, real estate, commerce and transport, as well as to bring consumer goods, construction material and food produce into the country.

A significant share of profits is also reinvested in production, which in turn has stimulated a locally-led process of increasing sectoral productivity via technological assimilation, capital formation and mechanisation. Around 2010, shaft managers noticed a decrease in the quality of the extracted ore in the large gold mining town of Kamituga. In response, they introduced ball mills, cement mixer-sized machinery to grind large rocks into fine powder. Initially imported from Tanzania and eventually manufactured in local workshops, the mills allowed mine sites that had previously been exhausted by artisanal techniques to once again became productive. By the end of 2012, around 70 ball mills were in use. Shaft managers also started constructing their own pylons to connect sites to the local electricity grid, operated by a nearby hydroelectric power station.

Through the increased use of machinery, then, Congolese managers and traders in Kamituga were driving a domestically-managed process of capital accumulation towards a semi-mechanised mode of production, with origins in extractive techniques previously adopted by Congolese at other sites in South Kivu and the wider region. Their major problem, however, was that they were doing so in a site of strategic importance to the recently arrived Canadian mining corporation, Banro.

Corporate-State Suppression

Since the 2000s, Banro had held 12 exploitation permits covering nearly 3,000 square kilometres across South Kivu, including one at Kamituga. This rendered any ASM extraction inside this or any of the other permits illegal. Banro had, nonetheless, initially tolerated the presence of ASM on its Kamituga concession, while it focused first on moving towards commercial production in other areas. Yet by depleting the value of the corporation鈥檚 Kamituga deposit far more rapidly than had been the case under purely artisanal techniques, ASM mechanisation posed a greater threat. As the Public Relations Manager of Banro鈥檚 Congolese subsidiary Kamituga Mining succinctly noted: 鈥榃e continue to tolerate the presence of [artisanal] miners up to now, but under the condition that they remain in artisanal mining only鈥� (cited in Janvier Buraye, Nik Stoop and Marijke Verpoorten 2017).

In January 2012, the state mining administration attempted to formally ban the use of ball mills due to their illegal encroachment onto Banro鈥檚 concession. This had little effect, so in early 2013 Banro opened legal proceedings against the mill owners. In September 2013, after the mill owners had refused to move the mills, around 30 of them were appropriated by state agents with the support of local military and police. According to one of the local police involved in the operation, 鈥榩olice officers and soldiers were instructed to clear all the mills at Mobale. This was difficult for us, but we had to follow orders.鈥�

Locally driven mechanisation and capital accumulation in the Congo (Sara Geenen).

By 2017, while mills were no longer present at the main Mobale deposit, they continued to operate at Calvaire, a site of less strategic value to Banro. Yet no judgement had been passed on the court case opened by Banro against the mill owners. The president of a miners鈥� association in Kamituga reflected that 鈥楽ince 2012, artisanal miners have been leading a life of uncertainty. They continue in their work, not knowing what day their enemy will surprise them, inciting local authorities, police and military to appropriate their machinery鈥�. This testimony proved somewhat prescient, as in April 2018 the General Prosecutor informed the state mining police in Kamituga that the case against mill owners at Calvaire was still open, and that a visit would soon be undertaken 鈥榯o proceed to the suspension of all related [ball mill] activity鈥�.

However, this foreseen court visit has yet to take place, possibly as both Banro and the Congolese state have been distracted in recent years by their own problems. In 2019, one year after Banro emerged from Canadian government creditor protection, the corporation split its assets with the Chinese investment fund Baiyin International Investment and its CEO wrote to the Congolese Ministry of Labour requesting the suspension of all worker contracts for reasons of force majeure (circumstances beyond the control of the company). Meanwhile, that same year, F茅lix Tshisekedi was appointed as the new President of the DRC, and Theo Ngwabidje Kasi was appointed as the new Governor of South Kivu.

Banro鈥檚 ongoing difficulties and the new political climate open some space for a shift in the balance of power away from foreign corporations and towards more domestically anchored ASM operators in the region. Yet this space will not be granted without struggle, as our research demonstrates the historical continuity of corporate-state ASM suppression in South Kivu across different political regimes, from the 1970s through to the 2010s.

Conclusion

The World Bank remains wedded to promoting the potential benefits of TNC-led industrial mining across Africa. Yet African governments are beginning to depart from this prescription, taking a more confrontational stance in their dealings with foreign mining corporations. Based on the findings presented in , it is to be hoped that this shift might represent an ideological break with the past, and that future GVC-inspired scholarship on African mining and other industries expands its analytical framework to consider forms of value and accumulation that lie in networks outside of the currently dominant but all too often disarticulated and disruptive TNC-led incarnations.

References

Bair, J., and M. Werner. 2011. 鈥淐ommodity Chains and the Uneven Geographies of Global Capitalism: A Disarticulations Perspective.鈥� Environment and Planning 43: 988-997.

Bulambo, A. 2002. Capitalisme minier et droits de l鈥檋omme en RD Congo: la croisade des Nindja contre la Soci茅t茅 Mini猫re et Industrielle du Kivu. Huy: Les 茅ditions du trottoir.

Buraye, J. K., N. Stoop., and M. Verpoorten. 2017. 鈥淒efusing the Social Minefield of Gold Sites in Kamituga, South Kivu: From Legal Pluralism to the Re-making of Institutions?鈥� Resources Policy 53: 356-368.

Kamundala, G., S. Marysse., and F. M. Iragi. 2015. 鈥淰iabilit茅 茅conomique de l鈥檈xploitation artisanale de l鈥檕r au Sud-Kivu face 脿 la comp茅tition des entreprises mini猫res internationales.鈥� In Conjonctures Congolaises 2014. Politiques, territoires et ressources naturelles : changements et continuit茅s, edited by S. Marysse and J. O. Tshonda, 167-195. Paris: L鈥橦armattan.

Ben Radley听is a political economist and lecturer in International Development for the Department of Social and Policy Sciences at the University of Bath. His research centres on the role, influence and developmental impact of Northern transnational corporations operating in the extractive and renewable energy industries, with a regional focus on Central Africa.

 is assistant professor at the  (IOB), University of Antwerp, Belgium. She is project leader of the Centre d鈥橢xpertise en Gestion Mini猫re () at the Universit茅 Catholique de Bukavu, DRC. Her research interests lie in the global and local development dimensions of extractivist projects, addressing questions about more socially responsible and inclusive forms of globalization.

This article was first published on the .

Headline image: Mining in Kailo, Democratic Republic of the Congo. By .