Episode 07: Zambia, Part 2/3 - Civic Organizing on the Copper Belt
There’s some audio to go along with this case study! Check out the episode @ our Podcast “Brym Labs” on Apple Music
In this week’s podcast episode, you’ll hear recordings from a few moments during our time at a Town Hall Meeting in Lufwanyama, Zambia focused on mining, natural resources, and extractivism - I would suggest reading our last case study HERE first before listening so you have more context, but here’s a look inside the episode:
01:50 - 17:03: My interview with Martin Bwalya Kampamba, Founder of Future-Preneurs, just before the Town Hall Meeting started. He outlined the history of mining in the Copper Belt, the environmental, social, and human rights challenges mining communities face, and the solution-building strategies of his organization looking to the future.
17:12 – 35:06 A conversation during the Town Hall meeting led by Edmond Kangamungazi from Caritas Zambia, focused on challenging the councilors on their actions since their election 4 years ago and questioning the contrast between Lufwanyama’s natural resources value and the lack of profits coming to the actual town. This section also includes a couple different testimonies from community members sharing their experiences + raising their voice for greater government and mining company accountability.
35:15- 44:28 A final push at the end of the meeting for the community members to continue to push for change, not just rest on the laurels of the new government that preaches environmental and social considerations.
From Left to Right: Thomas, Martin Bwalya, Kampamba, EJ
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Recommended Reading: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Walter Rodney
Organizations Referenced:
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Introduction - Part 2/3 - Copper Belt
When American superstar actress, Mila Kunis, had her first child in 2014, she became the brand ambassador of Gemfields. Brandishing beautiful, bright green emeralds from the Kagem mine in Lufwanyama, Zambia, the world was blinded by the light… but I wonder if anyone thought about the small town where her emeralds actually came from and how they got to Marina B’s 57th Street Flagship Boutique in New York…
The town of Lufwanyama is in the Northwestern part of the Copper Belt region in Zambia and produces the most desired emeralds in the world. And yet, as Edmond Kangamungazi from Caritas Zambia asked the Town Hall meeting on March 25th:
‘Why do we produce the best emeralds in the world but also have one of the highest levels of poverty?’
Let me rewind a bit. On March 24th, my friends Kampamba, EJ and I headed North from Lusaka to Ndola in the Copper Belt Province. We stayed overnight with their grandmother who reminded me of my late grandmas, especially when she asked with a smirk ‘Are you fasting or something?’ when I initially declined breakfast on Friday. After taking her up on her generous offer, we drove to Lufwanyama where Edmond, Kampamba’s old colleague, met us and introduced us to Martin Bwalya Kampamba who runs a local non-profit called Future-Preneurs … the two of them in conjunction with other civil society organizations were organizing together for a Town Hall meeting to discuss mining practices and natural resource strategies in Lufwanyama.
When we set out, we had no idea this meeting was happening. But after introducing ourselves and telling them about Brym, they immediately invited us to join the meeting and ushered us into the City Council building…
The Meeting
Before I knew it, we were seated in a large room with an early morning breeze greeting us through open windows… a projector at one end, the Lufwanyama Deputy Mayor at the other, and a long table in the middle with city council members gathered in suits.
We took our seats on the side of the room with about 25 different community members and ‘civil society representatives’ including Caritas Zambia, Futurepreneurs, Women Alliance of Zambia, and Publish What You Pay. What transpired over the next 4 hours was an incredible display of democracy, civic participation, and hopefully a huge step towards Lufwanyama breaking the cycle of extraction from their community.
For more complete notes on the meeting, an Appendix will be included in a complete wrap up analysis later in April. For now, here were my main takeaways from the meeting:
Extractivism & Imperialism: The large majority of the benefits of the Lufwanyama mines do not go to the local community.
Profits from selling the emeralds are going to foreign owners of mines. Then they are supposed to pay taxes back to the town based on these profits but activists present say they aren’t paying nearly enough. Also noteworthy, about half of the town profit goes to the council members themselves.
Workers for the mines are being bussed in from Kitwe and other towns instead of the workers coming from Lufwanyama itself.
The representatives from the mining companies didn’t even show up to the meeting!!! What does that tell you about the amount they care about the communities where they mine??
The environmental, social and psychological effects of mining in Lufwanyama are serious!
Take a listen to Martin’s testimony during the interview we had together (first 17 minutes of the podcast).
We also experienced this personally as we drove up to Lufwanyama. We stopped in Kabwe, the most polluted town in Zambia, where you can smell the sulfur and lead in the air. Next, we passed through Kitwe, where you can see the fumes rising from Black Mountain - a huge waste field of copper extract - where many kids ‘picking’ copper were buried alive by the landslide captured on video in 2018 (Warning, Explicit content).
There are both pros and cons when a town thinks about opening a mine.
From the outside in, it seems clear that mines shouldn’t exist, but they provide the promise of jobs that community members need to survive. This reminded me of the Coal Mining conversations in the US.
Democracy appears alive and well in Lufwanyama in the 22nd year Zambia has had Multi-Party Democracy since their independence in 1964.
While they might be up against legislative and politico-economic barriers, moments like this seem important to bring community voices to the table in a structured way… I’ll be curious to stay in touch with the local activists to see if anything truly changes or if this was ‘performative participation’ rather than a truly participatory planning process.
A Way Forward - Environmental Impact Research and Community Accountability Training
When community members asked the council what could actually be done to inspire a change in the status quo, the Deputy Mayor asked for further research on the impacts of the mines…
So Martin’s organization has put together an impressive selection of studies that I will outline briefly below – for deeper analysis please see our appendix coming soon.
The First - Attached HERE - a Comprehensive Study on ‘Environmental Remediation and Improvement focusing on the towns of Kabwe, Kitwe, Chingola and Mufulira from 2017-2020’
This study was funded by the World Bank in 2017, providing over $65 Million in funding to conduct the study and support the implementation of programs in response to findings.
The Second, a grant proposal to follow up on the implementation of the previous study for ‘Enhancing Communities Capacity to Demand for Natural Resource Accountability and Environmental Management in the Mining Sector
The assessment of Future-Preneurs is focused on updating the public on the lack of results from the previous study.
Rather than just citing the lack of results, they present a strategy for community organizing to hold their elected officials accountable.
Another Way Forward - Conservation, Regeneration & The Just Transition
On the way home, we decided to stop at Mwakera Forest… EJ went to university at the Forestry School here and was able to show us around. Absolutely gorgeous. Luscious greens, huge old growth trees, flowing rivers carrying fishermen on handmade canoes, kids playing soccer on a grass field, flowers of purple and yellow along meandering paths carved out of overgrown shrubs, a sunset of endless orange and red, a tropical oasis surrounded by towns treating the earth very differently.
I remember thinking: ‘This is what the region would look like without mines…’
And to me, an outsider, it’s so clear! Don’t mine! Look at how much healthier the water, air, and earth will be. But the conversation isn’t that simple…
As Kampamba mentioned during the Town Hall meeting: ‘I think people’s concern is survival.’
This is why the ‘Just Transition’ conversation is so complex - on one hand, people need to survive, and the environment therefore isn’t always top of mind over things like a job and providing food for your family. On the other hand, I remember learning about my family who died in the coal mines of Wales during the Industrial Revolution and think, there has to be a better way to achieve both human and environmental survival at the same time…
There has to be a better way… everyone always says that it’s much harder to come up with solutions… I don’t know if I’m the best person to assert what the ‘better way’ needs to be, but my heart tells me from my experience so far here that it needs to be based on changing our world system away from our current Global Capitalist mentality… when I think about what role Brym can play, maybe it’s building a space to re-imagine our world system and bring together people from all over the world to dream up new ways of organizing together to make sure communities and nature can survive and thrive on Planet A before we plug into the Metaverse or ship off to Mars.
What’s next? Part 3/3 - Lower Zambezi
This weekend, the ‘Stormtroopers’ as we’ve started calling ourselves, will head down to the Lower Zambezi region to see what we can find out about the Kangaluwi Project - The copper mine that just received approval to commence operation in the middle of the Lower Zambezi National Park. I’ve been able to connect with a few different organizations from an NGO Coalition pushing back against the mining activities, including representatives from Conservation Lower Zambezi.
I will use the Social Life of Things Exercise as well to challenge us to think about where our iPhones (and the copper in them) comes from - shout out to my dad, Ken, featured in the Youtube video!
A local Newspaper Article from March 22nd focused on the Kangaluwi Mine in Lower Zambezi National Park.
Excited to continue to share our experiences… the next update will come during the week of April 11! Thanks for following along!
