WEBVTT - From the Archives: Nicolas Niarchos Exposes the Cobalt Gold Rush 0:00:02.200 --> 0:00:05.080 I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the 0:00:05.120 --> 0:00:09.360 Thing from iHeart Radio. There's been a lot of talk 0:00:09.600 --> 0:00:12.920 about who should replace Daniel Craig now that he is 0:00:13.000 --> 0:00:16.480 retiring as James Bond, and I think I have found 0:00:16.600 --> 0:00:22.599 the perfect person. He's handsome, charming, brilliant and multilingual. His 0:00:22.720 --> 0:00:25.759 name is Nicholas Niarkos and if only he could put 0:00:25.760 --> 0:00:29.960 down his computer long enough to play the part. Nearkos 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:34.200 is a journalist. His choice of unglamorous and at times 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:37.600 dangerous profession is all the more surprising when you learn 0:00:37.640 --> 0:00:42.680 about his background. His grandfather, Stavros Niarkos, founded the international 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:47.400 shipping company Nearkos Limited. I first came across Nearkos in 0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:51.920 the New Yorker magazine. His recent piece Buried Dreams covers 0:00:51.960 --> 0:00:56.240 the exploitation of workers in the cobalt mines in Central Africa. 0:00:56.880 --> 0:01:01.960 In his reporting, Narcos exposed the danger and exploitative conditions 0:01:02.200 --> 0:01:05.240 for the workers in Congolese cobalt minds, many of whom 0:01:05.440 --> 0:01:08.480 are children, as well as those that stand to profit 0:01:08.520 --> 0:01:12.520 handsomely off the minds. In addition to being a reporter 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:15.800 at large at The New Yorker, Nearcos's work has appeared 0:01:15.840 --> 0:01:18.600 in Time, the New York Times, and the Nation. 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:21.399 I think that all the places that I try and 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:26.240 work for require a sort of serious journalistic engagement. And 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:29.000 that's what I really seek for. When I look for 0:01:29.040 --> 0:01:32.280 a publication to write for The New Yorker, I find 0:01:32.560 --> 0:01:34.600 the fact checking process. I was a fact checker for 0:01:35.080 --> 0:01:38.039 many years. I think that's a very engaging thing to 0:01:38.120 --> 0:01:40.480 deal with. I like working directly with the fact checkers. 0:01:40.480 --> 0:01:42.959 I liked being a fact checker, learning you know a 0:01:42.959 --> 0:01:45.440 great deal about a subject, you know, for a couple 0:01:45.440 --> 0:01:47.119 of weeks and then and then sort of moving on. 0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:51.720 And actually I found now as a reporter actually enhances 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:54.800 my reporting. It leads me down new alleys when I'm 0:01:54.800 --> 0:01:56.800 trying to sort of verify things to the kind of 0:01:57.080 --> 0:01:58.520 one hundredth designs. 0:01:59.320 --> 0:02:00.920 When you factor you did it for how long? 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:03.440 I did it for five years? Actually, well almost four 0:02:03.520 --> 0:02:04.760 years and eleven months. 0:02:04.960 --> 0:02:08.600 Did they confine you to fact checking in a certain 0:02:08.639 --> 0:02:10.919 realm or did you fact check a lot of different things? 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:13.080 I fact checked a lot of different things because I 0:02:13.120 --> 0:02:16.120 speak French and Italian. Obviously, when there were stories which 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:18.080 required those languages, I would. 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:20.120 I would be sort of fact you were the go 0:02:20.160 --> 0:02:23.000 to fact checker sometimes, yeah, when and when you would 0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:26.320 do the fact checking or I mean, were there ones 0:02:26.360 --> 0:02:29.080 you enjoyed more, like ones that were like deep and 0:02:29.160 --> 0:02:32.720 intense and scientific or culture whatever, and did you did 0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:34.800 you didn't love, You didn't love doing the fact checking 0:02:34.840 --> 0:02:37.160 of the profile of some actress, or you enjoyed all 0:02:37.160 --> 0:02:37.440 of it. 0:02:38.040 --> 0:02:39.960 I enjoyed all of it, you know, Listen. I worked 0:02:39.960 --> 0:02:42.160 on a piece on TMZ by Nick Schmiddle, which was 0:02:42.200 --> 0:02:44.080 a kind of investigative piece, and that was a kind 0:02:44.120 --> 0:02:47.440 of crazy experience. It was kind of well, I don't know, 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:50.760 sort of more you know, kind of input and sort 0:02:50.760 --> 0:02:53.240 of back and forth and lawyers and whatever than most 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:53.840 other pieces. 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:54.000 You know. 0:02:54.040 --> 0:02:57.040 Sometimes it would do pieces on Iraq and Afghanistan and 0:02:57.080 --> 0:02:59.440 so on, and they would require less and less. 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:03.720 Rod Loyal Dafi or Harvey Levin exactly exactly. 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:08.000 But no, I loved working with I mean, the writers, 0:03:08.000 --> 0:03:11.880 they're are great, Patrick Keith, Sarah Stillman, Rachel Laviv. 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:14.799 I mean, these this kind of Rebecca Meade. 0:03:15.040 --> 0:03:19.200 Rebecca was actually a sort of wonderful early person who 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:22.160 I've fact checked quite quite early on in my career 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:23.720 there and then kind of ended up sort of doing 0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:25.680 quite a lot with her, which was quite fun. And 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:28.520 we did a piece i remember on adult and Cabano, 0:03:28.680 --> 0:03:30.680 and we just had like a lot of back and 0:03:30.720 --> 0:03:32.840 forth with Doulty Gavan as people, and it was just 0:03:32.919 --> 0:03:35.960 it was sort of hilarious because sometimes you know, those 0:03:36.120 --> 0:03:38.160 sort of fashion stories and so on. I mean, if 0:03:38.160 --> 0:03:40.800 you're talking with people in government and so on, they 0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:42.920 kind of they have this attitude that, oh, well, it's 0:03:42.920 --> 0:03:44.800 a story, it's going to go away. Whereas you know, 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:46.520 if it's a big fashion house and you know, this 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:48.120 is one of the few times that it appears in 0:03:48.160 --> 0:03:50.840 The New Yorker, you know, this year or in the 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:53.800 you know, in five years or whatever, they realized that 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:54.720 that's going to stick with. 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:58.760 The marketing for them. Yeah, exactly. I agree. Well, I 0:03:58.800 --> 0:04:01.160 mean I'm obviously an ever reader of The New Yorker. 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:03.560 The thing I tend to see when I when I 0:04:03.600 --> 0:04:06.440 was thinking about your article and budgets and costs and 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:08.640 things like that, is that, you know, the magazine has 0:04:08.680 --> 0:04:11.200 obviously a menu or different articles. There might be a profile, 0:04:11.240 --> 0:04:13.840 there might be there's obviously the shouts and murmurs and 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:15.760 talk of the town and so but if the body 0:04:15.800 --> 0:04:17.719 of the pieces that are not criticism or art or 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:20.040 what have you. There seems to be a limit I 0:04:20.040 --> 0:04:22.560 would imagine of the number of pieces that are this expansive, 0:04:22.560 --> 0:04:24.120 because it must be expensive. Correct. 0:04:24.400 --> 0:04:26.960 You know, I started this piece reporting it for as 0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:29.640 a book, and that first it started as a as 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:32.000 a sort of book reporting and then and then kind 0:04:32.040 --> 0:04:34.440 of developed into New Yorker reporting. 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:35.480 So actually I. 0:04:35.240 --> 0:04:37.160 Funded some of it for my own money, and then 0:04:37.200 --> 0:04:39.600 I used some of the New Yorker what the New 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:43.560 Yorker paid me to sort of continue the reporting. But actually, 0:04:43.600 --> 0:04:45.400 you know, this was a sort of budgetless piece at 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:45.919 the beginning. 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:48.400 You first became aware of this when and how. 0:04:48.760 --> 0:04:51.400 I first became aware of this issue around cobalt mining 0:04:51.839 --> 0:04:56.400 because of somebody called Dan Getler. He is a mining 0:04:56.440 --> 0:04:59.520 billionaire who has sort of made his wealth in the DRC, 0:05:00.320 --> 0:05:03.640 and he actually made a lot of money. Buy he's 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:06.640 from Israel. Originally he came to DRC. It's a crazy story. 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:08.560 Came when he was about twenty three, and by the 0:05:08.560 --> 0:05:11.839 time he was twenty six, he was in charge of 0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:15.839 the Congo's entire diamond export. And then various sort of 0:05:15.880 --> 0:05:18.720 human rights groups were like, wait, well, what's happening here. 0:05:18.760 --> 0:05:21.360 He was very close to the ruling family and so 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:24.000 he was kind of booted off that and Congo said, look, listen, 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:26.240 look we've dealt with this problem. Suddenly it turned out 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:28.400 that he had a bunch of copper and cobalt mines 0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:30.960 down in the South, which he seemed to be basically, 0:05:31.600 --> 0:05:34.159 and this is very well documented by the Carter Center 0:05:34.279 --> 0:05:36.839 and sort of Human Rights Watch and various other institutions, 0:05:36.960 --> 0:05:40.160 basically he was selling them on for the ruling family 0:05:40.279 --> 0:05:43.840 to finance their elections. So he'd basically flipped the mines. 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:45.000 And he became aware of him. 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:46.480 How I became aware of him. 0:05:46.480 --> 0:05:48.599 I have a very good friend of mine who works 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:52.480 in mining, and I was sort of casting around for stories, 0:05:52.760 --> 0:05:56.520 you know, related to Africa, related to corruption and so on, 0:05:56.640 --> 0:06:01.040 and he said, well, this is I mean, looks exactly good. 0:06:01.560 --> 0:06:04.080 And also actually Patrick Keith, who's been a great sort 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:06.560 of inspiration to me and who I worked with actually 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:09.280 at the New Yorker, and you had Alex Gibney on 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:12.960 the show and you know they collaborated on the opioid story. 0:06:13.640 --> 0:06:15.120 To Patrick on the street the other day, by the way, 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:17.360 already okay, with his family down in the village and 0:06:17.560 --> 0:06:19.000 I just said to myself, my goddo of that? I 0:06:19.080 --> 0:06:21.480 thought the documentary was sensation, Yeah, sensation. 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:24.480 So he'd done a piece on Benny Steinmetz, who was 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:28.560 a Israeli mining billionaire. I think he's he's currently been 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:31.640 arrested or he's on trial in Switzerland, and he had 0:06:31.720 --> 0:06:36.000 basically taken control of an iron or mine called Simon Do, 0:06:36.279 --> 0:06:38.920 which is in Guinea. And so Patrick had done that story, 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:41.000 and that was a kind of great inspiration. And then 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:43.360 I sort of went to Patrick, and Patrick said this, 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:45.640 and you should also follow this story. It's a great idea. 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:48.240 I've always wanted to do Gutler. And then I arrived 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:50.920 in Congo and I realized that the Gutler story was 0:06:51.040 --> 0:06:53.599 very interesting, but it wasn't the whole story. And actually 0:06:54.200 --> 0:06:58.320 what became more interested interesting to me is the lives 0:06:58.360 --> 0:07:02.160 of these people, just the hellish existence of a cobalt 0:07:02.240 --> 0:07:04.200 min an artisanal cobalt minor. 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:07.000 I have to be preciser in the southern DRC. 0:07:07.680 --> 0:07:10.840 Now I read the article and you become suspicious, or 0:07:10.880 --> 0:07:13.400 you become enlightened, if you will, to the idea that 0:07:14.280 --> 0:07:17.520 huge swaths of this continent are being exploited for these 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:20.680 kinds of minerals. And if I may say so, I'll 0:07:20.760 --> 0:07:23.520 let you speak to this, not just the greatest hits 0:07:24.040 --> 0:07:27.440 like petroleum based things, but these cobalt for lithium for 0:07:27.720 --> 0:07:32.320 modern technology, chips, photovoltaic whatever they may be used for batteries, 0:07:32.360 --> 0:07:35.080 mostly correct the lithium batteries. So was it safe to say, 0:07:35.080 --> 0:07:38.280 you talk about Guinea, you talk about DRC. Is this 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:42.000 happening all over Africa where these minerals exist, I mean, American, Israeli. 0:07:42.080 --> 0:07:43.800 It doesn't matter pirates or when they're trying to grab 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:44.720 as much of it as they can. 0:07:45.080 --> 0:07:47.800 Well, it depends where Obviously some places are better regulator 0:07:47.840 --> 0:07:48.280 than others. 0:07:48.840 --> 0:07:51.280 Who's doing a good job of regulating if you can say. 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:54.600 I think, for example, Zambia has had a better track record, 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:57.200 although now the sort of influx of Chinese wealth into 0:07:57.280 --> 0:07:59.160 Zambia has sort of upended some. 0:07:59.240 --> 0:08:01.640 Of that, if you but seeking their copper as well. 0:08:01.720 --> 0:08:03.320 So it's actually on the border with DRC. 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:05.320 When I was reporting some of this stuff, I actually 0:08:05.360 --> 0:08:08.200 flew to Zambia to meet a sort of renegade Congolese 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:12.560 politician before he was traveling back into the DRC so yeah, No, 0:08:12.640 --> 0:08:14.920 it's known as the Copper Belt, and it's a sort 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:15.600 of large part. 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:17.960 The scene between the two countries exactly exactly. 0:08:18.080 --> 0:08:20.720 And the other big one is coltan actually, and that's 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:23.240 sort of been the focus of a lot of human 0:08:23.320 --> 0:08:27.320 rights work because it is largely mined by sort of 0:08:27.560 --> 0:08:29.920 army types and sort of warlords in the northeast of 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:33.520 the DRC. And coltan is used in capacitors, which are 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:36.760 sort of key for computers and batteries. That's also been 0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:39.559 a big issue, and people confuse that with cobalt, and 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:43.920 actually what's happening there is slightly different from cobalt, which 0:08:43.960 --> 0:08:47.079 is a kind of more of a mechanized, sort of 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:48.880 legitimized type of trade. 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:51.959 Well, the thing that also struck me in terms of 0:08:52.080 --> 0:08:55.079 any store like this where there's danger, describe to me 0:08:55.559 --> 0:08:57.839 what you had to do in advance security wise. You 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:00.240 don't just land at the airport and say in an 0:09:00.320 --> 0:09:02.280 uber and say take me to you know, Cobalt town. 0:09:02.480 --> 0:09:04.360 There must have been a lot of preparatory steps you 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:06.760 took and security steps you took, if I'm assuming, And 0:09:06.800 --> 0:09:08.599 then talk about when you first got there for the 0:09:08.640 --> 0:09:09.800 first time, what went on? 0:09:10.160 --> 0:09:11.800 Okay, so yeah, the security steps. 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:14.599 I mean, I've traveled to quite a lot at this 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:19.439 point of countries which sort of have different complicated security profiles, 0:09:19.559 --> 0:09:22.400 places like Yeam in western Sahara, in fact, this southern 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:24.800 part of the DRC. You know, there is the threat 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:29.160 always of randomized violence, but I, you know, had looked 0:09:29.200 --> 0:09:31.920 into it. I'd spoken to a couple of people who 0:09:31.960 --> 0:09:34.360 had been there. I've spoken to a couple of journalists, 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:38.880 and I don't think there was a kind of threatening 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:42.640 or kind of looming threat we're afraid. I wasn't particularly 0:09:42.720 --> 0:09:45.679 afraid that. You know, sometimes traveling on the road at night, 0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:48.040 you'd be stopped at roadblocks and there would be sort 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:50.800 of policemen with guns and they'd be drunk, and you know, 0:09:50.920 --> 0:09:53.719 then you get a little bit nervous, and then we 0:09:53.800 --> 0:09:56.480 were sort of held up in broad daylight. So I 0:09:56.520 --> 0:09:59.360 traveled with the local journalists called Jeff Kazadi, who's a 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:02.360 wonderful one of and he was a great resource. He 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:05.920 worked as a translator. He was incredibly sort of resourceful 0:10:05.960 --> 0:10:08.480 as well on the ground, and he sort of knew 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:10.959 quite a few of the operators and he'd worked with 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:14.640 I believe CNN before and some other journalists who had 0:10:14.679 --> 0:10:17.559 been down to do stories like this or to do 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:20.679 other types of stories in southern DRC. He works for 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:26.120 a mining trade publication, so you know, oftentimes he wanted 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:28.439 to sort of look further into stories, but because he 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:31.360 works for an industry publication, it wasn't the type of 0:10:31.440 --> 0:10:31.960 journalism that. 0:10:31.960 --> 0:10:32.800 They were interested in. 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:36.840 So I contacted Jeff. I also contacted another journalist, Ben Yemba, 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:39.280 who's based out of her and he was interested in this. 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:41.720 So the first time I went, I went with Jeff 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:44.560 and Ben. We kind of thought about the security risks 0:10:44.600 --> 0:10:47.640 and we discussed the different types of issues along the road. 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:50.520 Sometimes there were bandits and so on, but usually if 0:10:50.559 --> 0:10:53.400 you're traveling in the daytime, you're fairly safe along that road. 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:55.679 So when I first arrived in the South, i'd been 0:10:55.720 --> 0:10:58.319 in Kinshassa for a bit, and in many ways the 0:10:58.440 --> 0:11:02.600 South is much less hectic. In Conchasta and I arrived 0:11:02.640 --> 0:11:04.600 on a local flight so we didn't have to deal 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:08.160 with customs. I stayed in a sort of very downbeat hotel, 0:11:08.280 --> 0:11:10.880 which was an interesting experience to say the least. There 0:11:10.920 --> 0:11:12.640 were a lot of women coming in at night and 0:11:12.800 --> 0:11:13.760 leaving in the morning. 0:11:14.320 --> 0:11:14.400 But. 0:11:16.120 --> 0:11:20.640 Afterwards everywhere, which is everywhere exactly. And then I stayed 0:11:20.800 --> 0:11:24.120 the next two or three times. I was there in 0:11:24.360 --> 0:11:27.480 more kind of like hotels that sort of mining execs 0:11:27.600 --> 0:11:29.719 had made their home. It was you know, kind of 0:11:30.040 --> 0:11:32.560 immediately there with people at the bar kind of talking 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:34.880 about their sort of the you know, the greatest hits 0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:38.160 of you know, copper mines and cobalt. 0:11:37.880 --> 0:11:40.439 Mines, some of the work some of the useful work 0:11:40.520 --> 0:11:40.880 done there. 0:11:41.120 --> 0:11:43.440 Yeah, and those are sort of like off the record 0:11:43.600 --> 0:11:47.400 chats usually, but it helps you get such a good 0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:48.840 sort of context around the stuff. 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:49.160 You know. 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:52.440 What else was very useful is that I visited a. 0:11:53.600 --> 0:11:57.640 Mining conference there as well and sort of met a 0:11:57.679 --> 0:12:00.880 lot of people in the field. It was hosted by 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:03.320 a South African firm, but it was kind of visited 0:12:03.360 --> 0:12:05.480 by all the sort of local potents and so on. 0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:08.120 It was a sort of eye opening experience. 0:12:07.760 --> 0:12:12.000 Because people are very aware of the problem of artisanal mining, 0:12:12.240 --> 0:12:15.000 and you have to make the distinction between artisanal mining 0:12:15.040 --> 0:12:18.920 and industrial mining. So artisanal mining is something somewhere between 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:21.679 ten and thirty percent of Congo's production every year. It 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:25.040 really fluctuates depending on you know, supply demand, so on 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:27.959 and the rest is industrial which has done much in 0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:30.680 the way of large mining firms anywhere else in the world. 0:12:31.240 --> 0:12:33.640 And do the industrials want to put the artisanals out 0:12:33.679 --> 0:12:33.920 of work? 0:12:34.240 --> 0:12:38.440 The industrials would probably prefer that the artisanals were not there, 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:42.079 because there are serious human rights issues with some of 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:44.760 the artisanal minds, which are with many of the artisanal minds. 0:12:44.760 --> 0:12:46.559 I would say some are led. 0:12:46.440 --> 0:12:51.360 By cooperatives, and those cooperatives are sort of better about 0:12:51.400 --> 0:12:56.280 safety than other sort of non cooperative managed artisanal minds. However, 0:12:56.559 --> 0:12:59.760 the big problem is that there's just been a huge 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:01.400 flux of people into that region. 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:02.360 It's a gold rush. 0:13:02.480 --> 0:13:05.199 It's a huge gold rush, and you really feel like 0:13:05.400 --> 0:13:07.360 just people are arriving every day, that kind of thing. 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:10.040 There's a train that comes down from a place called 0:13:10.120 --> 0:13:12.880 Mambuji Mai, which is in the middle of Congo, and 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:15.920 that is a place in which there used to be 0:13:15.960 --> 0:13:19.080 a huge amount of diamond mining and that's been sort 0:13:19.080 --> 0:13:21.640 of woefully mismanaged and the industry has kind of fallen 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:23.520 into pieces. So a lot of people who had some 0:13:23.720 --> 0:13:26.800 mining experience now sort of getting on that train which 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:29.880 goes through the sort of jungles and wilds of Central 0:13:29.920 --> 0:13:34.120 Congo and comes to Lumumbashi and sort of people are 0:13:34.160 --> 0:13:35.760 just sort of hanging off the side of that train 0:13:36.280 --> 0:13:38.960 and it comes, you know, every two months or something 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:42.000 like that. Nobody really the schedule basically works on you know, 0:13:42.120 --> 0:13:44.319 whenever it's completely full or whenever they can sort of 0:13:44.400 --> 0:13:47.120 get the engine running. And so with that, you know, 0:13:47.200 --> 0:13:50.280 people come and then the industrial minds have sort of 0:13:50.320 --> 0:13:52.800 run by very few people, so they don't have the 0:13:52.880 --> 0:13:55.640 capacity to observe high resolve that the labor force. 0:13:55.440 --> 0:13:59.160 Exactly, they don't they can't hire. So yeah, I think 0:13:59.160 --> 0:13:59.480 that they. 0:13:59.440 --> 0:14:01.679 Will arrived to participate in artisinal mining. 0:14:01.760 --> 0:14:02.080 Exactly. 0:14:02.120 --> 0:14:03.800 You arrived because you think you're going to get rich 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:06.319 and there's just like a lot of stories about it 0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:08.160 and so on, and you arrive and there's nothing to 0:14:08.240 --> 0:14:12.559 do apart from artisanal mining basically, and people really exploit 0:14:12.679 --> 0:14:16.160 that they get paid nothing. I mean, it's some people 0:14:16.280 --> 0:14:18.559 say that there have been people who made lots and 0:14:18.600 --> 0:14:21.880 lots of money, but I actually found that quite difficult 0:14:21.920 --> 0:14:23.760 to believe after spending two months there. 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:26.440 I just so you went the one on the one 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:27.320 trip for two months. 0:14:27.360 --> 0:14:29.440 So I went on one trip for a month, then 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:32.480 I went on another trip for ten days, and then 0:14:32.520 --> 0:14:34.880 I was there for about almost a month the next time, 0:14:34.920 --> 0:14:35.760 So yeah, two months. 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:39.800 So when you arrive and you are in the more 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:43.040 decent hotel with people who seem to be related to 0:14:43.080 --> 0:14:44.960 the whole enterprise and you can chit chat with him. 0:14:45.440 --> 0:14:47.200 Is the idea that when you arrive you don't go 0:14:47.360 --> 0:14:49.400 right into the belly of the beast and go to 0:14:49.440 --> 0:14:53.960 where the artisanal mining is at full throttle. You kind 0:14:53.960 --> 0:14:55.840 of work your way toward that. Did you take a 0:14:55.880 --> 0:14:58.160 few days before you get into the into the pits 0:14:58.240 --> 0:14:58.760 so to speak? 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:01.800 Depends actually on the different trips. On my second trip, 0:15:01.840 --> 0:15:04.320 I went straight to the artism mining because I'd spent 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:06.960 a lot of time, you know, talking with seth Africans about, 0:15:07.160 --> 0:15:09.320 you know, the benefits of copper mirning for the area. 0:15:09.600 --> 0:15:11.800 So you know, I had all that material and I 0:15:11.920 --> 0:15:15.720 wanted to really focus on the artisanal miners. 0:15:15.600 --> 0:15:17.880 Who were people that sounded like they had not the 0:15:18.000 --> 0:15:20.160 right idea, but maybe the better ideas about how this 0:15:20.200 --> 0:15:22.440 should be handled, what should happen there for the greater 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:23.240 good of everybody. 0:15:23.520 --> 0:15:27.480 So there's a Catholic charity called Good Shepherd Calwazy and 0:15:27.880 --> 0:15:32.080 they've been incredibly sort of outspoken and sort of quite 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:35.120 sort of research focused as well around some of these issues. 0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:38.040 They've put forward this plan which says, listen, you need 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:41.120 to develop other types of industry because you have to 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:44.400 understand this as like as a cycle of which corruption 0:15:44.560 --> 0:15:47.080 is only a part. There's also just the basic fact 0:15:47.120 --> 0:15:53.239 of poverty and need. So they have suggested that agriculture 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:56.960 would be a way of engaging the local population. In fact, 0:15:57.000 --> 0:15:59.520 it's a very fertile region as well, and something like 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:03.080 ninety center of Congo's food is imported, so there's this 0:16:03.880 --> 0:16:06.360 kind of from other areas the region, from Zambia, from 0:16:06.640 --> 0:16:08.880 from other areas of the region, So there's this kind 0:16:08.960 --> 0:16:11.960 and import taxes are huge, and people are making money 0:16:12.160 --> 0:16:13.800 at every step of the way and so on and 0:16:13.840 --> 0:16:16.680 so forth, often not Congolese. So they say, listen, why 0:16:16.720 --> 0:16:19.120 don't the Congolese grow their own food here? Why don't 0:16:19.120 --> 0:16:22.040 people work on farms? And so I think that that's 0:16:22.200 --> 0:16:26.080 a you know, there are large businesses that obviously invested 0:16:26.120 --> 0:16:28.680 in this. I think that's actually something which would be 0:16:28.800 --> 0:16:31.600 positive for them to do. So there are also some 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:34.240 other groups like the Fair Cobalt Alliance and then there's 0:16:34.240 --> 0:16:39.240 another Chinese group. The UN doesn't have a permanent presence, 0:16:39.280 --> 0:16:41.680 I don't think in Colway's actually a lot of what 0:16:41.920 --> 0:16:44.600 they do in Congo is to do with rebels in 0:16:44.640 --> 0:16:47.040 the north, and then they assisted with some war crimes 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:50.240 tribunals in a city which was not too far away. 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:54.840 So they do mainly kind of like armed conflict type 0:16:54.840 --> 0:16:57.760 stuff there. I didn't see any sort of UN involvement, 0:16:57.960 --> 0:16:58.840 but I could you know. 0:16:58.880 --> 0:16:59.840 They could be that, they could be. 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:01.240 Yeah, there could be a. 0:17:01.280 --> 0:17:03.760 UN office that focuses on this, but it doesn't seem 0:17:03.800 --> 0:17:07.040 to be a main priority because they're focused on you know, some. 0:17:07.359 --> 0:17:08.320 What year did you go there? 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:09.960 I went at twenty nineteen. 0:17:09.800 --> 0:17:12.320 And right before the right before How convenient for you, 0:17:12.480 --> 0:17:15.320 I know, yeah, how wonderful. And what is the national 0:17:15.440 --> 0:17:17.879 government to the extent you could ascertain when you were there, 0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:19.600 what's their position on what's going on there? 0:17:19.800 --> 0:17:22.400 So the national government makes kind of these overtures over 0:17:22.400 --> 0:17:25.000 and over again saying we can't have child labor whatever, 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:27.360 and then the local government will say the same thing, 0:17:27.440 --> 0:17:29.119 and they're like, we're cleaning up the minds and then 0:17:29.280 --> 0:17:31.480 they use you know, these kind of mind clean up 0:17:31.720 --> 0:17:35.240 activities in order to basically seize more parts of the 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:38.800 minds for themselves and you know, kind of co opt 0:17:38.880 --> 0:17:41.800 local cooperatives and so on. And I document that in 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:44.440 the piece, And at the moment there's a bit of 0:17:44.480 --> 0:17:47.760 a power struggle happening down in that region, and it's 0:17:47.880 --> 0:17:50.720 very unclear to me what's actually happening in terms of 0:17:50.840 --> 0:17:53.400 like who's getting pieces of the eye, But the fact 0:17:53.480 --> 0:17:55.240 is that it still continues. Actually, I was I was 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:58.639 speaking to a friend of mine who's a photographer who 0:17:58.720 --> 0:18:01.639 can sell a Cunningham who's done great, great work in 0:18:01.760 --> 0:18:05.960 the DRC. He was there last weekend and he saw 0:18:06.240 --> 0:18:08.840 basically exactly the same condition. So it's not improving. 0:18:09.080 --> 0:18:11.199 But I'm assuming for people who don't understand the way 0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:15.119 these things work, it's that you have the corporate mining, 0:18:15.200 --> 0:18:18.400 you have the industrial mining, which of course the government's 0:18:18.440 --> 0:18:19.920 going to sanction that because they're going to make a 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:22.840 lot of money. I'm assuming just like the drug trade 0:18:22.880 --> 0:18:25.840 in other parts of the world, in South America, for example, 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:28.199 they don't want it to go away. They can't make 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:30.520 it go away because there'll be just so much illegal 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:34.000 activity and violence and bloodshed. Do they sit there and say, 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:35.600 and they just write it off and say, well, we 0:18:35.680 --> 0:18:37.960 have to tolerate a certain amount of artisanal mining just 0:18:38.040 --> 0:18:40.000