Democratic Republic of Congo- November 18,. 2025

In Response to the Workers' Massacre at the Kalando Mine in Lualaba

On Saturday 11/16, the mercenary militias surrounding the Kalando mine opened fire on the true owners of coltan, the thousands of Congolese who extract those minerals to make a living, and who in this country—as in all of Africa—, have been dispossessed of all power of decision and ownership over their own wealth.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the infamous Tshisekedi government is the guarantor for transnational companies enriching themselves, by means of legalizing forced labour of millions of children and men, shored up by bayonets, stealing minerals such as coltan and cobalt—strategic raw materials coveted by the war industry and the technological production sector, which make millionaire profits worldwide.

When the miners were trying to escape the mercenaries' bullets through the precarious structures in a section of the mine, the collapse occurred. This perverse action ended the lives of 40 miners. MURDEROUS EMPLOYERS! THE STATE IS COMPLICIT!
As the hours passed by, thousands of miners from all over Lualaba staged protests in different parts of the province, filled with hatred over the murder of their class brethren at the hands of the multinational corporation that is looting that mine.

It´s just that what happened in Kalando reflects the reality of millions of exploited, who are the fundamental support for their families, and when they fight to take the wealth that belongs to them, the very governments that serve the transnational corporations deploy their repressive apparatus to guarantee the plunder of the colonised nation, even at the cost of the lives of the workers whom they themselves exploit.
This was the case of the Marikana miners, who in 2012 led a heroic strike in which they fought for a decent wage and better working conditions. At that time, the murderous ANC government, with its police, carried out a true massacre to defend the interests of the imperialist Lonmin mining company.

So far this year, there have already been dozens of cases of workers' massacres in conditions similar to those at Kalando across Africa, which governments and the pirates of the transnational corporations are trying to conceal. We also recall the recent massacre at the Stilfontein mine in South Africa, where the slave-driving employers and, once again, the anti-worker ANC government, claimed the lives of 78 miners, whom they had fenced in the mine for months, subjecting them to die there.

The international bourgeois press and the starvation government of the USN ruling coalition are covering up this true workers' massacre, trying to pass it off as an "accident", for which they are also trying to blame the workers themselves, treating them as thieves and illegals, when the criminals here are companies like the murderous Zijin Mining/COMMUS, which gave the order to shoot the Kalando miners.
Only the hand of a workers' and peasants' government will bring justice for all the fallen of the black working class: For workers' and people's tribunals to judge the murderers!
In the words of the families of the Marikana martyr miners: "Their spirits will live in our hearts".

Miranda Maglioni