The Life of the Super Rich in Central Africa

The Life of the Super Rich in Central Africa: Between Luxury and Misery

DW (2021)

Film Review

This documentary concerns the 600 millionaires in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The majority of DRC residents on less than two euros a day. Even miners (including 40,000 children) who work in the lucrative coltan mines earn only 5 euros a day.

The film profiles three specific multimillionaires: a rock star, the former rebel leader who currently owns the largest coltan* mine (and serves as a member of parliament) and a prophet who cures people with miracle juice made from gasoline and lemon juice.

The main reason so many DRC residents live in abject poverty is extreme corruption. Mobuto Sese Seko, brutal dictator between 1965 and 1997 (when DRC was called Zaire), embezzled four billion euros from the government prior to being ousted by rebel forces. Joseph Kabila, president of DRC between 2001 and 2019, embezzled three million euros. In 2021, DRC is number one on the list of the 20 most corrupt countries.

Tax evasion also continues to be a major problem, leaving the current government starved for funding to improve infrastructure. Most rural roads are unpaved, electrical outages are common and less than one-fifth of the population have access to electricity.

Owing to the fragile September 2020 ceasefire (enforced by 16,000 UN peacekeepers), many former DRC expatriates have returned to take the country’s limited middle class jobs. The filmmakers profile a couple who earn a total of $3,500 a month (100 times the country’s average salary) working as bankers. One third of their income goes to pay rent in a luxurious Western-style high security enclave.

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*Coltan is refined to produce tantalum, a rare metal essential in cellphone technology.

The Role of Slavery in Chocolate Production

Chocolate’s Heart of Darkness

Directed by Paul Moreira (DW) 2019

Film Review

In this documentary, filmmaker Paul Moreira visits illegal cacao plantations in the Ivory Coast that employ child slaves to prepare the cacao beans they sell to local cooperatives. One third of plantation workers are children, most immigrants from drought and violence plagued Burkina Faso.

Parents sell children to traffickers for the equivalent of 300 euros each. The traffickers, in turn, sell them to growers. Typically the children work without pay for up to six years. Then growers with a small plot of land to grow their own cacao. In addition to performing forced labor, the children are required to spray plantations with lymphoma-linked Roundup without protective masks or suits.

The illegal plantations result from systematic deforestation of “classified” forest reserves.

The Ministry of Forests is supposed to enforce laws again child labor, slavery and illegal deforestation but clearly fails to do so. Likewise Cargill and other global food merchants are in violation of international agreements not to purchase beans from illegal plantations.

The global chocolate industry generates $100 billion annually, with growers receiving only six percent of this income.

Bangladesh: A Study in Western Colonial Exploitation

Scrapped

RT (2015)

Film Review

Scrapped is a documentary about the shipbreaking industry in Chittagong, which dismantles and reclaims the vast majority of the world’s ships. The second largest industry in Bangladesh, it produces enormous profits, given the country has no metal resources of its own.

Located in the poorest region in Bangladesh, the industry pays an average wage of $3 a day. Owners seem oblivious to national child labor and workplace safety laws, with 13 workers killed on the job in 2013 and 12 in 2015. As the mayor of Chittagong runs his own shipbreaking yard, the city is quite lax about legal enforcement.

After paying a yard manager a substantial bribe, cameramen are allowed to film inside one shipyard for three minutes.

Otherwise filmmakers rely on a local “human rights” activist for most of their information. The latter receives a €2,500 annual grant from the European Union to monitor worker safety in his city’s shipbreaking yards.

 

Economic colonization: Gold mining in the Philippines

Golden Gamble: Gold mining in the Philippines, a dirty business

RT (2017)

Film Review

This documentary concerns rural Filipinos who scavenge abandoned goldmines in a continuous struggle to feed their families. Because the old mines are submerged in up to 30 feet of water, the operation relies on divers to scoop up mud from the bottom. Others treat the nuggets with mercury to extract the gold, without face masks or protective clothing. The gold is sold on for $16-32 per gram to local gold merchants.

Although this informal mining is illegal, the government turns a blind eye. The scavenging operations generally produce 10 grams per 24 hours of operation. Children as young as eight can earn about $2.30 per day to buy food for their families.

Mortality rates are extremely high, from collapse of the mine walls, failure of the divers’ breathing tubes and lung and neurological disease from mercury and other toxic exposures. Other participants in the operation develop debilitating skin rashes and ulcers.

There is pressure on the government to fence off these unofficial mines – something local Filipinos oppose as the region offers no other source of employment.

The Ugly Face of Beauty: Is Child Labour the Foundation for Your Makeup?

The Ugly Face of Beauty: Is Child Labour the Foundation for Your Makeup?

RT (2016)

Film Review

This documentary is about mica mining in the Jharkhand state in India, which produces 60% of the global mica supply. In addition to its use (as glitter) in cosmetics, mica is used to manufacture joint compound (for filling and seams in drywall), drilling fluids (in fracking), plastics, synthetic textiles and as an insulator in the electronics industry.

Although mica mining is technically illegal in India (owing to serious health risks, eg lung cancer and potential mine collapse), mica “processing” is legal and immensely profitable.

Rough 20,000 children (some as young as 3) are employed in mica mining in India. Adults can earn up to $3 per day, with lower caste workers earning less. They sell the mica they mine to processing plants or to the “mica mafia,” which sells it directly to exporters.

The Disposable People Who Process Our Toxic E-Waste

ToxiCity: A Graveyard for Electronics and People

RT (2017)

Film Review

Toxic e-waste is equally poisonous to the planet and the third world poor who are forced to process it for a living. The only truly humane and sustainable solution to toxic e-waste is to force big tech giants like Apple, Google and Dell (and the billionaires who run them) to assume responsibility for end-of-life disposal, instead of externalizing this cost to the rest of us.

This documentary is about Agbogbloshie in Acra Ghana, the largest toxic waste dump in the world, and the men, women and children who pick through electronic waste from Asia, the US, Australia and western Europe. Although it’s illegal to employ child labor or import e-waste in Ghana, these laws are never enforced.

The filmmakers interview various “waste managers” who run the site, as well as a 10 year old boy, a fifteen year old girl and the “waste site coordinator.”  The latter  adjudicates disputes and deals with the police when fights break out. The 10 year old (an orphan) earns about $8-10 a days from the scrap metal he collects. This is enough to buy two meals. The 15-year-old was forced to leave school because her parents had no money to pay for her school fees, uniform or textbooks. She prepares food to sell to other scavengers and hopes to return to school and become a nurse.

Scavenging e-waste among the burning rubber and plastics at Agbogbloshie is a highly dangerous occupation due to the high risk of cadmium and lead toxicity. Doctors at a nearly clinic also report an increased incidence of respiratory infection among children who live and work there.

 

The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy

People Get Ready: The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy

Robert McChesney and John Nichols (2016)

Film Review

An extremely inspiring public presentation in which McChesney and Nichols talk about their latest book (of the same name)

McChesney begins with research indicating that 50% of current jobs will be eliminated by robots and artificial intelligence in the next 10-20 years. He also talks about the inherent inability of a scarcity/profit based economic system to address this crisis.

For me, the most interesting part of his presentation was a discussion of Franklin D Roosevelt’s Second Bill of Rights.* According to McChesney, both Germany and Japan incorporated this Second Bill of Rights into their constitutions after World War II. This, in his view, explains why both countries have become economic powerhouses.

Both men talk about the crucial need to form a post-capitalist society and economic system. Nichols talks more about the large global movements which have formed to build this new system. He, like McChesney, has been surprised by the popular candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. The book predicts the appearance of proto-fascist and democratic socialist candidates in response to growing popular resistance movements. However neither expected it to happen so quickly.

The best part of Nichols’ talk is his discussion of the massive Luddite and Chartist movements in Britain (and the populist and progressive movements in the US) that would ultimately lead to universal suffrage, honest elections and the rise of the trade union movement.

Nichols stresses that none of these reforms resulted from the heroic efforts of a political savior – they all resulted from the dedicated and persistent mass organizing of ordinary people.

 

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*Roosevelt’s Second Bill of Rights included the basic right of all Americans to

• Employment (right to work)
• Food, clothing and leisure, via enough income to support them
• Farmers’ rights to a fair income
• Freedom from unfair competition and monopolies
• Housing
• Medical care
• Social security
• Education