So What Exactly is Communication?

There are literally billions of mobile phones in use across the world. They all require the conflict mineral coltan to enable their high-density capacitators. Much of this coltan is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where it has fuelled decades of civil war. Illegally mined coltan enters the supply chains of Apple, Samsung Dell, Sony and Vodafone. Most coltan mining is ‘legal’. It relies on charters granted to international mining companies by the contested sovereignty of the Congolese government. Salaries paid to mine workers are higher than the average wages paid in the Congo, though still paltry. Often mines function because of agreements (tax) with local militia to ensure that mined coltan can leave the Congo – via Rwanda. The illegal creusers work in disused tunnels, or on discarded rubble heaps, to extract the remaining coltan with bare hands and pick axes (Amnesty International 2016: 4–11). Workers are often children. This coltan is sold to the mines, or in the various market towns across the region, from where it finds its way back in to the supply chain, having become the legal property of the purchaser. In these ‘zones of exploitation‘ industrial mining is deemed too costly. Illegal mining reduces the cost of extracting the coltan. It benefits the warlords and other organised groups who feed it back in to legal supply chains. Legal and illegal find a happy concordance as traders mediate the smooth integration of illegal coltan into legitimate property regimes. Possession wrought by violence becomes legally enforceable property. This overlap should not divert our gaze from the legal companies granted property rights over coltan. Legality is bought, secured all too often through bribes, and brings with it the requirement for violent exclusion. The Congolese state issues leases, or sells mines, to international companies. The selling of rights to copper and coltan mining follows a common logic. Land, or right, nominally owned by the Congolese state, is sold to offshore companies for less than their actual worth. Shell companies then sell the rights on, at a large profit, to multinational mining firms such as Glencor. Money paid to the shell company finds its way back to the Congolese state (Burgis 2015: 50–1) where it is deployed as a slush fund by dominant elites.