History is not just one damn thing after another. We become aware of the plots and meanings rather slowly. Long after the damn things actually happened. Take Congo. Take an ambitious Congolese politician, from the first cohort of the educated locals. An unexpected scandal at the public announcement of independence. The first Congolese president (Kasavubu) remained calm. The first Congolese prime minister (Lumumba) did not. He accused the Belgian king of the most brutal colonialist exploitation (on June 30, 1960). A sequence of networking activities followed. Belgian paratroopers, Belgian mining corporation, Bandung’s Non-Aligned Movement, UNO, Soviet Union, CIA and the local political rivals – all played their roles as if they knew how to get their act together. Patrice Lumumba was killed by the Katangan separatists on January 17, 1961. Dag Hammarskjøld, the secretary general of the United Nations, died in an airplane crash in Ndola, when dealing with the Congolese crisis (on September 18,1961). The world learned about their deaths from newspapers, radio and – increasingly – television.
Let’s travel in time. On August 6, 2026, the prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Kongo, Judith Suminwa Tuluka announced in Kinshasa a ban on the export of the strategic raw materials. She meant the copper and cobalt concentrates, arguing that they should be further processed and refined by the local industries, generating more income and employment inside the country. The largest mining companies in Congo belong to the Chinese (they mine 69% of cobalt, often together with the local companies and with the government), Anglo-Swiss and Kazakh corporations. The world learned about the ban from the specialized economic online communicators. Major online news agencies ignored the news. Experts from the niche online sources were sceptical, pointing out the failure of the earlier ban (2025). Will this government ban improve the economic chances of the citizens of Congo?
Let us list the differences between 1961 and 2026. Belgians cannot simply send the paratroopers in. UNO cannot simply send the UN Peace Force. Children cannot be allowed to scavenge around the mines. Cobalt, lithium, copper will not necessairly replace oil as the new hit to turn Congo into a new Saudi Arabia. And nobody has to wait for the newspapers or TV news. We can patch the news on “the war below” using our cell phones. Will it improve our chances to understand what is going on? Has the world changed and eVolved? Or has it recycled to remain the same?
Haarlem, August 15, 2026