PUBLIC

ON AUGUST 6 – Hiroshima Day – I participated in a groundbreaking event at the South African Museum in Cape Town entitled The Missing Link: Peace and security surrounding uranium. The event had been organised by the Congolese Civil Society of SA to put a spotlight on the link between Japan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): that the uranium used to build the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima came from the Shinkolobwe mine in the DRC’s province of Katanga.

This was the richest uranium in the world. Its ore had an average of 65percent uranium oxide compared with US or Canadian ore, which contained less than 1 percent.

The mine is now closed, but its existence put it at the centre of the Manhattan Project in World War II. The DRC was a Belgian colony at the time and the Congolese suffered from the harsh colonial reality of racism and extreme inequities.

Following the war, the mine became a focus for the Cold War conflict between the superpowers. Today, freelance miners, desperate to earn a living and at severe risk to their health, still go to the site to dig out uranium and cobalt.

The Congolese Civil Society of SA seeks to bring together the DRC community living in and around Cape Town.

In February this year it presented a memorandum to the South African Parliament,