Bonde Wakulima does not exist. Morgan, Zanele, Sami and their allies and enemies are fictional characters. But wars like the one that devastated them are very real.
What you are about to read is only a primer on these conflicts. To learn more, I recommend reading A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a boy soldier, by Ishamel Beah, for whom Zanele Beah is named. I also recommend Consuming the Congo by Peter Eichstaedt and most of all, Congo: The Epic History of a People, an excellent and comprehensive history book by Belgian historian David Van Reybrouck, whom I quoted at the beginning of this story.
Wherever government is weak and precious minerals are abundant, resource warfare rears its head. Such conflicts can be found in many parts of Africa, but none more so than in the eastern half of the country that calls itself the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There, roving armies conquer towns and occupy surface mines, sustaining themselves by "taxing" locals who do the hard work of mining it.
After being dug up or panned, precious minerals are sold to vendors, who in turn sell to independent smelters, who refine it into the raw materials purchased by first-world corporations and made into products sold in stores. Any time you purchase an item made with gold, coltan, tin or any of the other materials mined in unstable regions, there is a small chance that some of your money is going to support real-life counterparts to Mauve and Sabertooth. Buying from bandit-occupied mines indirectly funds the atrocities these militants commit.
Roving militant factions are often comprised of children abducted and forced to become soldiers or disaffected young people who lack both family and education and see no better alternative. Aside from bullying miners, these armies battle each other for control of the mines, and they frequently attack civilian villages. When they do, they commit crimes similar to what I portrayed in this story. Destruction of property, murder of unarmed adults and kidnapping of children are all common. Some of the barbarity is motivated by ethnic hatreds which have nothing to do with conflict minerals, but are nonetheless funded by them.
In addition, rape is ubiquitous in these massacres. What Zanele said of the Mauves and Sabers is true of real-life militants; they are paid in plunder, and rape is part of that grotesque reward. Rape is also used to fracture communities that militant armies see as ethnic enemies. This is effective mostly because raped women are rejected by their families, as if they were culpable for what happened to them. For this reason, it is an act of considerable courage for a woman to admit that she has been raped. To announce it publicly, as Graham did in this story, is a taboo that is only slowly decaying.
However, although one inspired the other, my Venus is not the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and there are crucial differences.
Obviously, roving militant armies are not matriarchal-- very much the opposite, unfortunately. Venus' skewed gender ratio and the gender inequality in Mauve and Saber culture are pure fabrications that I added to make my story memorable and unique. It is not a commentary on real life.
Furthermore, my representation of these militant armies was not entirely accurate. In real life, they do not develop such distinctive cultures or unique forms of dress, let alone fashions that require a constant supply of hair dye. Although they frequently make use of butchered religious doctrine to motivate their troops, they have also been known to suppliment this with hard drugs, which make their soldiers numb, aggressive and dependent on their commanders for more.
Finally, conflict minerals are rarely the only motive for war, and the reasons for the fighting are often wrapped up in shady alliances and ethnic, political and religious differences with deep historical roots. For this reason, the wars are morally and politically murky, and foreign intervention rarely works as well as it did in Bonde Wakulima. The conflict portrayed in this story represents only one dimension of real-life Congolese bush wars.
However, by removing the economic incentive to oppress and abuse miners, we can help to remove one dimension of these wars, thereby removing one of the many barriers to peace. This can begin with consumers like you. There is now an organized effort to ensure that the minerals that go into our electronics are mined without the use of forced labor or exploitative taxes. The number of middlemen involved in the mining operation makes this a daunting task, and not all corporations have undertaken it, but progress has been made. The next time you purchase electronics, you can contribute to this noble effort by ensuring that you buy from the brands with the best reputation regarding these minerals. There are various websites and organizations dedicated to ranking corporations in terms of ethical soundness, and I recommend checking them all to form a consensus.
The days of banditry in the African mining industry are numbered. Any business plan that involves warfare and forced labor is too volatile and inefficient to compete with proper infrastructure, and warlords have no influence in first-world governments. Even the corporations which buy from them seem willing to jettison them.
There will come a day when this kind of war is only a memory. By taking action, you can make that day come sooner.
