Nyirasafari is the second of eight children that her mother, the second of her father’s three wives, had. Her father was a big farmer. “My father had the means to send us all to school but, because of our culture, my sisters didn’t care about anything other than having kids and getting married,” she says. “I was the exception. I didn’t want to get married before finishing my studies and my father supported me.” Despite her privileges, Nyirasafari, like most Congolese people, endured some very hard times. During the first Congolese war, which erupted in 1996 as a direct consequence of the genocide that occurred in Rwanda two years earlier, Nyirasafari – who belonged to the well-off Hutu community based in the DRC – lost both her brother and his wife. In fact, during the ravenous hunt the Tutsi organised to eliminate their Hutu oppressors who had found shelter in Congo from Rwanda, those who only shared an ethnic lineage with the Hutu paid a hefty price. “Even if they told us that those who got kidnapped were later murdered, we can’t be 100% sure,” says Nyirasafari. “We never saw their bodies.” Since her brother disappeared, his children have been living with her.

Until 2015, Nyirasafari was involved in the humanitarian sector but, as she craved spending more time at home with her kids, she decided to quit. With the money she put aside, she started, first, buying minerals from small traders and selling them in Goma and later dealing directly with the miners in the mining sites. Although the mineral business is dominated by men in the DRC, it is still the fastest way women have to climb up the economic and social ladder. While Nyirasafari’s interest in this field is quite recent, women actually started entering the (mainly artisanal) mining sector in 1982, pouring into it in greater numbers in 1996 when the national mining company, SOMINKI, was shut down at the beginning of the war and thousands of men employed there became jobless. On entering the mining sector, Nyirasafari decided she would improve the working standards of her colleagues alongside her career. The turning point was the National Conference of Women in the Mining Sector held in Bukavo, the capital of South Kivu, in 2015, supported by the World Bank and the Congolese government. There, they set the foundations for what, two years later, became the National Network of Women in Mining (or RENAFEM). After attending that conference, Nyirasafari decided to form an association named Dynamics for Women in the Mining Sector (FEDEM), which flanked COOPERAMMA in the protection of women in Masisi territory. “In Congo being a woman is the greatest challenge,” Nyirasafari says. “Often it’s women themselves who feel inferior to the men and men feel legitimised to behave, as if they were really superior.” For this reason, joining an association for many women becomes the only way out from the constant pressure the society exerts upon them.

Today, Nyirasafari is also involved in DRC politics and will soon be running as a national deputy for the Senate, to give voice to the trampled on rights of the women of Masisi. “Inside COOPERAMMA I am the only woman with a diploma,” she says somewhat disappointedly. “Women from my area only think about getting married and, if things keep going this way, soon there will be no more literate women in Masisi.” Since local miners feel frustrated about the privileges granted to outsiders such as Senator Mwangachuchu, they all too often join armed groups to make up for their subdued sense of injustice. By doing so, they leave an often too heavy burden upon the women.

The mission of both the Chamber of Commerce and Mwanza is to identify risks within the mining sector, in order to regulate the sale and export of minerals from post-conflict areas that, like North Kivu, are still strongly unstable and characterised by a high presence of armed militia. “Despite the obstacles, I make sure that the supply chain of the minerals destined to go to foreign trade is responsible and that, at least for the 3Ts, the international standards of traceability are implemented,” Mwanza explains, referring to the basic minerals the growing electronics industry relies upon, such as tin (cassiterite), tantalum (coltan) and tungsten (wolframite). “Since both gold and precious stones slip away from the regulations imposed by the official market, and are often exposed to trafficking and smuggling, I am also backing the authorities in the creation of a Stock Exchange.” Mwanza has a very clear vision of the direction the mining sector must take in order for the resource-rich North Kivu to become competitive on a global scale. “The first thing that needs to be done to increase the still insufficient level of production,” she explains, “is pushing miners to form cooperatives, which in turn need to receive material support from the State to get mechanised and be able to exploit larger areas in a shorter time. This way they can make bigger profits.” Things should be the same for women, even if they often cover marginal roles otherwise performed by the machines. “It’s not true that illiterate women risk losing their job, if mining gets mechanised,” claims Mwanza.

The women’s issue has become pivotal since the RENAFEM network was formalised in 2015. “I attended both conferences in Bukavo and Lubumbashi,” Mwanza says. “For a while the World Bank had been trying to present my case as an example of a success story, to encourage the other women to believe in themselves and never renounce to the idea of growing within the mining sector.” Mwanza is the first to admit that she is not like any other woman, though. “Probably, if I had stayed in the village in Kasai where my father was born, I wouldn’t be like this,” she says. “The environment I was raised in helped me become the woman I am today.”
Mwanza is the first of eleven children her mother had from a well-renowned judge of the Supreme Court. The Congolese legislation dictates that people pursuing this career must change place every couple of years, to avoid conflicts of interests, which is why Mwanza’s first memories are blurred. Given the high social status of her parents, though, no one in her family had to give up their career to build up a family, or vice versa. “According to our local mentality, being a woman is a misfortune. But my parents were different,” she says frankly.

Like the other women, Mwanza suffered the advent of the war in her own way, too. “I feared for our lives but I was also very concerned that, if I stayed in Congo, I would have to make compromises,” she says. “So many people offered me bright careers, but I didn’t want to work for the rebels controlled by foreign powers.” Mwanza left Bukavo – where she lived at the time – with her husband and found shelter in Rwanda, where she spent ten years until 2006, when she returned to Congo to vote at the first free multi-party elections in 46 years. She moved to Congo for good in 2007 when she was offered the management of the firm she still runs. As soon as her managing skills were ascertained, she was asked to cover more challenging roles, too. Today Mwanza wants to beat another record and become the first woman in North Kivu to hold a licence not only to export, but also to cut and sell finished jewels, designed by herself.

Gender based violence and systemic rapes started in the 1990s, spiked during the second Great War (which formally ended in 2003) and became routine between 2006 and 2007. “Back then, I used to work at Doctors Without Borders and I called for the authorities to become grantors of the antiretroviral therapy programs aimed to slow down the spread of the virus,” Sebahire says, still visibly shaken. “Also joining that program was the Rwandan commander who led the revolt, himself HIV-positive. But I couldn’t know that his involvement was a farce.” One night, in fact, the commander sent some of his men to kidnap Sebahire with the probable intent being to abuse her. But her husband managed to hide her and organise an escape. “Having seen so many women broken by the war, and knowing that I could have been one of them, contributed towards making me more committed to what I do,” Sebahire claims. “But my interest in this field precedes all this.” Since 2006, Sebahire has also started helping women miners by handing out contraceptives to limit the spread of sexual infections and diseases in the mining pits. It was when she first set foot in the sites that she became aware of the physical abuses women are constantly subjected to and decided to create a program to promote their rights.

As Sebahire managed to uproot this and other wrongful practices, new ones would spring up to replace them. For instance, at some point the site managers prevented women from accessing the mining pits unless they paid 15,000 francs (roughly £8). Traders, pickers, washers… everyone was subjected to the same treatment. The only ones who didn’t have to worry about sharing their profits with anyone were, as usual, men. “Women miners earn up to £2.70 a day, if it’s a good day, and you ask them to pay an entrance fee?” asks Sebahire, opening her eyes wide. “This is pure discrimination. We divided women into groups and, amongst them, we chose and trained a representative. After this, with the help of a legal councillor we gathered the local chiefs, the police and the site managers, we proved, laws in hand, that the tax was wrong and had to be blocked. We still do this every three months.” The conditions of women miners in the area have steadily improved and, if men don’t stop trying to step upon their rights, women have developed better awareness and have become more resilient to their provocations. Sebahire’s choice to focus on Walungu as the first area of intervention was random. “We were contacted by the site managers because they feared the HIV contagion,” explains Sebahire. “When we arrived, we noticed other problems too.”

The lives of women miners are hard and at each and every level men subject them to different forms of discrimination. An example of this concerns women who are forced to negotiate their access to the mining sites through sexual activity. Sebahire believes – and she’s not the only one – that: “If they must be protected from a medical point of view, they are but not to be considered more socially vulnerable than other women.”

All of a sudden, in the middle of a junction, where old Jeeps challenge motorbikes and pedestrians to see who will reach the nearby mining site first, two old ladies in traditional dresses appear. They both point at the wooden ALEFEM (Association against the Exploitation of Women and Children in the Mining Sector) sign standing on the opposite side of the road, and wave to follow them. ALEFEM was founded by Francoise Bulambo and Emilienne Intongwa in 2006, a few years after the end of the second Congolese war, which hit Kamituga with particular intensity.

Like a phoenix that obtains new life by rising from its own ashes, Intongwa has re-elaborated her own tragic past and carved out a leading role for herself. “As we were seeking shelter far from the city, the Mai Mai armed militia kidnapped my husband. Since that day I haven’t heard from him. I kept running but they robbed me of everything,” she tells. “When I returned to Kamituga, I had nothing with me and, since, until that moment, I had worked in the field that had passed under the control of the militias, known to kill and rape each and every woman attempting to get her property back, I decided to move to another sector.”

Intongwa obtained a loan from a trader to explore her own mining pit but, in exchange, she was forced to hand him her house documents. “If you find minerals, the trader will be your only buyer; if you don’t, you’ll either pay back the loan or you will have give him your property,” she explains. “In my case, I found the minerals but I came across a much bigger problem. It was the first time men saw a woman managing a pit and they started spreading a rumour that I was a witch. To save my own life, I had to contract further debts and pay the local chiefs to protect me.” Back then, being accused of witchcraft meant being buried alive. Likewise, working in the mining site proved to be anything but easy. “The biggest challenge for me was working with so many men,” she says. “Until I tied up a strong relationship with some of my workers, many of the diggers would steal from me and I had to pay extra money to find someone who could check on them.” Moreover, further problems arose when men and women started working side by side. “The reason I co-founded ALEFEM was that many women miners after few months fell pregnant,” Intongwa says, grumbling. “Hence, I decided to create a network where I could also tackle their reproductive rights.”
Intongwa’s mining pit is located in the southern part of the Kamituga site, where artisanal mining is flourishing despite the industrial concession, in violation of the mining code. With men engaged in the underground digging and women exhausted from long hours spent dealing with all the remaining tasks, the industrious microcosm that revolves around Intongwa mirrors the complexity of the giant machine, which is Kamituga. At this point, Intongwa is eager to add something.

Besides getting her hands dirty, Intongwa is also one of the few female entrepreneurs Kamituga can brag about and she knows that, in order to grow and reach a position of economic solidity, she needs to form a cooperative. “Men don’t want to share with us the revenues they make from mineral sales and they do everything they can to hinder our access to the cooperatives. For this reason, I want to establish a similar organisation for women only,” Intongwa explains. “Sadly, in order to get the authorisation and be able to support this cooperative, we need money, and it’s hard to get the endorsement of women miners who struggle to even make their daily ends meet.” Despite all the difficulties, Intongwa is aware she owes everything to the mining sector. “Even if the men here first accused me of being a witch, I thank God for the opportunities he gave me,” she concludes, as her eyes start filling up with tears.

Despite the efforts associations such as ALEFEM make to get the mama twangaises involved in their activities and, therefore, push them to raise their heads up against the abuses they experience every day, only few of them have joined this association so far. “When you earn something, you use the money for your kids and, when you come back the day after, you start everything from scratch,” Masoga says. “Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t save money for other things.” Although the monthly fee for the association is low (approximately £4.50), it’s still too high for women, who struggle to arrive at the end of the day. Like a cat that bites its own tail, if the associations function well, “as long as they are created by women miners themselves,” as researcher Marie Rose Bashwira says, the mama twangaises criticise them because they feel they don’t represent them and won’t ever be able to understand their real problems.

The transporteuses (or maman kasomba) carry 25kg sacks of sand or stones from the mining pit, to where either other women (the twangaises) or mining machines grind them. For each run they get paid £1.20. The hydrauliques fetch water to keep the presses cold; the laveuses filter and wash the dust; the bizalu collect the discarded sand; the souteneuses deal with side tasks such as scoring fuel, working tools and food for the miners. Finally, the negociantes deal with the buying and selling of minerals and precious stones. All these activities depend on the daily supply and demand and can vary from day to day. To these women, we must add those responsible for the small restaurants, and the prostitutes. Women miners’ revenues can be as low as £0.45 and, except for traders, seldom go beyond £8 per day.

At the end of each working day women miners of Walungu raise up and sing together a chant that tells a lot about their lives, their struggles and their daily achievements.