Zambia’s Stary Mwaba mines the toxic legacy of the Copperbelt’s ‘black mountains’

The famous “black mountains” in Zambia – huge piles of mining waste that beats the copper horizon – is a deep figure to Stary MWABA, one of the visual visual artists in the country.

“Kabfal, we used to call it” mu danger ” – meaning” in danger “,” tell MWABA BBC.

The painter, who was born and lived in copper until he was 18 years old.

The artist recalls: “But we sneak anyway – to choose wild fruits that somehow managed to grow there.”

Nowadays, young people who go to “MU Danger” are looking for fragments of copper ore in the rock slag of this towering garbage – the toxic legacy of a century of industrial mining production in Zambia, one of the largest copper and cobalt producers in the world.

They are digging deep and trapped tunnels – and they come out of the rocks to sell to most of them from Chinese buyers, who then extract copper.

It is a difficult and dangerous work and is often illegal and sometimes dead. But this can also be profitable – and in an area where young unemployment is about 45 %, for some young people, this is the only way they can meet their needs.

It tells the latest MWABA work – shown at the Lusaka National Museum this month – the story of young people calling Montenegro in the town of Kitwe – and acquires life rhythms among the residents of the Wusakile neighborhood.

They work for gang masters known as “Jerabos”, which is a corruption for “Boys Boys” – hinting to their perceived criminality.

The artist drew a series of large pictures, using old newspapers as a cloth. He cuts the articles that attract his attention – what he refers to as “major novels” – and attaches them to a support paper.

Uses a welding rifle to burn some words and create a series of holes in stories. Then pour into the paint to create pictures, or what he calls “small novels”.

“I take these major novels, and create holes so that you cannot understand the stories anymore. Then impose pictures of people I know for them – to show these little stories and small novels for ordinary people as well,” explains.

“They have important stories and it is part of the biggest story.”

Pictures can be seen on both sides, and in the distinctive MWABA style, they are colored in bright colors.

The artworks were wrapped with transparent acrylic and the boundaries of the newspapers that you hold with a clear tape because they are very fragile – like the presence of people MWABA painted.

They live in the shadow of Montenegro – the site since the early thirties of millions of tons of waste, full of toxic heavy metals – that cause chaos on the health of people and the environment.

One painting of his current work is entitled to it Girapo A astrologer worker appears that are preparing for safety ropes, which are associated with his waist while reducing tight tunnels fraught with risks, dug by hand and vulnerable to landslides.

Earlier this year, the entire water supply was closed to Kitwe, which includes about 700,000 people, after a catastrophic spilled of waste from a Chinese -owned copper mine near the tables flowing across neighborhoods such as Wusakile in one of the most important waterways in Zambia, Kafue River.

MWABA hears stories about difficulties and survival during the workshops, photography and performance that he and other artists kept for several years.

Choufulu It depicts almost a young man who embraces the precious “Chovulu” – the word Zambian English, or Zamilish, for the shovel. Mapa says these tools are the “personal artery”.

IPENGA The Tuba player picks up the local church group walking in the streets on Sunday morning.

Mapa says that most social life revolves around the church or the bar.

But the two young girls are in Shambelua Make their own fun on homemade fluctuations.

In the strong branches of the tree of yellow and blue cables-as soon as copper electrical wires are stripped of copper wires and sold them as scrap minerals.

MWABA comes from a family of mines – his grandfather, one of the grandfather on the mines and his father above the ground.

But the 49-year-old girl’s interest in the impact of Zambia mining as a subject of his paintings, almost mistakenly started in 2011-after his daughter, Zoe, helped with a scientific project at the Chinese International School, which she attended in the capital, Lusaka.

The task was to clarify how to absorb minerals and water. He and Zawi went to the market and bought the Chinese cabbage. It is not an indigenous but eaten now in many Zambian homes.

It contains a white stem, so it is ideal for absorbing food dyes so that Zoe decided to use it to show how the minerals will be drawn similarly in the factory.

MWABA recalls that the use of Chinese cabbage made the audience “uncomfortable and very comfortable.”

At that time, the late Michael Sata was carrying out campaigns for the presidency – and the tensions were high due to his glass rhetoric against the Chinese, who domestically accused of controlling the Zambian economy and the exploitation of workers.

So Maba turned the science project into a work of art – where the Chinese presence in the mining sector in Zambia was explored through three Chinese cabbage, yellow -dyed copper photography, blue blue for cobalt and the third red of manganese.

His Chinese MWABA cabbage brought a lot of international praise, and returned to Zambia in 2015, glowing with the success of artistic residence and exhibition in Germany.

He went to Kitoy, where he spent some years of childhood. But his focus has changed from the mere exploring the Chinese presence in Zambia to trying to tell the story of the people of Montenegro.

“I went back to a place where I grew up and things changed a lot,” the artist says, adding that “he never imagined that I would see the type of position that I see now – poverty.”

“It was a very emotional space and I was sad,” says Mapa.

Moaba moved to Massama in the northern province in 1994, after his father suddenly died. Three years later, the Zambia mines were privatized – which led to huge losses in jobs and an unprecedented economic crisis in Copperbelt.

The Black Montenef – always a source of environmental and health problems – is now somewhere to make money.

“The worst thing happened when the Black Montenefa was very profitable, most of these young people left school.”

Unable to get a job anywhere else, MWABA Ngallofwana joined a crew from Jerabos. Every day he wakes up and risks his life just to stay on his feet and feeds his family.

But even when the government banned mining there, the wealth of the garbage is tightly controlled through the aggressive hierarchical sequence – with the highest, and sometimes very rich, Girapos is often promoted to their title.

Frustration is more than the Jerabo series – from the feeling of exploitation, abandonment of education to finance the lifestyle of another luxury person, and the presence of a little saying in his future – is reflected in the plate of one young man in the turquoise T -shirt stands with his hands with confidence on the hips.

One -day head I got out of a workshop in which MWABA people to take their own photos, which led to a situation that reflects their hopes and dreams.

Sometimes the art of MWABA may change the path of a person’s life.

MWABA remembers a time when the older Jerabo came to a workshop and said: “Hey, I really love what you do.

“I think I may not understand that, but it is better for my young brother to come here because I do not want him to go through what I went through.”

Benny del is an independent journalist, podcast maker and documentary -based documentary maker