George Padmore on the Post-World War II Situation: Belgian Congo Uranium Deposits Vital in Atom Bomb Development—Workers Scandalously Underpaid

By George Padmore

September 8, 1945

Reprinted from the Pittsburgh Courier

PANW Editor’s Note: This article was published in African American newspapers in September 1945 just one month after the United States atomic bombing of two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9 of the same year. These military actions changed the dimensions of modern warfare, triggering a nuclear arms race which continues well into the third decade of the 21st century. We are not sure if the following text represents the entirety of the article since this is the only pdf version we have been able to recover online. George Padmore was based in London during this period and served as a correspondent for numerous newspapers, writing extensively on the anti-colonial struggle in Africa and internationally. Padmore was a leading participant in the Fifth Pan-African Congress held in Manchester, England the following month after this report was published. He later became a principal organizer for Dr. Kwame Nkrumah in the formation of the National Association of Socialist Students Organizations (NASSO) in the UK and later as his chief advisor on African affairs during the transitional and early independence period in the Gold Coast, later renamed Ghana in 1957. The question of uranium and its strategic value has come to the fore in the West African state of Niger in the aftermath of the ascendancy of the military-led CNSP and the subsequent threats of an imperialist-backed intervention by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), chaired now by neighboring Federal Republic of Nigeria President Bola Tinubu.  

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London—Ever since Japan’s capitulation to the devastating effects of the atomic bombs which completely vaporized two cities, British scientists have been warning the public that unless international control is immediately established over all deposits of uranium, western civilization is heading fast toward destruction. While much is being written about the atomic bomb and atomic energy released by the splitting of the atom in uranium, many people are still ignorant about this extraordinary element which now threatens the end of humanity. What is this uranium? 

Briefly, it is a hard white metal first discovered in 1789, but not isolated until 1840. It occurs in the black mineral, pitchblende, and radioactive, slowly disintegrating to make a new element known as uranium x. It is one of the rarest elements in the world. Deposits have been found in Cornwall, England, Bohemia in Czechoslovakia, Canada, the United States and Norway. But the largest quantities yet found are in Africa in the Belgian Congo and Rhodesia.

The mineral, pitchblende, is usually associated with copper and tin, consequently geologists in this country suspect that uranium will also be found in the great tin-producing areas of Nigeria in West Africa where exploration will shortly be undertaken by a British scientific expedition.

Congo Output Revealed 

Now that the atomic bomb has come into its own and the secrecy surrounding its production has been lifted, it can be revealed that in 1937 the Congo exported 1,052 metric tons of uranium ore and after the war started speeded up its production. When America came into the war, an economic mission was dispatched to the Congo by the late President Roosevelt to help the Belgians develop the output to a maximum. 

According to the 1944 report of the Union Miniere du Haut Katanga, it is revealed that “the treatment of the radium ores continued to be carried out in the United States of America. Belgium was then occupied by the Nazis and uranium works at Oolen in Belgium occupied by the Germans.”

Workers Underpaid

The uranium deposits in the Congo are being closely guarded by specially trained Congolese soldiers, who supervise the native miner as they produce the uranium ore, the most valuable mineral in the world today. These black miners receive an average wage of twenty-five cents a day, plus rations and a hut provided by the company. Once they enter the mining compound, they are never allowed to return to their village.