Buried in Rubaya

As Ibrahim Taluseke recovered two hundred bodies from the mud, the rebel commanders controlling the mine insisted only five had died.

[Speaker 1]: It started with the rain. In North Kivu, the wet season is always difficult, but late February was different. The ground was already saturated when the storms hit the Masisi territory earlier this week. [Speaker 2]: Local sources say the earth just gave up. We’re talking about the Luwowo and Gasasa quarries. These are massive, terraced pits carved into the side of a mountain. And on Tuesday, March 3rd, the soil structure failed. [Speaker 1]: The reports coming from the miners themselves are horrific. They describe walls of mud liquefying instantly, collapsing into the tunnels where hundreds of people were working. Ibrahim Taluseke, a digger who survived, told reporters he personally helped recover two hundred bodies before the area became too unstable to continue. [Speaker 2]: And that’s where the narrative splits. Because the group that controls that territory-the M23 rebel movement-issued a statement almost immediately. Their spokesperson, Fanny Kaj, claimed that only five people died. Five. And she blamed the incident not on the rain, or the lack of safety supports, but on "bombings" by government forces. [Speaker 1]: So you have a gap. On one side, witnesses seeing hundreds of their colleagues buried alive. On the other, a militant group insisting it was a minor incident caused by enemy fire. [Speaker 2]: And usually, a discrepancy like that is just called the "fog of war." But in this case, that gap between five dead and four hundred dead isn't just about propaganda. It’s about keeping a specific supply chain alive. [Speaker 1]: Because the mud in that collapsed pit is full of tantalum. And tantalum is the one metal the modern world currently cannot function without. [Speaker 2]: It’s Thursday, March 5, 2026, and you’re listening to The Angle. [Speaker 1]: To understand why this collapse happened, we have to look at the map. This mine, Rubaya, is the largest coltan deposit in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It supplies roughly 15% of the world's tantalum. [Speaker 2]: Which means 15% of the world's supply is currently sitting in territory occupied by a sanctioned rebel group. M23 seized this area back in May 2024. They set up a parallel administration, they collect taxes-estimated at about $800,000 a month-and they run the mines. [Speaker 1]: But here’s the complication. Four months ago, in November 2025, the DRC government officially declared Rubaya a "Red Zone." [Speaker 2]: Right. This was a legal maneuver. The government in Kinshasa lost physical control of the mine, so they tried to kill its economic value. By tagging it a "Red Zone," they made it illegal to source minerals from there. It was a ban intended to starve the rebels of cash. [Speaker 1]: But in practice, the ban did something much more dangerous. It didn't stop the digging. It just removed the oversight. When the Red Zone decree came down, all the government safety inspectors were pulled out. The NGOs left. The supply chain auditors stopped visiting because they couldn't legally be there. [Speaker 2]: Exactly. So for the last four months, you’ve had thousands of artisanal diggers working under M23 supervision, with absolutely no safety protocols. And they weren’t just scratching the surface. They were digging deep, vertical shafts and horizontal tunnels, running parallel to each other, honeycomb-style. [Speaker 1]: Which is a geological time bomb. When you have that many tunnels close together, and you introduce heavy rainfall, the water pressure builds up between the soil particles. It’s called pore water pressure. Eventually, the friction holding the dirt together drops to zero, and the hillside behaves like a liquid. [Speaker…