Global Voices

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The world is talking, are you listening?

A documentary on Zambian copper mining and its negative impact on society has emerged on YouTube and has so far attracted over 6,000 hits.

The clip “Zambia: Good Copper, Bad Copper” was first reported in the blogosphere by the Zambian Economist. Chola Mukanga, the creator of the blog, wrote:

A powerful documentary on the economic plunder of copper mining in Zambia and the associated environmental damage. These are issues we have discussed many times on this website but it is good to see them brought together in this video. The video was produced April 2012. Sadly, it takes non-Zambian journalists to put a documentary like this together. Where are our investigative journalists?

A number of netizens have reacted to the clip. George Chisenga responded:

i really do not even know what to say but all i can say is that i feel so disgusted and i really do not know what we can do and what we shall do to make the dice fall in our favor as zambians one day

TheJosok bemoaned:

Cry our beloved country.
Why should we remain poor when a coveted product is plenty and mined at the expense of the locals’ health

Map of Zambia showing the copper mining area in Zambia. Image released by Wikipedia user Acntx under Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

gogohasme2 wrote:

[…] i am zambian too and after watching this i think we need to come up together and try to fight for our country and not just watch the video and let go we need to come up with something,we are not going to say MMD OR PF HAVE DONE THIS ,,we can stand up and let our voices be heard ..

The least Zambians can hope for is that political leaders in the country not only get to watch the documentary but do something about it as well.