# Union Minière du Haut-Katanga If this cluster has a protagonist, it is not a country or an ideology but a company. UMHK connects Leopold's concession model to the Belgian colonial labour regime, the Hiroshima bomb, the secession of Katanga, and — through its nationalised successor [[Gécamines]] — the assets that Chinese and American investors are buying and selling in 2026. ## Structure Founded in **1906** as a joint venture of the Belgian Compagnie du Katanga, the state-linked Comité Spécial du Katanga, and the British **Tanganyika Concessions** of Robert Williams, whose prospectors had proved up the copper. Concession: about **20,000 km²**. Control ran through **Société Générale de Belgique**, which by the Second World War held roughly **70% of the entire Congolese economy**. ## Scale | Year | Position | |---|---| | 1911 | First year of production at Ruashi — 997 tonnes of copper | | 1917 | 27,462 tonnes | | 1922 | Radium refinery at Olen; by 1926 a near-monopoly of the world radium market | | early 1930s | **The largest copper-producing company in the world** | | 1950s | ~75% of world cobalt | | 1960 | Sales ~$200m/yr; **60% of Western uranium, 73% of world cobalt, 10% of world copper** | Katangese copper generated roughly **a third of all Congo government revenue**; UMHK export duties at times supplied two-thirds of it. ## Labour The company did not compete for workers; it had them supplied. The **Bourse du Travail du Katanga** (1910) recruited through village chiefs paid ten francs a head, backed by soldiers, with quotas assigned. Head and hut taxes forced men into wage labour. By the 1920s about 60% of the workforce were foreign recruits, largely from Northern Rhodesia. In 1922 Belgium legalised whipping to enforce labour contracts. **Mine-worker mortality ran at 70 to 140 deaths per thousand per year between 1913 and 1917.** The 1927–28 "stabilisation" under medical director Léopold Mottoulle replaced six-month tickets with three-year contracts, brought families into company camps and provided schools, clinics and rations — covering 98% of the workforce by 1931. It is usually narrated as reform. It is more accurately the point at which the company acquired the worker's entire life rather than renting his labour by the season. On **9 December 1941**, with wartime inflation having raised the cost of living 71% against wages of about 700 francs a year, striking workers assembled at the Elisabethville stadium and troops opened fire. Official toll: 48 dead, 74 wounded, with perhaps 50 more dying of wounds. Two days later UMHK granted a 25–50% raise. The governor who gave the order was promoted and decorated. ## Uranium The [[Shinkolobwe and the Manhattan Project]] page covers this in full. The short version: UMHK's Katangan ore assayed up to 65% U₃O₈ against 0.02% for American alternatives, [[Edgar Sengier]] shipped 1,200 tons of it to Staten Island in 1940, and it supplied roughly two-thirds of the ore behind the Manhattan Project. ## Katanga On 11 July 1960, eleven days after independence, UMHK **advanced [[Moïse Tshombe]] 1,250 million Belgian francs** as an advance on taxes it owed to the government in Léopoldville. The company did not bribe a secession into existence; it redirected its tax stream to one. Without that, the [[Katanga Secession]] is not financially viable, [[Patrice Lumumba]] is not isolated, and the Congo Crisis takes a different shape. ## End, and afterlife [[Mobutu Sese Seko]] seized the operations on **31 December 1966**, creating the state company that became [[Gécamines]] — while UMHK's commercial arm retained the marketing and service contract, so the sales channel stayed put. The Belgian parent continued as a metals group and is the corporate ancestor of today's Umicore. The ore bodies UMHK opened are the ones [[Glencore]], [[CMOC]] and the 2026 US-backed consortium are now trading. That is the point of the page: **the shareholders change and the asset does not.** ## See also [[Gécamines]] · [[Belgian Congo]] · [[Katanga Secession]] · [[Shinkolobwe and the Manhattan Project]] · [[Conflict Minerals Hub]]