The worst day of Bathsheba Musole’s life was February 18, 2025. It started with a deafening crash when the 30-foot wall around a toxic-waste pool collapsed at the Chinese copper mine above her village. A poisonous river of a stinking yellow liquid rushed downhill, inundating homes and fields, including the one where she grew corn to feed her eight children. The floodwater, laden with cyanide and arsenic, rose chest-high. “I thought I would drown,” said Musole, 48 years old, in a recent interview.

In August 2025, months after the Feb. 18, 2025 disaster, officials from Sino Metals, a unit of the state-owned China Nonferrous Mining Corp., showed up at Musole’s half-acre farm, which the Zambian government says is too toxic to sustain crops for at least three years. They were there to make things right, she recalled them saying. Their offer was $150, but it came with a catch. To get the money, she would have to agree never to talk about the spill, take legal action against Sino Metals or even reveal the contents of the nondisclosure agreement itself…

Zambia’s government and economy.. have grown reliant on China. Zambia collects about $2 billion a year in mining taxes, mostly from Chinese mining companies. Half of the copper mined in Zambia, much of it by Chinese companies, is exported to China. In 2024, the Zambian government announced that Chinese miners would invest $5 billion in the country by 2031…

After months of investigation, Drizit Environmental, a South African firm contracted by Sino Metals, concluded that 1.5 million tons of toxic waste had overflowed into the Kafue valley, 30 times what the company had said. Sino Metals terminated the firm’s contract a day before the final report was due…

Excerpt from Nicholas Bariyo, China Pushes to Silence Victims of African Mining Disaster, WSJ, Oct. 27, 2025