SADC wants all Congo conflict parties in Dar talks

DRC President Felix Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame – the main belligerents in the deadly fighting – are expected to attend a summit on Saturday, their offices confirmed.

Kinshasa accuses Rwanda of funding the rebels and sending its troops to fight inside the Congo. And Rwanda accuses Kinshasa of hosting remnants of the genocide perpetrators,rebels known as FDLR, who still seek to topple Kagame's administration.

Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who chairs the 16-member SADC bloc, said the summit can only be fruitful if all the parties in the DRC conflict participated in the search for lasting peace.

Read: SADC agrees to meet EAC over Congo crisis

“I believe it will be most fruitful if all the parties to the (security situation) in the DRC are present,” said President Mnangagwa, who will co-chair the Dar es Salaam summit with Kenyan President William Ruto, the current EAC chairperson.

“It does not help to discuss matters with some of the parties being absent. So it is my belief that my dear brother (President Tshisekedi) will invite them,” he added while addressing journalists in Harare on Wednesday.

President Tshisekedi has in the past refused to recognise the M23, a situation that has complicated previous efforts to broker peace.

In fact Kinshasa has labelled  the group a terrorist organisation. Rwanda, on the other hand, demands that the group be at the table for any longterm peace talks.

There are more than 100 armed groups in the volatile eastern DRC, but the M23 has emerged as the biggest threat in recent weeks after it seized control of Goma, the capital and largest city in North Kivu Province late last month.

Fourteen South Africans and three Malawians, who were part of the SADC Mission in DRC (SAMIDRC) that was mandated to disarm the M23 rebels, were killed in the battle for Goma.

Read: Tanzania to host joint EAC-SADC summit on eastern DR Congo crisis

President Mnangagwa said SADC believed that the solution to the conflict in the DRC lies in the central government regaining full control of the country.

“The DRC has always been faced with challenges of this nature,” he said. “Besides it is a vast country and one would want to see a central government that is in full control of that country, that is the first step I think.

“Currently as we meet as both SADC and the East African Community we will probe that question and see whether it is possible to make sure there is one voice in one country.”

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya confirmed to journalists on Wednesday that he will attend the Dar es Salaam summit.

An extra-ordinary SADC summit held in Zimbabwe last week mandated the block’s Organ Troika on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation chaired by Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan to engage all state and non-state parties to the DRC conflict on a ceasefire process.

The leaders also called for a coordinated effort to promote dialogue, including supporting the Luanda Process and the United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO), among other initiatives.

Rwanda President Paul Kagame has been critical of the SADC troops’ presence in eastern DRC as he says they are aiding Kinshasa’s fight against its own people.

M23 was formed in 2012 as an offshoot of another rebel group and its stated goals are to protest the Tutsi population in eastern DRC, which had long complained of persecution and discrimination.

Read: East African Community banks on SADC to address confidence crisis in its ranks

Kigali, which has previously accused the Congolese authorities of working with some rebel groups made up of people who were responsible for the 1994 Rwandan genocide who then fled to the DRC, denies charges that it is arming the rebels.

SAMIDRC was first deployed on December 15, 2023 to support the DRC army to fight resurgent armed groups in the eastern part of the country.

SADC leaders in December last year agreed to extend the mission by another year at an extra-ordinary summit held in Zimbabwe.

The regional force comprises armies from Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania and elements of the Congolese army.

SADC’s Mutual Defence Pact (2003), which motivated the setting up of the SAMIDRC emphasises that: “any armed attack perpetrated against one of the member states parties shall be considered a threat to regional peace security and shall be met with immediate collective action.”