Why Rwanda and South Africa bickering persists post-Mandela
Rwandan security officers escort members of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC), who surrendered in Goma, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, following fighting between M23 rebels and the FARDC, in Gisenyi, Rwanda on January 27, 2025.
President Paul Kagame knows what he is talking about when he says, “If the South African President Cyril Ramaphosa wants to bring war to us, we can deal with it in that context."
The tension between the two countries didn’t start yesterday in Goma. Rwanda and South Africa have traded accusations before, the former alleging that ANC bigwigs harboured Rwanda’s paramilitary group Rwanda National Congress (RNC), which conducted grenade attacks in Kigali between 2013 and 2014.
South Africa later accused Rwanda of being behind the elimination of the head of the same paramilitary group, Patrick Karegeya, and a failed hit on his successor, Kayumba Nyamwasa, in the same period.
Rwanda lightly denied the allegations. The RNC military wing was eventually disbanded and they moved their struggle to social media.
Rwanda used to have excellent relations with South Africa. President Nelson Mandela is on record declaring that his government armed Rwanda to go into the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to neutralise genocide perpetrators who, after defeat in Rwanda, had turned against Congolese Tutsi, with the same objective of exterminating them. Those Congolese Tutsi are who M23 is fighting for today.
Successor President Thabo Mbeki continued in Madiba’s footsteps and maintained friendly relations with Rwanda. Many of us have studied in South Africa, and Mr Kagame thanked the South African people for their help, in his speech last April at the 30th commemoration of the Genocide Against the Tutsi.
However, while he was close to Madiba and Mr Mbeki, President Kagame has never seen eye-to-eye with their successors, Jacob Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa.
What do Madiba and Mbeki have in common, and what about Zuma and Mbeki?
Well, the former statesmen did not battle corruption allegations, nor were they involved in mineral dealings in eastern DRC. If you fly across the DRC, you will see that almost every mine concession has a private airstrip.
Planes, small and big, fly in, are loaded with minerals, and fly out to destinations unknown, under the radar of the Congolese authorities and international control mechanisms.
These mines are co-owned by politicians in Kinshasa and big multinationals, including South Africans, and are operated by child soldiers, militia and Rwandan genocide perpetrators, FDLR.
Some of these mines are located in territories that belong to the Congolese Tutsi and Hutu. However, this group’s livelihood being farming and cattle keeping, is seen as a hindrance to those with mining ambitions.
You will see that whenever the Congolese army or the FDLR attack their area, not only do they displace them, but they cut the agroforestry in the area to trade as charcoal and shoot their cattle—both symbols of environment protection and life for the Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese, then turn the area into artisanal mines.
With the spectacular capture of Goma, M23 has destroyed about 80 percent of the DRC resistance. They eliminated, captured, or exiled to Rwanda, Congolese and Burundian elite troops, pushed away their Southern African Development Community allies and mercenaries and Monusco, which was offering artillery and reconnaissance support to FARDC, and forced the notorious Wazalendo militia founded by the Kinshasa regime to hide their rifles and self-demobilise.
M23 has also collected the arsenal of these defeated belligerents, including missile systems and tanks.
FDLR’s two notorious leaders, Nshimiyimana (Gavana) and Pacifique Ntawangudi (Omega), were killed, and hundreds of their fighters seized, and others were pushed deeper into South Kivu or across the borders in Burundi and Rwanda.
M23’s ongoing progression into Bukavu in South Kivu, has forced the DRC army to relocate its air force base to Kisangani, around 600 miles from Goma, making its drones and fighter jet attacks predictable and vulnerable to M23’s freshly acquired surface-to-air missiles.
With this situation, Mr Tshisekedi will have to finally accept to sit down with them and commit to implementing the “M23”: Peace accords signed on March 23, 2009, between the two parties.
Now, this complicates things for Burundi as well. When its President Evariste Ndayishimiye was chairing the East African Community, M23 emissaries went to see him to seek his support in encouraging Kinshasa to negotiate with them.
He accepted and asked them in return not to work with his enemy rebels of Red Tabara based in South Kivu, and not to recruit from Burundian refugees in camps in Rwanda and across the region, which they accepted. A few months later, he deployed troops to fight alongside FDLR and against M23.
I am seeing a new Angolan or East African force coming in to create a demilitarised zone between eastern Congo and the rest of the country to monitor the demobilisation of the Wazalendo militias and the FDLR by Kinshasa and their repatriation to Rwanda, where most will be integrated into the community as has been routine for the past 30 years. Only those with genocide cases will face trial.
Sanctions, against the backdrop of images of Western mercenaries paraded by M23 in Goma, handed over to Rwanda, then sent off to the countries whence they came, unharmed, will confirm Western hypocrisy in the eyes of M23 and Rwanda.
The writer is a researcher, a business lawyer and a writer based in Kigali. Jenerali's column returns next week.
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