The UK has just decided to “punish” Rwanda with sanctions and will seek to rally other European nations to follow suit, based on its conclusion that Rwandan interference is the sole cause of the conflict in eastern DR Congo. This is the same UK, manned by much of the same civil service in its Foreign Office, that was last year willing to send illegal migrants to Rwanda, labelling it a "safe third country" known for its stability and a long-standing tradition of providing protection to those in need. Rwanda currently hosts over 135,000 refugees and asylum seekers who have found safety and sanctuary there.
What happened is that the UK, and the West in particular, have swallowed hook, line and sinker, the public relations-driven Kinshasa narrative on the conflict that has bedevilled its eastern region for decades.
First and foremost, it needs to be acknowledged that many of us who have met or interacted with Congolese people, in their country or abroad, are usually struck by their decency, warmth, and kindness. They are among the most gracious and resilient individuals on our continent, embodying qualities that stand in stark contrast to the unrelenting suffering they have seemingly borne for generations.
Their humanity and resilience stand in stark contrast to the relentless suffering foisted upon them - tribulations so profound they rival the horrors inflicted by King Leopold and his Belgian enforcers, who turned Congo into their personal slaughterhouse.
Yet, despite this history of external plunder and cruelty, the truth must be told: the roots of Congo’s current tragedy are not found outside its borders, and they are certainly not in Rwanda. The country’s former president, Joseph Kabila, acknowledged it as much recently in an Opinion Editorial published on February 25 in South Africa’s Sunday Times.
The real cause lies within—a legacy of corrupt, visionless leadership that has compounded the suffering of its people at every turn. This suffering has been self-inflicted. Congo has been endowed with nearly every mineral essential for modern technology, from smartphones to electric vehicles, an agricultural potential vast enough to feed the entire continent, and the ability to harness its rivers for energy that could power everything from Cape Town to Cairo, the Congolese people are left to scrape by with barely a meal a day. They endure a non-existent healthcare system and an infrastructure so dilapidated it can barely be described as such.
The contrast just across the border, a country that is 89 times smaller and nearly annihilated by a genocide that claimed the lives of a million people, couldn’t be more striking. Rwanda has managed to pull itself from the brink. Economically, socially, and politically, Rwanda not only surpasses Congo but stands as a beacon for much of Sub-Saharan Africa. I am (almost) certain that if a Congolese person were to fall asleep in their home in Kinshasa tonight and woke up the next morning in Kigali, they would be convinced they had died and gone to heaven.
The pattern that has led to the current state of affairs was set early when Congolese collaborators aided the Belgians in assassinating Patrice Lumumba—dissolving his body in acid, then sending a single tooth back as a grotesque token. They did more than kill a man. They murdered the very possibility of a Congo that could stand tall, independent, and prosperous. Since then, the nation has been trapped in a cycle of predatory rule, with Presidents Mobutu, Kabila, and now Tshisekedi following the same tragic path, and thus ensuring that the country's potential remains unfulfilled. Worse, they empowered a predatory elite to institutionalise theft and corruption, dismantling the economy, eroding the social fabric, and leaving the country’s infrastructure in ruins.
This is the root of the crisis today. Not some grand foreign conspiracy. Not Kigali. Not an external boogeyman. Congo’s greatest enemy has always been internal. And yet, instead of reckoning with this reality, Kinshasa is making reckless choices that will only deepen the chaos.
The latest miscalculations include trying to expand the war by inviting Chad’s military to intervene—a country that can barely manage its own internal strife. If Chad struggles to stabilise Ndjamena, what miracle can it possibly perform in the vast and turbulent forests of the eastern Congo? Then there’s the desperate move of offering the region’s precious resources to Donald Trump or the European Union in exchange for sanctions against Kigali. Or orchestrating a visit by an ICC prosecutor looking to salvage his Gaza debacle and possibly regain his cancelled American visa. And to top it off, publicly lobbying European sporting football teams to weigh in and help Kinshasa win a PR war when its own military and hired mercenaries can barely keep their uniform on at the sight of M23. Did President Tshisekedi actually believe that Arsenal – known as the ‘Gunners’ – would rush their strikers and defenders to the front lines, and trade their football kits for fatigues?
The attempt to turn this war into a public relations spectacle, as if a slick marketing campaign can substitute for a functional military, is ill conceived. Wars are not won by slogans, nor by seeking external scapegoats. Congo’s path to peace and stability begins where this tragedy took root: at home. Until Kinshasa reacknowledges that the much-oppressed Congolese Tutsi, in the east of the country, are deserving of citizenship and equality, no amount of foreign intervention—military or rhetorical—will change its fate.
Nasser Ega-Musa, is a former UN official and Editor, Africa News Edition
