DR Congo’s Rwandophone question: What US govt, SA, Tanzanian leaders have said

The situation in eastern DR Congo, especially an escalation in hostilities between a government-led coalition and the M23 rebels, has raised fears that the Great Lakes Region could be sunk into a wider conflict, if it is not contained in time. Since early February, the M23 rebels have advanced towards Goma, the capital of eastern DR Congo’s North Kivu Province, raising fears that they might take control of the city of an estimated two million people. Calls have mounted for the government in Kinshasa to agree to peace talks, instead of pursuing military operations that could escalate the conflict which has entered its third year. One of the conflict's root causes is the unsolved question of Kinyarwanda-speaking communities, also called Rwandophones, who are mostly persecuted and denied their rights to citizenship. ALSO READ: Rwanda ensures defence measures amid ‘serious threat’ from DR Congo Kinshasa continues to accuse Rwanda of supporting the M23 rebels – allegations Kigali dismisses. Rwanda has stressed that the conflict in eastern DR Congo is a result of internal problems including bad governance, ethnic discrimination, and violence, in DR Congo. Kigali also accuses the Congolese armed forces, or FARDC, of integrating the FDLR, a Rwandan ethnic militia directly linked to the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. The US-sanctioned terrorist group has, for long, been spreading hate and violence against Congolese Tutsi communities. Among others, Bernard Maingain, a Belgian lawyer has condemned hate speeches in eastern DR Congo and called on the international community to put aside other interests and finance an effective justice system to deal with hate speech in the country, to no avail. “The hate ideology has been there for years and it was amplified within the past months but in reality, the issue is that there was never a process to completely eradicate such ideology and we are seeing the consequences,” Maingain said in a televised show on the national broadcaster on December 27, 2022. ALSO READ: Belgian lawyer on why genocide ideology doesn’t dissolve three decades after dispersion of genocidaires The roots of the conflict, the persecution and violence against Kinyarwanda-speaking Tutsi communities, sometimes referred to as Banyamulenge – this is just one of the Kinyarwanda-speaking groups in question – can be traced as far back as the early 1960s, when DR Congo gained independence. Instead of addressing the main root cause of insecurity in eastern DR Congo, the United Nations Security Council preferred to manage this insecurity and focus on the consequences of the genocidal militia’s presence in eastern DR Congo, The nationality of the communities, which found themselves within the borders of Congo after the 1885 Berlin Conference, has been contentious. Laws have been passed and changed to accept them as Congolese citizens but a dangerous attitude that classifies Tutsi communities in the eastern DR Congo as ‘foreigners’ that should, therefore, ‘go back where they came from’ persists, and is a seed of unending conflict. This attitude promotes hate, marginalisation and violence. ALSO READ: FDLR integration into DR Congo army must be addressed – Kagame Various African leaders have spoken out on the issue of the Congolese Tutsi communities. Such leaders include Tanzania’s former president late Julius Nyerere, and South Africa’s former President Thabo Mbeki, among others. Thabo Mbeki Mbeki, who spoke to South African broadcaster SABC recently following his country’s military deployment to eastern DR Congo as part of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), has been clear that until the plight of the Banyamulenge is addressed, any external intervention will not solve the problem. “The fundamental problem remains,” said Mbeki in an interview with SABC’s Sophie Makoena. “The solution to that problem in eastern Congo is political.” “The government in Kinshasa must recognise that all the people of the Congo are all Congolese and it’s a responsibility of the government of the Congo to protect all of them.” ALSO READ: South Africa sends 2,900 troops to DR Congo despite censure by main opposition party “The fundamental reason the M23 emerges, whoever is behind it, is because a section of the Congolese population in eastern Congo doesn’t feel protected,” said Mbeki, who traces the problem in the days of President Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled the country, then called Zaire, from 1971 to 1997. Mbeki who served as the second president of South Africa from June 1999 to September 2008, noted that it was said since the days of Mobutu that Banyamulenge were not Congolese and that they were Rwandans. “The boundaries of the [DR Congo] as they stand today were colonial boundaries ... and therefore the people within those borders are a responsibility of the government of the Congo,” Mbeki said. Julius Nyerere Before his death in 1997, Nyerere, who was president of Tanzania from 1964 to 1985, also talked about the decades-long conflict in eastern DR Congo. While in New York at a roundtable discussion organised by the International Peace Academy in 1996, Nyerere spoke, at length, about divisive politics which had plunged the Great Lakes Region into conflict over the years. “Zaire passed some law which said the so-called Banyamulenge are not Zaire citizens anymore. This was a change. At first, at independence, they were regarded as citizens and then later a new law was passed which denationalized them,” said Nyerere. “The Banyamulenge are not immigrants to Zaire, they are not,” he said. “There is the problem of the Banyamulenge, yes. But there is a purely political problem of Zaire which will still remain when the problem of the Banyamulenge is over.” ALSO READ: Absence of security gave birth to M23 rebellion – Amb. Karega Ethnic violence before 1994 The influx of Interahamwe militia and members of the former Rwandan army – the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda – into DR Congo in 1994 intensified their genocide ideology inside DR Congo, this time targeting the Congolese Tutsi. It also fed into discriminatory tendencies that claimed that the Congolese natives of the Kivu regions were ‘Congolese of doubtful nationality,’ as explained by Rwanda's former ambassador to DR Congo Vincent Karega. However, long before the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, Kinyarwanda-speaking Tutsi communities in DR Congo were discriminated and despised as Rwandans and not Congolese citizens. ALSO READ: Pentagon Leaks: DR Congo banks on FDLR to topple Rwandan govt US government files The United States government has remained abreast of the situation in eastern DR Congo and the persecution of the Kinyarwanda-speaking Tutsi communities for at least 60 years. In 1965, a cable sent to the US State Department from the American Consulate in Bukavu, in South Kivu Province, documented an outbreak of violence in Masisi territory in North Kivu in which at least 200 people were killed. “The source of this violence has been the friction” between the so-called Banyarwanda and the Bahunde communities, with the Banyarwanda group called refugees and non-Congolese citizens, according to the classified cable dated October 29, 1965. Interesting. Detailed analysis by US diplomat 58 years ago showing unresolved issues that continue to plague our region. Until these root causes are grappled with, peace will elude us. This is why implementation of Luanda and Nairobi agreements are critical. https://t.co/HouMOeDWbJ pic.twitter.com/N94VOwyoxe — Yolande Makolo (@YolandeMakolo) February 14, 2023 The then-North Kivu provincial government controlled by the Nande, another ethnic group, sought “to picture the Banyarwanda as refugees (which they are not) and not as Congolese citizens (which they are),” read the cable, adding that the administration did not seek to “correct or even recognize the grievances of the Banyarwanda.” The cable read: “Further suppression of the Banyarwanda could lead to an explosive situation.” The 1965 cable noted that at the time, there were “no indicators of rebel attempts to capitalise on the dissatisfaction of the Banyarwanda,” adding, however, that “this group is presently the most attractive target for rebel recruitment in the Kivu.” Rebellion In the late 1990s, an armed group called RCD-Goma was created in rebellion to President Laurent Desire Kabila’s divisive politics that side-lined Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese Tutsi. In the 2000s, a group called CNDP was born, with Laurent Nkunda at its head. In early 2009, CNDP reached a peace deal with the Congolese government to integrate the rebels into the national army and its political wing becoming a political party. ALSO READ: CNDP to transform into political party On January 29, 2009, CNDP soldiers started voluntarily integrating into the national army, a development that then considerably contributed to a return to normalcy in the country’s east. The initial integration exercise, at Rumangabo military camp, was attended by top government officials who welcomed the development. At the ceremony, Julien Paluku, the then Governor of North Kivu Province, serving from January 2007 to February 2019, currently DR Congo Minister of Industry, said it was “a big day for the Province,” and thanked all involved for the effort that would bring peace to the region. “No one benefits from war,” he pointed out, “all we benefit from is peace.” But the optimism was short-lived. Barely 11 months after denouncing rebellion and moving to form a political party so as to partake, constructively, in their country’s political life, the rebels were frustrated. In November 2009, a frustrated Désiré Kamanzi, the then CNDP head, resigned. “The fundamental reasons are, notably, the slowness in implementation of the agreements we have signed with the government since January,” Kamanzi said. Key among CNDP’s demands was the sending home of hundreds of Congolese refugees in neighbouring countries, including Rwanda, as well as the full and proper reintegration of their new party’s political cadres into the national politics. Three years later, the M23 rebel group was formed by former CNDP carders as their communities were still threatened by FDLR and other Congolese militia groups. In North Kivu Province, the M23, or Movement of March 23, draws its name from the unimplemented Kinshasa-CNDP agreement of March 23, 2009. There is another group formed by the Banyamulenge community in South Kivu Province, called Twirwaneho, meaning ‘let's defend ourselves’.

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DR Congo’s Rwandophone question: What US govt, SA, Tanzanian leaders have said