There are times when language flops under the weight of insincerity. The Democratic Republic of Congo’s Council of Ministers, convened on Friday, 2 January 2026 presided by President Félix Tshisekedi, offered one such moment—solemn, rehearsed, and hollow. According to the Congolese Minister of Communication, Patrick Muyaya, the Head of State expressed his “regret and strong disapproval” of remarks made by Major General Sylvain Ekenge, judging them “incompatible with republican values and national cohesion.” One almost expects violins to accompany such moral anguish.Except that what General Ekenge delivered was not a verbal faux pas. Neither was it a slip of the tongue, nor a surge of patriotic excitement at a parade. It was a venomous, structured outburst on the national broadcaster RTNC—mobilizing hatred against an identifiable group, Tutsi, and specifically dehumanizing Tutsi women. That is not “remarks.” That is hate speech with a pedigree, a lineage, and lethal historical consequences in the Great Lakes region. Nevertheless, in the DR Congo’s highest moral court—the Presidency—this metastasizes into a matter of indiscipline. The sanction? Suspension from spokesperson duties. Not arrested. Not prosecution. Not referral to a court of law. Just a professional timeout, as though the General had missed a briefing or forgotten to salute his seniors. One must respect the restraint. When speech is a real danger to the lives of hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions—across a volatile region, the Commander-in-Chief reaches not for the law but for a communications strategy. Indeed, President Tshisekedi “ordered the immediate establishment of a coordinated public communication strategy, in order to prevent any further excesses.” Proper translation: the problem is not the ideology, the incitement, or the uniformed authority projecting it. The problem is messaging. The General strayed from the script. Here lies the correct parody. General Ekenge spoke in a military uniform, decorated with official insignia, embodying the state’s monopoly on force. Yet the offense, we are told, is not criminal but rhetorical. He did not say it properly. Had he whispered it in coded language, outsourced it to militias, or covered it in nationalist lyrics, perhaps it would have passed muster. This minimization ruins the law into etiquette. It is precisely what international norms were built to prevent. The law is without euphemism The prohibition of incitement to hatred is not a matter of taste—it is a matter of binding obligation. Article 4 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) requires States to criminalize dissemination of ideas based on racial hatred and incitement to discrimination or violence. Article 20(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) mandates prohibition by law of “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.” To spell out how these obligations operate alongside freedom of expression—jurists articulated the Camden Principles on Freedom of Expression and Equality. Principle No. 12 is unambiguous: “All States should adopt legislation prohibiting any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence (hate speech).” The Principle 12.1 defines their terms with surgical precision. “Hatred” and “hostility” refer to “intense and irrational emotions of opprobrium, enmity and detestation towards the target group.” “Advocacy” requires an intention to promote hatred publicly. “Incitement” denotes statements that create an imminent risk of discrimination, hostility, or violence against persons belonging to the targeted group. Measured against this standard, what General Ekenge did on RTNC on 27 December 2025 is not ambiguous. It is incitement to hatred—and nothing less. When such speech is delivered by a military General—on a national broadcaster—in a country riven by ethnic violence and cross-border militias, the “imminent risk” threshold is not imaginary. It is a historical fact. Principle 12.2 adds another safeguard against strategic amnesia: “States should prohibit the condoning or denying of crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, but only where such statements constitute hate speech as defined by Principle 12.1.” This matters because denial and condoning are not neutral acts; in the Great Lakes region of Africa, they are accelerants. When Kinshasa invites and supports a convicted genocide denier such as Charles Onana—or hosts and tolerates a genocidaire outfit like the FDLR, it knowingly violates the spirit and letter of these principles—normalizing narratives that prepare future crimes while play-acting to honor peace. Further, UNESCO’s normative framework removes any remaining ambiguity. In its work on combating hate speech and preventing mass atrocities, UNESCO stresses that States have a positive obligation not only to refrain from hate speech, but to actively prevent its dissemination—especially when it emanates from public officials or state-controlled media. UNESCO’s 2015 and 2022 guidance on hate speech emphasizes that expressions which dehumanize protected groups, particularly in fragile or post-conflict societies, pose a direct threat to peace and must trigger legal accountability, not administrative correction. UNESCO further warns that state silence, euphemism, or “balanced” communication in the face of incitement amounts to institutional complicity. Memory, UNESCO maintains, is hollow without justice. And, for that matter—prevention is difficult or impossible without naming perpetrators. Peace built on rhetorical neutrality is just violence adjourned. Genocidal language as a matter of tone For President Tshisekedi, it seems—would have us believe that his General improvised. He didn’t. Ekenge’s speech draws from a well-rehearsed canon: the reference list of Rwandan Hutu Power, refined over decades—exported, adapted, and dispatched wherever accountability is fragile or nonexistent. This is not ignorance speaking; it is mastery. And mastery of genocidal ideology is not cured by suspension from a microphone. Extend the President’s reasoning just a little further, and history itself begins to be dirty. If incitement to genocide is merely a lapse in discipline, then the architects of humanity’s darkest chapters were not criminals but poor communicators. Had President Tshisekedi been a judge at the ICTR, justice would have been swift—and nonexistent. Théoneste Bagosora was not a planner of extermination—but a man careless with words because he was inadequately trained in restraint. Jean Kambanda would be judged as a man who betrayed republican values but did not preside over a genocidal government. For Tshisekedi? Kambanda merely failed to align his rhetoric with “national cohesion.” And what about Hassan Ngeze? His crime, according to Tshisekedi, was not turning hatred into print—it was publishing without editorial moderation—and demonstrated unnecessary zeal. Major General Augustin Bizimungu? Suspended from duties. None of them, after all, personally wielded any machete or threw a grenade. In such outrageous moral universe, genocide is not illegal; it is inelegant. By the same logic, one shudders to imagine how President Tshisekedi might have judged Europe’s most infamous propagandists. Josef Goebbels did not personally gas anyone; Julius Streicher wielded ink, not a pistol and bullets. Both might have been summoned before a council of ministers, solemnly informed that their language was regrettable, advised to lower the temperament, diversify their metaphors, and submit future editorials for approval. Possibly Der Stürmer would have been suspended, not proscribed. Conceivably Goebbels would have been urged to adopt a “coordinated communication strategy” to avoid excesses while continuing to prepare the population psychologically for annihilation. In Kinshasa’s ethical universe, both men might have escaped justice with a stern lecture on moderation, urged to temper their vocabulary, refine their metaphors, and align their rhetoric with “national cohesion.” Their crime, it seems, would not have been preparing the ground for Holocaust, but speaking at the top of their voice, too openly, and without sufficient communicational restraint. Here you have the endpoint of laundering ideology into good manners. When an extreme form of mass violence is reduced to a breach of politesse, the State becomes an accomplice—not by action, but by rewording. This is how ideology survives: not by denial, but by procedural downgrading. When the law retreats into etiquette, mass murder no longer requires justification. It only requires better phrasing. Propaganda at cruising speed Still fresh in public memory—and apparently still ringing uncomfortably in the corridors of power—attempts to muffle the noise of the Ekenge scandal have driven the Congolese government into yet another performance of extraordinary mediocrity. And in this domain, it must be said, President Félix Tshisekedi’s administration is unmatched. When confronted with credibility crises, it does not correct course; it doubles down on farce. Thus, in the early hours of Saturday, 3 January 2026, propaganda shifted into cruising speed. The FARDC paraded prisoners before the press, dressed in military uniforms, solemnly presented as captured soldiers of the Rwandan Defence Force (RDF). The choreography was familiar, the acting wooden, the plot thin. Rwanda’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Olivier Nduhungirehe, summarized the spectacle with devastating economy on X: “What we are witnessing is a crude media spectacle, one in which even its own directors no longer believe.” It was not diplomacy but diagnosis. Indeed, the production collapsed under the weight of its own recycling. One of the alleged RDF soldiers, presented that day, was none other than Ndayambaje Abuba, a figure already known to the public. On 16 February 2024, Colonel Guillaume Ndjike Kaiko—then FARDC spokesperson in North Kivu—had introduced to the press, the same emaciated young man as an RDF soldier “from a place called Kayonza,” conveniently without a service number, and wearing a conspicuously brand-new uniform. Authenticity, it seems, can be tailored overnight. What Colonel Ndjike either forgot—or assumed the public amnesia—is that the same individual had been paraded roughly a month earlier, in mid-January 2024, wearing filthy civilian clothes, barefoot in appearance, with feet that had clearly never known the discipline—or discomfort of military boots. The transformation from a rag-tag civilian to RDF soldier required no training, no enlistment, and no time. Only a uniform and an obliging narrative. This is not intelligence failure; it is disrespect. Contempt for evidence, for memory, and for the intelligence of both Congolese citizens and international observers. When states recycle actors in different costumes, they are not merely lying—they are testing how little truth still matters. On the very same day, MONUSCO took to X to express ritualized outrage: “MONUSCO is deeply concerned by reports of a drone strike in Masisi Centre. It strongly condemns any attack, including by drones, that targets or affects civilians and civilian infrastructure.” The tears were public; the perpetrators were not. This institutional amnesia becomes less mysterious when one recalls that President Tshisekedi had already promised to “recalibrate” his government’s communication strategy. In this new doctrine, clarity is replaced by concern, and responsibility by grammar. The halfhearted condemnation—carefully avoiding mention of FARDC as the authors of this war crime against Congolese civilians—is entirely understandable. On 4 November 2025, MONUSCO proudly announced on X that it had trained 120 FARDC soldiers in Ituri, including in the use of drones and heavy weapons. When the graduates of that training applied their newly acquired skills not against armed enemies but against civilian homes in Masisi Centre, discretion became the last refuge. Condemn the act, erase the actor. This is how allies behave when accountability threatens partnership. Or how accomplices behave when exposure looms. Propaganda, well lubricated and shamelessly repetitive, continues its work—not to persuade, but to exhaust. In such a system, truth is not defeated by better lies; it is buried under layers of mediocrity, until fatigue replaces outrage and spectacle substitutes for justice. Médecins Sans Frontières echoed the outrage, counted the wounded, treated the shattered bodies—while equally declining to name the hand that shattered them. Thus the doctrine was perfected: violence without authors, victims without aggressors, suffering without accountability. This is not neutrality; it is narrative management. When bombs fall and no one is named, communication does not prevent excesses—it erases them. And erasure, history teaches us, is not the opposite of violence. It is its accomplice. Impunity baptized unity We are told by Kinshasa that national cohesion will be preserved by managing speech rather than confronting its meaning. The lesson is unmistakable: hate may be broadcast, as long as it is properly packaged. Lives may be endangered, as long as cohesion is rhetorically affirmed. No communication strategy has ever stopped a genocide. Only law, accountability, and moral clarity have—and only when leaders choose them over comfort. Scholars of mass violence have warned about this for decades. Gregory Stanton identified dehumanization as a decisive stage of genocide; Jacques Sémelin demonstrated how language normalizes the unthinkable; Martha Minow showed how failure to prosecute signals permission. These are not abstractions. They are warnings written in graves across this region. In Kinshasa, comfort won the day. The General’s uniform was gently folded. The microphone was removed. The ideology was left intact. Incitement was rebranded as indiscipline. The law was replaced with tone-policing. And history—patient, precise, and unforgiving—took notes. If ‘republican’ values are to mean anything in the DRCongo, they must be enforced when it is uncomfortable, not merely invoked when it is convenient. Otherwise, Tshisekedi’s “regret and strong disapproval” is not a moral stance, but a rehearsal for denial. In Kinshasa, comfort did not merely win the day—it was enthroned as doctrine. The uniform was gently folded, the microphone discreetly removed, and the ideology carefully preserved, like a dangerous family treasure wrapped in ‘republican’ language. Incitement was downgraded to indiscipline; hatred was reframed as excess; and the law was replaced with tone-policing. This is governance by code word, where mass violence is never denied—only grammatically softened. History, however, has an unforgiving ear. It does not listen for civility; it listens for consequences. What emerges is a state that does not fail to recognize danger—it chooses to manage it cosmetically. A state that believes genocide does not begin with ideology, but with poor phrasing. A state that treats uniforms as absolution and silence as wisdom. In such a country, perpetrators are not prosecuted; they are repositioned. Victims are not protected; they are managed for future violence. And justice is not denied outright—it is indefinitely postponed in the name of cohesion. But cohesion built on denial is not unity; it is a ceasefire with truth. “Regret and strong disapproval,” repeated often enough, becomes a ritual—performed after the speech, after the bombs, after the funerals. And history, patient and merciless, records not the words spoken at councils of ministers, but the choices made when law demanded courage and leaders chose comfort. Lessons from selective outrage What makes the Ekenge episode truly revealing is not what was condemned, but what never has been. For years, individuals such as Justin Bitakwira and others have engaged in unrestrained incitements against Tutsi. Their language is so categorical, so repetitive and venomous that it hardly bothers to disguise its intent. Yet President Tshisekedi has never once publicly admonished them. No regret. No strong disapproval. No sudden concern for ‘republican’ values or national cohesion. Silence, instead—long, deliberate, instructive. The shame, it seems, was not the caustic words. It was the military uniform on RTNC. Hate speech, when delivered by politicians, so-called activists, or civilian demagogues, is tolerable—even useful. But when spoken by a general in full regalia, broadcast to the world, it disrupts the carefully curated fiction. It exposes what is usually outsourced: the ideological continuity between civilian inciters, tolerated extremist Tutsi-haters, and the armed force that finally acts. None of this is novel. It follows a pattern so exhaustively documented that its repetition now borders on farce. Every major failure of genocide prevention begins the same way: incitement is detected, contextualized, minimized, and finally normalized. President Tshisekedi knows this calculus well. He also knows that the world rarely lifts a finger. It issues statements, expresses concern, urges restraint, and avoids naming names. Silence has never been punished; it has been rewarded with diplomatic patience. And so the message is perfect: hatred is not the problem—its visibility is. Say it unnoticeably, say it often, say it outside a uniform, and the state will look away. Say it too openly, too officially, and you will be suspended—not for what you meant, but for making it impossible to pretend otherwise. In Rwanda the genocide against Tutsi was preceded by public incitement, openly and often by officials but were dismissed as non-actionable. The United Nations’ own record is damning. The doctrine of “never again” repeatedly collapsed into “not yet,” then into “too late.” Genocide does not erupt from chaos but from permission: a go-ahead granted when leaders treat its ideology as speech, hate speech as excess, and excess as someone else’s problem.
