South Africa’s foreign minister, Nduhungirehe, talks on the DR Congo crisis

During a conversation with his South African counterpart Ronald Lamola on Thursday, January 30, Olivier Nduhungirehe, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, discussed the situation in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the M23 rebels made progress this week and took control of the vital city of Goma.

The conversation between Nduhungirehe and Lamola took place amid a diplomatic crisis that arose after South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, accused Rwanda of aiding the rebels in a statement on Wednesday. President Paul Kagame responded violently.

Kagame said that the South African leader’s speech included “distortion, deliberate attacks, and even lies” regarding their discussions over the situation in eastern DR Congo. Kagame has spoken with Ramaphosa twice since the M23 rebels seized over Goma on Monday.

“I had a good and constructive conversation with the two foreign ministers,” Nduhungirehe said.

Rwanda is “looking forward to working with South Africa towards common aspirations in our region and in the whole continent,” Nduhungirehe stated, adding that his country is “committed to peace and stability in Eastern DRC.”

“We agreed to pursue the spirit of the ceasefire agreement and committed to advancing dialogue on eastern DRC,” said Lamola.

A recent escalation claimed the lives of 13 troops from South Africa, the country in charge of a Southern African Development Community mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (SAMIDRC). Following the defeats, Ramaphosa and his administration attempted to present the SAMIDRC soldiers as “peacekeepers” rather than combatants.

Concern regarding the SAMIDRC’s participation in a Congolese government coalition that also includes the FDLR, a UN-sanctioned organization established by those responsible for the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, has been voiced by Rwanda twice.

The SAMIDRC soldiers joined an army of a nation whose president has declared his aim to overthrow the current government in Rwanda, Rwanda said, by fighting with the Congolese military forces close to the Rwandan border.

“SA is not present in the DR Congo to seek peace.”

Opposition parties demanded the South African contingent’s evacuation, and the president of South Africa was criticized for the deaths of the troops in the Democratic Republic of Haiti.

On Friday, Julius Malema, the head of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, claimed that Ramaphosa had deployed South African troops “to fight rebels who are more equipped than us” and in “a conflict we do not understand.”

Malema claimed that the diplomatic rupture with Rwanda and the humiliation in eastern DR Congo were caused “by our role of peace in the DRC being questionable.”

“The use of troops has never resulted in peace. The goal of the South African Defense Force’s presence in the DRC is not peacemaking. To protect the Congolese capital elite’s resource interests, however, we are taking part in the ten-year-old struggle.

South African troops should leave the DRC “because the motivations to send our forces there are dishonest,” Malema demanded.

“Not a corps of peacekeepers”

In the DR Congo, Helmoed Heitman, a defense expert from South Africa, criticized the attempt to portray the SAMIDRC as peacekeepers.

On Wednesday, Heitman told a South African radio, “The main issue is that at least some members of our government have the wrong idea that the SADC force and our force with it were there on a peacekeeping mission.”

The mission states that they are there to assist the DRC government in dismantling armed organizations, such as the M23. By neutralizing them, you are now participating in the conflict rather than maintaining peace.