Ilda Amani, 26, a beautiful lady from Bukavu won the Miss Universe DRC beauty peagant on August 29 in Kinshasa after a tough competition with 20 other contestants. Ilda will represent DRC at the 73rd Miss Universe 2024 pageant in Mexico in November. DRC last participated in the contest in 1985 when the country was known as Zaire under the leadership of Mobutu Mobutu Sese Seko.

As many commentators from around Africa congratulated Ilda for the achievement, within DRC, the story was different and absurd. Apart from her friends and fans in Bukavu, in eastern DRC, who showed up to join her in celebrations, many commentators on social media from other parts of DRC called Ilda a foreigner.

The reason for the negative comments is nothing else other than the fact that Ilda comes from eastern DRC and is from the Rwandophone community. One social media user wrote: “Both Miss Uganda and Miss Universe DRC have cause a lot of controversy in their respective countries for being too beautiful to be Uganda or Congolese…they accuse them of being Rwandan I didn’t know beauty is synonymous with Rwanda.”

The Miss Universe contest therefore, exposed xenophobia against Rwandophones in eastern DRC, and how they are treated as illegitimate citizens. In a country of more than 250 tribes, Rwandophones are concentrated in the eastern part of the country where the Congolese government is battling the Congo River Alliance (AFC) rebellion.

It all started just about two years ago when the M23 rebellion ressurged after a 10-year hiatus, with the rebels fighting for their rights as legitimate Congolese citizens. The rebels took up arms again to protect a comunity whose rights to citizenship, among others, have been denied by successive regimes since the 1960s. The rebels joined a larger AFC rebel coalition headed by Corneille Nangaa, the former head of the DRC electoral commission, end last year.

The Miss Universe contest is aimed at empowering young women, and striving for gender equity around the world. Ilda will carry the DRC flag to Mexico with two hearts.  One heart will be of happiness knowing that she is doing all she can to make her country proud if she wins the Miss Universe global contest.

The second heart is of misery, knowing that she is not considered as a legitimate citizen of her own country. And she shares such absurd realities with millions of Rwandaphones in eastern DRC and others in refugee camps in neighboring countries.

The question of the conflict in eastern DRC continues to be deliberately distorted and misunderstood by the international community. Instead of tackling the fundamental causes of the conflict in eastern DRC, the international community simply because of its own interests, deliberately focuses on the vast country's mineral wealth as the cause.

To them, the main interest in DRC is the minerals and they do not care about the lives of millions of people denied their rights as legitimate citizens.

Patrice Émery Lumumba, who served as the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo was a nationalist who advocated for a united Congo and fought against any form of discrimination. He was executed on January 17, 1961 under the orders of Belgium and the United States.

This explains why the world cannot expect the people who killed Lumumba, a man who wanted to have control over DRC minerals for the benefit of the Congolese and to rule over an orderly Congo, to do anything to save the country or its people. Congo remains disorderly and chaotic after Lumumba, and the international community benefits from a chaotic DRC.

In a book titled: The real Story behind Patrice Lumumba’s Assassination (2003), the author, Isaac Chotiner, points out that, “The Belgians wanted to protect their mining money. The Americans feared a Soviet foothold.”

Today, the interest of the Belgians, Americans, and the rest of the West is one and that is to protect their mining interests and that’s why they keep a blind eye to the Kinshasa regime that has denied Rwandophones in eastern DRC their fundamental rights as legitimate Congolese.

The international community is aware of the root causes of the crisis in eastern DRC, but will not come out openly to call for a political settlement of the conflict between DRC and AFC. As early as October 29, 1965, André J Navez, then US Consul in Bukavu, informed his government with a detailed account on the killings and discrimination the Rwandophones in North Kivu were facing according to declassified US cable. 

“For its own political ends, the WaNande-controlled North Kivu Provincial Government seeks to picture the Banyarwanda [Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese] as refugees (which they are not) and not as Congolese citizens (which they are) [….] No attempt has been made by the provincial government to correct or even recognize the grievances of the Banyarwanda [Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese]. Instead, the North Kivu Government claims that there is a vast conspiracy organized by the “Rwandan emigres,” the document reads.

The crisis in eastern DRC exposes the hypocrisy of the international community and reasons why the rebellion has lived on for decades. 

Ilda is happy for being a celebrity who will raise the flag of DRC before the entire world.

On the other hand, she has a set of unanswered questions. Who will stand to protect and give confidence to Ilda as she sets her eyes on a world prestigious crown amid the xenophobic attacks? Who will give dignity to millions of Rwandophones denied the right to live in their country and are languishing in refugee camps? Ilda only needs to be proud of who she is, move with confidence, and set her eyes on the Miss Universe crown in Mexico.