Opinion
Diversion, deceit and the Rwanda-Congo affair
Part Four: A Call for Peace, A War on Hatred
Congo
is in deep, carnal inner turmoil, and its citizens’ palpable distress is only
natural.
Congo
has consistently ranked at the top of the list of countries with the highest
estimated likelihood of onset of internal mass killings for the past several
years.
In
the years 2018-2019,
Congo was ranked most likely to experience mass killings in the world; above
war-marred Afghanistan and Yemen. This is the alarming local state of
affairs that President Tshisekedi is trying to distract from; the one that
shows the tumour spreading, as one does, from within, as it feeds on his denial
and incompetence.
I
would like to point out that peace-driven Rwanda, despite its grim history,
despite having suffered the most rapid genocide known in modern history less
than 3 decades ago, despite being falsely accused of thriving through murder,
was nowhere to be found in this top 20 crisis countries list published by the Early
Warning Project in 2019.
Why
are Rwandans, and Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese vilified? Because hate and
violence have, sadly, been at the core of the Congolese experience for decades.
Kinyarwanda-speaking
Congolese people were getting lynched on the streets of Kinshasa in 1998 (a
time when Radio Television Nationale Congolaise in Bunia was also broadcasting
the following message: “People must bring a machete, a spear, an arrow, a hoe,
spades, rakes, nails, truncheons, electric irons, barbed wire, stones and the
like, in order, dear listeners, to kill the Rwandan Tutsis”) , and
Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese people are still getting
lynched on the streets of Eastern DRC, in 2022.
Hatred
for Rwanda and all its affiliations, founded or unfounded, has driven Congolese
people to kill their own countrymen. Meanwhile, it is Rwandan leadership that
is perversely, shamelessly, and most importantly, falsely, accused of murder.
DARVO is an
acronym that, in psychology, refers to a “a reaction perpetrators of wrong
doing may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior”,
involving both playing the victim, and victim-blaming. DARVO stands for “Deny,
Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender” and to illustrate it accurately, I
believe its definition should be accompanied by the portrait of a current
President of a resource-rich, long-suffering, better-deserving country nearby.
Victim-reversal
is typically regarded as an act of intentional manipulation, emblematic of
sociopathic behavior, but we could perhaps look at it differently, and offer
empathy even where it is not reciprocated.
Maybe
some people’s commitment to seeing cruelty and hostility in the “outgroup” is a
defense mechanism against a painful inner revelation; an undesired, forced
confrontation with a mirror’s ugly reflection.
And
if what you saw in yourself frightened you beyond the tolerable, what other
choice would you have, but to project that which repulsed and worried you, upon
other people?
There’s
an answer to this, actually. The choice you would have, the only noble,
acceptable solution to this tragic and painful inner dilemma, would be healing.
Felix
Tshisekedi ought to work to give his citizens the healing they deserve.
Rwandans unfortunately know a thing or two about engaging in this testing
process. Maybe when things de-escalate as they ought, the Rwandans that have
achieved recovery following hatred’s wounding, can share their wisdom with
those looking to receive it, across the lake.
Speaking
of de-escalation, there seems no desirable nor plausible alternative future.
The
Congolese hand is clutched around emptiness, a bluff they hope will be
convincing because of Rwandans’ Tutsi genocide and war trauma. Western support
seems to be what Congo is aiming for (and depending on), judging by the
touching soliloquy that President Tshisekedi delivered at the UN General
Assembly, and his armed forces’ desperate collusion with volatile rebel groups
in a self-doubting grapple for power.
And
yet the west seems....disinterested.
US
Secretary Blinken came to Kigali and served an unspiced, cold ambiguity soup,
went to Congo and did the same, and eventually flew home to the US to go be
prejudiced against Africans in peace.
France’s
relationship with Rwanda has improved drastically, at a diplomatic and
political level, to the point, it appears, of genuine friendship (the miracles
of good leadership are what we must keep wishing upon those that are yet to
know them); the UK-Rwanda asylum deal is unrolling smoothly. In the Region,
President Kagame’s amicable relationship with leaders of neighbouring countries
appears indisputable.
Support
for Congo in its twisted endeavor seems scarce, obnoxious as they have been
about demanding it.
So
it seems there’s nothing further to discuss besides how soon President
Tshisekedi shall be willing at last to fight the only good fight: the one for
his country and our region’s peace.
Someone
ought to tell His Excellency President Tshisekedi that history always has and
will remember.
The
same way it remembered the apathetic leaders that allowed what is arguably the
richest country in the world to become one of the most tainted by poverty; the
same way it watched as the foreign authorities for which cowardly global south
leaders tapped-danced went about plundering their countries; the same way it
told us, from the efficiency with which our Liberating Forces returned peace to
this country, that Rwandans would never be drawn into senseless conflict again.
Arrogant
as some may call the moon for not barking back at the dog, it shall keep
shining; history will remember whether a neighbourly President chooses to make
of his nation the moon, or a slighted animal.
This
is the final of the four-part series.
Source:
www.newtimes.co.rw