KAMPALA, UGANDA

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) sent troops to eastern DRC to help President Félix Tshisekedi fight and eliminate M23 rebels only despite the fact that the volatile region has more than 260 armed groups. SADC countries that deployed troops to DRC are South Africa, Tanzania, and Malawi.

Burundi, a member of the East African Community, also has troops there under a bilateral arrangement with Kinshasa.

Burundian troops are supporting the Congolese army coalition which comprises the SADC forces, European mercenaries and other militias groups including the Rwandan genocidal group, FDLR.

Reliable sources claim that from the recent attack by SADC on M23 positions at a place known as Mweso, six soldiers from South African Defence Forces (SADF) were killed, while Burundi and DRC lost 17 and 72, respectively.

The call for SADC troops came after the DRC government forces, FARDC, and its coalition failed to defeat the M23 rebels and push them out of captured territories including the border town of Bunagana.

The SADC forces moved into DRC after Tshisekedi dismissed the East African Community regional forces (EACRF) that deployed in eastern DRC after the decision by EAC heads of State to take measures to stop the war in eastern DRC.

The fall out between Tshisekedi and EACRF was a result of the latter refusing to fight the M23 rebels, with the belief that military force was not the appropriate solution to the crisis in eastern DRC.

Since the problem between M23 rebels and the DRC government is political in nature and has prevailed for decades, the EAC bloc believes that it is only political and diplomatic means like dialogue between the two sides that can bring about a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

This is not the first time that SADC forces have come to fight the M23 rebels in DRC. In November 2012, the M23 rebels captured the city of Goma but were later chased out by SADC forces.

The fact that the rebellion resurfaced again, a decade later, is an indication that although SADC celebrated the defeat of M23 rebels then, the root causes of the conflict were not addressed.

The cycle can keep on repeating itself.

People who fight for a just cause never give up.

The case of South Africa fighting against apartheid and the liberation of South Sudan should be an eye opener.

It took the ANC almost 50 years to fight against apartheid.

Nelson Mandela served 27 years in prison under harsh conditions but did not give up. The SPLA took 28 years to liberate themselves from the Khartoum government. M23 rebels are fighting for their survival against an existential threat.

The fundamental question here is whether SADC is helping DRC to solve the crisis or making it more complicated. Thousands of innocent people have been displaced and others killed by heavy artillery shelling by the SADC forces since they started engaging M23 rebels.

South Africa which is leading the SADC contingent knows very well how apartheid was bad for South Africans. The term “apartheid”, an Afrikaans word, derived from the French term “mettre à part”, literally translated to “separating, setting apart,” is currently in operation in DRC based on ethnicity.

The Apartheid system legalized racial segregation in which one racial group was deprived of political and civil rights. In DRC, the M23 rebels represent a segregated group, the Kinyarwanda speaking Congolese Tutsi community.

The question dates back in history when colonial borders were set up dividing communities that belonged to neighboring countries.

Although majority M23 rebels speak the same language as the people of Rwanda (Kinyarwanda), they are not Rwandans as Tshisekedi and the regimes before him denied them their political and civil rights.

Unfortunately, DRC authorities continue to run away from their responsibility of uniting the country and have externalized the problem, making Rwanda a scapegoat.

The DRC authorities have engaged in hate speech and incited citizens to hunt and kill people from Kinyarwanda speaking Tutsi communities. Hundreds have been arrested, tortured and killed. The Congolese Tutsi have been harassed and told that they are foreigners who do not belong to DRC.

Thousands of Kinyarwanda speaking Tutsi sought refuge in neighboring countries and farther abroad to save their lives.

SADC’s military intervention in DRC ignores the M23 rebels’ plight where they face threats of ethnic cleansing. The decision by SADC, and more especially South Africa, to help Tshisekedi in his ethnic cleansing agenda betrays Nelson Mandela’s legacy.

What SADC forces are doing in eastern DRC is worse than what the Apartheid regime did to South Africans.

When he opened a case in The Hague against Israel, Ramaphosa said, “As a nation that fought and defeated apartheid, we have a particular obligation to stand up for justice and fundamental human rights for all people, everywhere.

It is this obligation that informed our application to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to halt the violence unleashed by Israel on the Gaza Strip.”

Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki knew very well the problem of the Kinyarwanda speaking Tutsi community in eastern DRC, but today, questions are asked as to what has blinded Cyril Ramaphosa from seeing the eastern DRC crisis in the right perspective, as Mandela and Mbeki did?

It is a big shame for the leader of a country that suffered Apartheid to be supporting an ethnic cleansing agenda in DRC.

In November 2012, when the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, visited eastern DRC, she warned of the violence and the abuse targeting of civilians based on their ethnicity.

M23 rebels are fighting to protect the targeted community and, sadly, SADC is fighting on the side of those targeting the Congolese Tutsi community.

Genocide scholars have pointed out that hate speech is a precursor to genocide and what the SADC forces are doing in DRC in supporting a government that is targeting Congolese Tutsi for elimination, is worse than supporting Apartheid.