On December 9, 2021, Major Kaminzobe Joseph, a member of the Congolese armed forces (FARDC) and a Congolese Tutsi, traveled from his duty station in Fizi to Uvira together with other soldiers. When they reached Lweba, a village located between Baraka and Uvira, villagers pulled him from the vehicle and lynched him. His superiors who were travelling with him did not defend him but simply watched in approval as he was murdered.

But that was not the saddest part. Kaminzobe’s killers roasted his body and ate him in broad daylight.

Captain Kabongo Gisore, another Congolese Tutsi serving in FARDC, in Goma, the capital of North Kivu Province, was also stoned to death. His body too was roasted and eaten. As the killers stoned Kabongo, the gruesome act was recorded on video, as they chanted, “kill him, he is a Rwandan. He is M23; he is a Tutsi.”

The cannibals boasted as they ate Captain Kabongo and Major Kaminzobe, while the inhumane act was recorded on video.

No one was arrested.

The international community remained silent.

Many more Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese have been brutally tortured, and dehumanized in all sorts of ways, some of which are indescribable. Many have been, and continue to be killed, without impunity, in their homeland.

The international community knows and has kept deaf ears for decades as if the lives of Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese do not matter. 

A DRC member of Parliament known as Bitakwira is on the record publicly engaged in hate speech and inciting the Congolese population against the Congolese Tutsi. Many other government officials within security organizations and civil society have publicly incited the population against Congolese Tutsi calling them “foreigners who ought to be sent to their country” (meaning Rwanda).

The international community remains dumb and deaf.  This is just a few examples to show how deep the hatred of Congolese Tutsi is in DRC.

M23 rebels fight to end injustice

The M23 rebels are fighting to stop this injustice and restore the fundamental rights of the Kinyarwanda speaking Congolese.

When SADC countries come along to support Tshisekedi in executing his plan of ethnic cleansing of Kinyarwanda speaking Congolese, every right-thinking soul wonders what went wrong.

The South African Defence Forces (SADF), knowing the brutality and inhumane acts of the Apartheid regime against South Africans would be the last to point their guns at people who have been denied the rights to belong to their country with thousands languishing in refugee camps in foreign countries.

The Congolese Tutsi have been dehumanized and brutally killed the same way the Nazis dehumanized and brutally killed Jews. The first South African president, Nelson Mandela, who bravely fought apartheid would turn in his grave in a fit of sulks knowing that his country’s army is fighting a people persecuted and threatened by ethnic cleansing.

The founding father of Tanzania, the late Julius Kambarage Nyerere, if he turned to life would wonder what happened to the army he mentored to be the nucleus of African liberation movements that fought and defeated colonialism. Nyerere would find a different world where the army of his country is associated with mercenaries and genocidal militia, fighting people whose plight he knew very well, defended their cause and suggested that they political solution rather than military confrontation, was the right approach.

What a shame to the liberators turned oppressors of people in danger.

Wazalendo

When Tshisekedi created a militia called Wazalendo it was not by accident.

The Swahili word “Wazalendo” which means “patriots or indigenous”, is a self-appellation used to convey a nativist ideology, opposing the “true or authentic sons of the country” as opposed to foreigners (Kinyarwanda speaking Congolese). The essence was to create a mind-set that there are other people who do not belong to DRC and therefore, they must be chased away or be killed.

The genocide ideology created by the genocidal government of Habyarimana was exported to DRC by the mass murderers who committed the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. French historian Jean-Pierre Chrétien, called the genocidal ideology of Hutu-Power: tropical Nazism. It is the origin of the genocide ideology, hate speech and ethnic cleansing committed against Congolese Tutsi today.

Tropical Nazism is what SADC troops are propping up by joining hands with European mercenaries, the Rwandan genocidal militia, FDLR, and Congolese militia like Wazalendo, against M23 rebels who are fighting to defend their people against an existential threat.

Tshisekedi’s lies, scapegoating Rwanda  

Tshisekedi continously tells the world that his country was invaded by Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

The security crisis in eastern DRC has prevailed ever since the 1960s, over three decades before Kagame became the President of Rwanda.

The only concern Kagame and Rwandans have in DRC is the presence of an armed genocidal terror group, FDLR, that threatens to attack Rwanda and continue the genocide against the Tutsi, which it says it never completed in 1994. 

Kinshasa simply uses Rwanda as a scapegoat for its own internal problems and ineffectiveness. 

The M23 rebels are Congolese; they did not invade DRC. In December 2013, the Congolese government signed a peace deal with M23 in the Kenyan capital Nairobi which was not honored and the crisis today is a result of that problem.

The M23 is struggling to restore the rights of Kinyarwanda speaking Congolese in DRC as their plight has been overshadowed by international political and economic interests. The M23 rebels have a legitimate cause of fighting for survival against persecution, genocide ideology and state-sponsored violence.

Kinyarwanda speaking Congolese found themselves on the DRC side when colonialists demarcated imaginary borders in 1884.

The SADC forces fighting against M23 rebels know that the latter actually occupy their ancestral land which they are ready to die for. Although they speak the same language as Rwandans, the Congolese Tutsi communities  are not Rwandans.

The confusion and misinformation that M23 are Rwandans has been conveniently created by Kinshasa to drag the name of Rwandan President Kagame into the mess created by the Congolese government.