KGAME SPECH

Rwanda Should Have Re-partitioned Congo Long Time Ago

president Paul-Kagame carries the Congolese cross

This week Rwanda celebrated its 50th independence anniversary amidst confusion as to where it stands on the ongoing civil unrest in the Congo.

The international community and particularly the United Nations have since issued reports implicating Rwandan military generals of complicity in the military standoff that is brewing in the DRC where the Congo army is fighting a mutinous Congolese military unit (M23) that is reportedly fighting to protect the ICC indicted Gen Bosco Ntaganda for crimes he reportedly committed in the recent years in the eastern Congo.

President Paul Kagame recently was at pains to explain the Rwanda position against a back-drop of a stern warning from the United States that Rwanda should back off.

Rights groups including Amnesty International and Global Witness have since called on the United Nations and aid donors to take action in the wake of the reports.

The Rwandan president is now in a catch-twenty-two situation of either looking on as the situation gets completely out of hand or intervene directly and face the wrath of the international community.

THE GIST OF THE MATTER

The truth of the matter is that Rwanda has a real and justified interest in Congo.

First of all there are more Rwandese of Tutsi extraction in Congo than those residing in Rwanda.

Most of these are called Banyamulenge and they are the ones that overthrew president Mobutu in 1996.

In-fact Gen Laurent Nkunda and Gen Bosco Ntaganda all emerged on the premise that they wanted to protect their people (the Congolese Tutsis) in Congo.

The Rwandese foreign minister Hon. Louise Mushikiwabo recently also hinted that these people were being killed because they were Rwandese.

I don’t think there is any shame in trying to protect your citizens.

Secondly there is another group of Rwandese who masterminded the 1994 genocide who are still holed up in Congo. These two factors are the ones forcing Rwanda into the Congo affairs.

When Paul Kagame led Rwandan rebel forces to victory in 1994, he was praised not only for halting a genocide that had killed half a million people, but also for advocating reconciliation rather than revenge.

But he still had an assignment to deal with the Interhamwe Hutu extremists (FDL) that had fled to Congo where they have been having their safe haven for the last 18 years.

The Rwandan government has over the years tried to liberate the eastern Congo from the FDL insurgents with little success.

On the other hand there are some Ugandans on the Congo side. My maternal grandfather actually migrated from Congo and resided in Kasese.

All this calls for the repartition of Congo.

LOST OPPORTUNITY of 1996

The real opportunity to repartition came in 1996 when a rebellion led by Banyamulenge (practically Rwandese of Tutsi extraction), erupted in eastern Congo resulting into the successful overthrow of the dictatorial regime of President Joseph Mobutu.

But somehow that did not happen. I don’t know why these Banyamulenge in particular cannot simply tell the world that they deserve to break off from Kinshasa.

They want to co-exist with Kinshasa in an arrangement which is practically impossible–just like the southern Sudanese tried unsuccessfully to co-exist with the Arab north.

When war inevitably broke out again in 1998when president Kabila fell-out with Kigali it provided yet another opportunity to deal with the same security issue.

The ensuing conflict sucked in the largest number of nations including Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda on one hand pitted against the likes of Zimbabwe, Chad and Angola on the other.

During my time as a political editor of this paper (in the now defunct Top Secrets Magazine series), I interviewed are tired UPDF officer who narrated how they (UPDF) interfaced directly with Chadian troops in Beni.

He revealed that if the Chadians had succeeded in defeating the UPDF in those battles, there is a huge possibility that Ugandan could have been invaded directly.

At that time, the late president Laurent Kabila was determined (and he said it several times) to overrun Kigali and Kampala respectively in a direct military revenge.

I thought that war was supposed to be concluded with a concrete solution that included dividing Congo because it has been a failed state since the advent of mankind that’s why all governments have failed to govern it.

THE WAY FORWARD

Given the basic demographic I have already given that, Congo has more Rwandese Tutsis it’s clear that Congo should be portioned into manageable states.

Yes, a bigger Congo will never recover from its unstable past. Rwanda and Ugandan should have pushed for the direct repartition of Congo with a direct interest of creating a viable state of eastern Congo.

I think this failed to work out because there was no local agitation for succession.

But the likes of Gen Bosco Ntaganda and Gen Laurent Nkunda should have pushed this agenda of a state that would encompass the Banyamulenge.

Then Jean Pierre Bemba should have pushed for the formation of equator province as a viable county on its own.

This was the only solution that would have stabilized the great lakes region.

This would have protected the Congolese Tutsis that Rwanda has been trying to protect for a long time.

But that was not done. Instead deceived by their much hailed slogan of African solutions for African problems, the African leaders went to Sun City  in south Africa and instead agreed that the Congo problem could be resolved  by a staging free and fair elections. Oh dear me!

This was like postponing the problem.

PRECEDENCE

That was one of the biggest mistakes that is now haunting Rwanda and the great lakes region

600 DR Congo Soldiers Flee To Uganda

DR Congo troops on the move

Some 600 soldiers from the Democratic Republic of Congo fled to Uganda Friday after mutineers attacked a strategic border crossing post, a Ugandan army spokesman said.

“They crossed over early this morning and are now under our control after we disarmed them,” Peter Mugisha, a spokesman for the Ugandan military, told AFP, adding “we are deciding what to do with them”.

Lieutenant colonel Vianney Kazarama, spokesman for the mutinous armed force known as M23, told AFP earlier his troops “took Bunagana around 6:00 am (0400 GMT)”.

DR Congo’s government forces on Thursday launched an offensive to rout the mutineers but the M23 said loyalist forces had been repulsed.

Bunagana is about 10 kilometres (six miles) from the positions of mutineers who have gathered in the hills in the southeast of Virunga national park since May.

The park, home to rare mountain gorillas, borders Uganda and Rwanda about 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of Nord-Kivu’s main town of Goma..