It is heartwarming to see the Eastern Congo rebel alliance including the M23 declaring a ceasefire for humanitarian reasons starting on Feb. 4, the group known as the Congo River Alliance said in a statement.
The alliance added that it had no intention of capturing Bukavu, South Kivu’s provincial capital after it seized Congo’s largest eastern city of Goma last week.
This is happening as the Congo just requested an emergency session of the UN Human Rights Council to discuss the situation in the eastern city of Goma after it was seized by Rwanda-backed M23 rebels, a UN spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Congo requested the session, which is still subject to approval, to take place on Feb. 7 in Geneva.
However, reminders of the rhetoric that has been the focus of this piece remain omnipresent in the Congo.
In 2023, former minister Justin Bitakwira, an ally of the Congolese president, declared in an interview: “A Tutsi is a born criminal. They’re all the same. When you see a Tutsi, you see a criminal.
“When they’re in a position of weakness, they can sleep in your bed for six months. And when they come to power, they deny ever having known you. I’ve never seen such a wicked race.”
Boketshu Wayambo, a popular diaspora influencer, posted a video on YouTube proclaiming, “Brothers in Kinshasa, you should target the Rwandans, all the Tutsis who are in Kinshasa…. They are turning God’s earth into Tutsiland!”
Two local academics have compiled a list of twenty-seven YouTube broadcasts containing similar rhetoric that have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
Ironically, in spite of the nationalist references invoked by these demagogues, these obsessions have a clearly colonial origin. European settlers in this region, inspired by the racial theories in vogue in the U.S. and Europe at the time, were influenced by the “Hamitic hypothesis” – from the biblical name of Ham, who dishonored his father, Noah, and was cursed for being the “servant of servants” – according to which any sign of sophistication in African architecture, culture or politics must necessarily be of foreign origin, brought by the descendants of Middle Eastern peoples in Africa.
In 1902, a French Catholic prelate said of the Tutsis: “Their intelligent and delicate appearance, their love of money, their ability to adapt to all situations seem to indicate a Semitic origin.”
In 1948, a Belgian cleric described the Hutus as “the most common type of blacks, brachycephalic and prognathic, with agronomic taste and aptitudes, sociable and jovial (…) with thick lips and a squashed nose, but so good, so simple, so loyal.”
These stories have a real impact. For example, Onana regurgitates, in pseudo-scientific language, the lie that Congolese Tutsis from South Kivu province, where they are called Banyamulenge, are recent immigrants and therefore have no right to citizenship – and therefore land – in Congo.
He claims that all the wars that have broken out in eastern DRC since the fall of President Mobutu have been fuelled by the “spurious” claims of the Banyamulenge.
In so doing, Onana conveniently overlooks the many sources drawn from oral histories and colonial documents which show that this community has lived in the highlands of South Kivu since at least the nineteenth century, and probably earlier.
According to Charles Onana, Congolese institutions have been systematically infiltrated by Tutsis. In a speech at Kinshasa University on March 17, 2024, he called on the government to track down and root out these “traitors.”
Referring to the numerous reports (notably from the UN) that the Congolese army is responsible for widespread abuses in the ongoing conflict, he wrote: “It is not Congolese military (officers) who are committing the crimes mentioned in these reports, but Rwandan and Burundian mercenaries and Banyamulenge militiamen integrated into this army.
“Within the FARDC, they are doing exactly what they have always done as militia or mercenaries in their respective ‘rebellions.’”
Needless to say, this is absurd: there is ample evidence that Congolese soldiers from other communities have also been guilty of numerous abuses.
Perversely, Onana could well be the bogeyman Rwanda needed. For their part, the Rwandan leaders present their own equally deceptive history to justify their actions. There is no example like Onana’s to spread their version of events.
Power in Kigali is organised differently, with little room for independent voices. It is the government itself, through its affiliated media and online supporters, that fuels debate.
President Paul Kagame, who came to power in 2000 after serving as Vice-President and Minister of Defense from 1994 onwards, linked the current situation in the DRC to the Tutsi genocide during the thirtieth commemorations of the genocide in April 2024.
Highlighting the crescendo of hate speech against Congolese members of the Tutsi community, he declared: “The perpetrators of the genocide are not the only ones to have committed acts of genocide.
The perpetrators of the genocide in Rwanda, who fled in 1994, have since collaborated with the governments of the DRC. And what they are doing today is akin to genocide.”
His government claims that the FDLR is integrated into the Congolese army to return to Rwanda and continue their genocidal project.
Onana is a favorite target of the Rwandan government, particularly its digital army, hyperactive on social networks. Kigali accuses him of minimizing or denying the 1994 genocide and stirring up hatred against the Tutsi community.
A government-linked site calls his book a “bible of hatred”, while a similar account on X (formerly Twitter) says it has become “the totem of these (anti-Rwanda) demonstrations, from Paris to Brussels, from Goma to Kinshasa.”
Parts of the Rwandan story are accurate. The Congolese army has a long history of collaboration with the FDLR, including in recent years. And there is no doubt that the Congolese Tutsi community suffers discrimination and persecution.
The problem is that the Rwandan authorities have got the sequence wrong: none of these factors seem to have prompted their recent support for the M23.
On the contrary, the Rwandan military intervention has been a self-fulfilling prophecy, aggravating anti-Tutsi sentiment and rekindling collaboration between the Congolese army and the FDLR.
It’s worth going back to January 2019, when Félix Tshisekedi came to power. After his inauguration, he sought to intensify collaboration with Rwanda. He visited Kigali and laid a wreath at the Gisenyi genocide memorial, a first for a Congolese leader.
Kagame reciprocated a few months later by attending the funeral of Tshisekedi’s father in Kinshasa, to the applause of the crowd in the national stadium.
The Congolese head of state then continued his predecessor’s policy of allowing Rwandan troops to deploy in eastern DRC and conduct targeted operations, often alongside Congolese troops, against Rwandan rebels.
In September 2019, they killed FDLR leader General Sylvestre Mudacumura. A few months later, they eliminated Laurent Ndagijimana, the leader of a dissident FDLR faction, the Conseil national pour le renouveau de la démocratie (CNRD).
This military collaboration lasted until the early months of 2021. In June of that year, Tshisekedi visited Kagame in Rwanda. They signed several agreements, including one giving a company close to the RPF the right to refine gold from a major Congolese state-owned gold mining company.
In November 2021, Kagame met his counterpart again in Kinshasa – on the sidelines of a conference on positive masculinity – where the two men reaffirmed their collaboration.
Meanwhile, the southern part of North Kivu province, where the M23 emerged, was relatively calm. Many Congolese troops had moved north, where they were fighting Islamist rebels, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF, affiliated with the Islamic State in Central Africa).
Prior to the M23’s return in November 2021, there was little sign of an imminent threat to Rwanda from either the Congolese government or the FDLR. (Reuters/NANFeatures)
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