adminTichaona Zindoga
THE assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Zaire’s first elected leader in 1960, ranks as one of the worst cases of western involvement in Africa, and in particular this troubled country, now Democratic Republic of Congo.
It reeks and rankles; and DRC remains to this date a tragic embodiment of the instability in what is known as the Great Lakes region of Central Africa.
Lumumba’s assassination was connivance among such countries as Belgium, Britain and notoriously the USA whose then president Dwight D Eisenhower engineered the plot carried out by the CIA.
Instability in DRC has led to millions of deaths while an equal number has fled their homes. The fall of rebels in DRC this week may yet call for a guarded reason to celebrate. It is but a small step in securing peace, as other fundamentals must change.
The first reason is simply that the spectre of western influence in DRC and the region has simply not gone away; it has only retreated. While the DRC government, the Sadc regional force and the UN mission could pat their backs for having defeated the M23 rebels after a 20-month attrition war, there is one reality that they have to face.
The rains started beating on the rebels when the US and Britain ordered that Rwanda stop sponsoring rebels. Rwanda, a government led by minority Tutsi ethnic people, has been backing Tutsi rebels in the DRC. It is said Tutsis want some Tutsi republic in Central Africa.
Last year, United Nations identified Rwanda Defence Minister, General James Kabarebe, as the commanding officer of a major rebel movement in the DRC, indicating that president Paul Kagame and his government are behind much of the instability in the Sadc member state.
Sadc leaders were unhappy with Rwanda for the same. Uganda was also fingered in supporting the rebels by supplying M23 with arms.
The order for freezing rebel support which Rwanda and Uganda have accepted – grudgingly and gracefully, respectively – if the recent Sadc meeting is anything to go by appears to have been the decisive factor in the DRC. And the peace depends on the game plan of Rwanda and its backers.
Some of us are not in the know, at the moment. But there is something rather worrying in the relationship between the US so entrenched in its interests in the region, and Kagame who one sees as always keen to cause havoc in the region, maybe to satiate his power hunger.
One may discount the fact that the United States has said it welcomes M23’s laying down arms, and DRC government’s “positive response to the M23 statement, and its willingness to return to Kampala to sign a final agreement.”
It is understood that Kagame is a favourite of US, and in particular Susan Rice, Secretary of State.
Jennifer Fierberg, a US social worker and commentator working on peace and justice issues in Africa with an emphasis on the crisis in Rwanda and throughout the central region of Africa offers some unsettling perspectives in US-Rwanda relations. Kagame is a lapdog ally of the US, and gets away with murder.
She writes, “The assassinations of three Presidents in the Central African region are linked to President Paul Kagame which includes President Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda, President Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi and President Laurent Desire Kabila of DR Congo.
“How can three sitting presidents be killed in cold blood with no international outcry, investigation or justice for these murders? For a person to get away with murder they would have to have friends in very high political places who are covering up those crimes or are complicit in them.”
She notes that the relationship of President Paul Kagame with his US and UK supporters goes back to when the RPF was still a rebel group being formed in Uganda. It stems in part to sympathy of the minority Tutsis who were massacred. But Fierberg also cites researcher and Human Rights Watch Researcher Alison Des Forges as having documented the many crimes of Paul Kagame.
Then comes the special relationship of Susan Rice and Kagame.
Says Fierberg: “Rice has a long history of supporting Paul Kagame in various ways. From the Clinton administration on the National Security Council and as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during President Bill Clinton’s second term.”
Even the New York Times is wary of the Rice-Kagame axis.
Last December, when Rice was still US ambassador to the UN, NYT wrote: “Support for Mr Kagame and the Rwandan government has been a matter of American foreign policy since he led the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front to victory over the incumbent government in July 1994 . . . But according to rights organisations and diplomats at the United Nations, Ms Rice has been at the forefront of trying to shield the Rwandan government, and Mr Kagame in particular, from international censure, even as several United Nations reports have laid the blame for the violence in Congo at Mr. Kagame’s door.”
Rice also worked with Kagame at Intellibridge, a strategic analysis firm in Washington.
Western interests in Congo, including from the likes of Canada and a host of big corporate organisations – which all thrive on chaos and darkness of war – may have first give way for real peace to obtain in the region.
Regional leaders and genuine DRC peace seekers should actively engage on this.
Online Reporter