Internally displaced persons in Mozambique’s northern region of Cabo Delgado over the weekend began to return to their homes after joint operations by Mozambican and Rwandan security forces drove Islamist terrorists from almost all of the areas they previously held. The IS-linked insurgents have rapidly lost ground since July when Rwandan forces joined their Mozambican counterparts to battle the extremists who have in recent years displaced more than 800,000 civilians and killed thousands others across at least five districts of the resource-rich province. The insurgency, which broke out in 2017, had devastated the districts of Palma, Mocimboa da Praia, Mueda, Mocamia and Muidumbe, but there is now hope for the millions of residents across the region after the terrorists were forced to retreat into forests far away from communities. When Rwanda deployed its troops to the Southern African country under an existing bilateral cooperation framework and in the spirit of south-south relations there were a few jitters, especially from cynics who look at Africa from the lenses of perpetual victimhood and whose helpless people can only be saved by external intervention. Less than two months later, the alliance of pan-African forces has made impressive progress in its mission to defeat the terrorist group, pacify the region and restore state authority there, proving the doubters wrong. And, while no one should underestimate the enormity of the task ahead, the celebratory mood and happy faces we saw during Saturday’s process to return more than 600 civilians to their homes speaks to new hope for the future. Today, more than 90 per cent of Cabo Delgado is safe for settlement, with the retreating insurgents pushed into a few pockets further north where operations continue. The success by the joint Rwandan and Mozambican forces is a testament to the effectiveness of African solutions to African problems and the viability of south-south cooperation, which we need to actively promote as a continent. It goes to show that solutions to our problems as a people are within and never again should we stand idly by and just watch as things go wrong under our noses because we somehow think that it is someone else’s job to ‘save us from ourselves’ – because they’ll never anyway.
