It angers me no end having to listen to all the old insulting lies about how Rwanda makes so much progress in its journey to development because “we steal the resources of DR Congo.” All the efforts this country has made; to attract foreign direct investment in different sectors of its economy; to build a tourism sector that brings in incrementally rising sums in foreign currency every year; to raise money through government bonds; to make prudent, efficient use of loans from the big bilateral or multilateral agencies, and so on, are overlooked. In favour of a lazy narrative by the DR Congo government that never, not once, gets up to address any of the myriads of problems sinking their country. As a Rwandan it leaves me seething with outrage. It almost makes me lose faith in humanity whenever I read social media posts that peddle the big lie that originates from DR Congo’s good-for-nothing fat cat officials, the worst of them their government’s spokesperson Patrice Muyaya; a lie which is then disseminated by legions of loudmouth liars for hire in Kinshasa (in the pay of Muyaya evidently). Big Congolese officials (other than Muyaya, aka minister of propaganda, count Foreign Minister Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner amongst the most egregious peddlers of Kinshasa’s anti-Rwanda smears) will allege everything; absolutely everything to push this slander that Rwanda gets rich off their country. They will, with not a smidgen of evidence, issue statements about how Rwanda supposedly traffics in Congolese minerals (and other resources) to enrich itself. They will concoct stories about how Rwanda is taking away their gold, coltan, and whatever else, to sell to international markets. They will even allege that Rwanda stole their gorillas. They claim all these things, but then show absolutely nothing – be it documentation; be it eyewitnesses; be it video or audio evidence – to back their words. Seriously. All they, and their propagandist minions do is shout “Rwanda is stealing from us!” “Rwanda has nothing!” Rwanda is taking from the big, grand Congo...”, and so on ad nauseam. It’s an old, infantile song that of course has another (political) purpose, but I will leave that for another day. This song and dance that the deeply unserious government in Kinshasa has latched on like a dog with a bone is one that they now are taking to new levels. The ruler of the DR Congo Felix Tshisekedi, the lyingest, least dignified of the whole bunch (well, he is their boss after all) has gone as far as threatening to sue certain global corporations, allegedly because the materiel in their products were sourced via Rwanda. It would be truly laughable if the ramifications weren’t so serious. The thing is, a lot of people, groups, or organizations that aren’t so discerning will be taken in by the Congolese lie. You will read stories published by big international media that parrot that lie, either because the journalists and editors are too lazy to do their fact checking and will go for easy clickbait, and others that relentlessly peddle it because they share the Congolese agenda to tarnish Rwanda, and sink it into disrepute. There are others working hard to push this agenda. Most notably the UN, or to be more precise something called the UN Group of Experts on DRC (if by “group of experts” one means a group of individuals that take their matching orders from Kinshasa), that parrots Tshisekedi government talking points, verbatim. Collectively, these elements – the Kinshasa regime, the UN in the Congo, i.e. the so-called Group of Experts as well as the Monusco the supposed peace-keeping force that’s never kept any peace, as well as those international media aligned with Kinshasa – operate an ecosystem of misinformation against Rwanda that’s a case study in how low some can go in efforts to maintain positions of power, and others in service of greed. The truly insane thing about their anti-Rwanda smear is that so many seem to have fallen for it, taking it as indisputable truth, or fact. In the case of the media, other than the bad-faith journalists, any good, ethical, professional news writer takes just a few hours to discover that the whole “Rwanda-loots-DRC” narrative is pure bunkum. In fact, a little logic lays waste to it. Begin with the fact that if one country were “to loot” another in volumes to impact the victim country’s economy in any way, one would need to have a consistent – moreover daily – flow of trucks, carting the alleged looted minerals across the border. People ignorantly assume that to transport minerals is akin to packing ready-processed products neatly in some vehicle and driving away, like they see in movies. It’s a lot of work extracting any value from a mine, of any metal. Huge volumes of dirt have to be removed before one gets to the ore of some metal. We are talking about industrial scale operations here. The logistics of setting up an operation like that (transporting heavy machinery across borders, building the super structures, setting up services like water to the mines, and so on) are significant. To set up a mining operation, that is, one with any hope of big returns, can only happen with peaceful cooperation between states, investors, and local economies. So, how would one country forcefully impose an operation like that upon another, without the whole world noticing, and being up in arms about it? It raises another question: do those who claim that Rwanda steals DR Congo minerals imply it (Rwanda) somehow uses invisible means to transport heavy mining equipment into DR Congo, set up supply routes no one can see, operate noiseless machinery, load it onto noiseless trucks, and in that way allegedly ferry the Congo’s wealth to Rwanda? This world...
