Life as an East African citizen sometimes feels quite confusing. If you enjoy reading regional newspapers, as I do, you’ll read a headline on one page that announces the launch of the largest domestically manufactured cargo and passenger ship ever built in East Africa (as was launched in Tanzania a few days ago). But then you turn a single page and read a story about the proliferation of hate speech and ethnic violence in a country just one country or so away (as in the case of DR Congo today). So, in one edition, you get the best, and the worst, news you could possibly want to engage with. And that’s what frustrates me so much with what is going on in, not just Eastern DR Congo, but also Kinshasa, the country’s capital. Tanzania’s good news gives us a glimpse of what can be if the politics are done right. DRC gives a very real view of what happens when everything is done wrong. When I say that everything is done wrong, I mean EVERYTHING. So, much so that it’s gotten to a point where I think it can be called self-mutilation. I mean, what else can you call it? Just a week ago, the heads of the different EAC armed forces (yes, including DR Congo’s) met in Nairobi to come up with a plan to help halt the fighting between DR Congo and the M23 rebel ground, separate the two sides and tackle the FDLR as well as the myriad of armed groups that terrorized not only the Congolese populace but also wreaked havoc on DR Congo’s neighbors to the East. You’d think that the resolutions agreed by the EAC’s top generals would be treated as sacrosanct by all the signatory parties. Alas, if you thought so you’d have been sorely mistaken. Not even a day after the meeting, the document stamped ‘Confidential’, was posted in part by pro-Kinshasa online influencers from Kenya as well as DR Congo. What gave the game up was the fact that the only thing they shared were pages that spoke about timelines for M23’s withdrawal from the areas it had captured. They posted nothing about the fact that EAC generals called for an immediate ceasefire on all sides (not just asking M23 to halt but also the Congolese government forces-FARDC). Neither did they post the page that commanded East African forces to ‘deal’ with FDLR specifically. Not negotiate, but rather fight them. Based on the fact that they (the Congolese and their acolytes around the world) are purposefully trying to create a narrative that suits their political interests, rather than the interests of peace and regional stability, and to hell with the implications, all I’m left with is one train of thought. Nothing that the region attempts will find a positive reception in Kinshasa. No EU resolution, no AU meeting, no ICGLR mediation. Nothing. We are watching in the DR Congo the slow, but inevitable, march to failed state-hood. Some students of history will examine Congolese history and identity the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, and his replacement by Mobutu, as the first domino to fall. Personally, I believe that the fall of present day DR Congo was written in the stars as soon as the Belgians got their hands on the territory and started playing havoc in people’s lives. But unlike, say, Somalia, DR Congo will not be left to implode violently. The country is, as Americans say, ‘Too Big to Fail’. There are too many essential minerals to be extracted for the situation to be like Mogadishu circa 1993. DR Congo cannot have roving bands of combatants, making it impossible to dig up the earth. Rather, it kept on a steady diet of foreign financing (both covert and overt), corruption and fake commiseration. So, what can be done? The same way that they are being kept viable by a steady stream of dark financing and international meddling, our regional fate is to use the means at our disposal to keep the barbarians at DR Congo’s gates as far away from our own homes as possible. Today it is the East Africa forces that are attempting to do just that. We don't know what tomorrow might bring. The writer is a socio-political commentator
