Rwanda is a good neighbour; perhaps you can do the same?

There was a bit of news I heard this week that I thought would register in international media houses but hardly did. On the third of this month, Rwanda’s Minister of Natural Resources, Stanislas Kamanzi, handed over to the North Kivu Minister of Mines, Naasson Kubuya Ndoole, 81 tonnes of smuggled minerals seized by the Rwandan Police at the Rwanda-DRC border. This stash of minerals included 77 tonnnes of casserite, three tonnes of wolfram and 612 kilogrammes of coltan. At the handover, Minister Kamanzi said “handing over these minerals to Congo is a strong political commitment of our two countries to working in an environment of trust and friendship but also to prove that we can solve most of our problems by ourselves, without the intervention of the international community”. The Congolese Minister Kubuya Ndoole thanked the Government of Rwanda for the restitution of the minerals and vowed to continue the fruitful collaboration to stop the regional mineral smuggling ring. This handover isnt something that just came out of the blue. Since January this year, Rwanda has been carrying out a system of mineral traceability which consists of tracking minerals being traded up to the mine site, in partnership with International Tin Research. Rwanda has also been piloting the system of Certified Mineral Trading Chains (CTC) since 2009, in cooperation with the Germany Federal Institute of Geosciences and Natural Resources. The country has also banned trading in untraced mineral within its borders. That is great news right? Well, tell that to the people blaming Rwanda for everything wrong in the Congo. While Rwanda and the DR Congo are cooperating in areas as varied as energy (methane gas exploitation in Lake Kivu), armed groups (Umoja Wetu joint military operation) and mineral certification, there are people acting like we are at each other’s throats. So, I have to ask, are they blind or are they malicious? With the glut of truthful information accessible at the snap of one’s finger, I have come to believe that people are merely malicious. But then I ask myself, why are they malicious? Is it possibly because they want the people of the Congo to focus their anger on an imaginary enemy, Rwanda, instead of their real enemies: the exploitative international mining companies, corrupt administrators and the other real impediments to Congolese development? I sincerely hope that the continual cooperation between Rwanda and DR Congo opens the eyes of the Congolese people; Rwanda isnt your enemy. Your enemies are closer to home. The handover this month is a slap in the face of those who want to paint Rwanda as a regional ogre terrorizing ‘poor’ Congo. In fact, it operates a pretty good neighbor policy. I mean, I’m sure smuggled Congolese minerals can be found in many international capitals; why don’t they return the minerals too? Is it perhaps because they want to talk the talk, and not walk the walk? Its far easier to point fingers and threaten censure on Rwanda rather than pressurizing their own firms (such as Motorola, Blackberry, Nokia et al) to act more responsibly. Because, at the end of the day, Rwandan firms aren’t the end users of smuggled minerals but rather international ones. sunnyntayombya@gmail.com