On Monday, member states of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) held an extraordinary summit in Windhoek, Namibia, to discuss the country that I call the ‘Sick Man of Africa’, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After the meeting, which brought together South Africa, Namibia, DR Congo, Tanzania, Zambia, Angola, and Malawi, a short communique was released. Along with the usual outcomes of summits that deal with the DR Congo challenge, the Heads of State called for ‘cessation of hostilities by all armed groups.’ What was particularly newsworthy was that they went even further and approved DR Congo’s request for SADC troops to help ‘restore peace and security in eastern DR Congo’ (as the communique put it). The SADC contingent is joining a mélange of international forces that includes MONUSCO and its specialized Forces Intervention Brigade (FIB), the EAC Regional Force, the Ugandan military forces battling radical Islamists in Ituri Province in addition to soldiers of fortune from Eastern Europe doing God knows what. This cocktail of armed forces is a potential powder keg. This is probably why the SADC communique stated that ‘given the multiple deployments under multilateral and bilateral agreement arrangement’ in eastern DR Congo ... DR Congo was urged ‘to put in place necessary conditions and measures for effective coordination amongst sub-region forces and bilateral partners' operation...’ The saying, ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’, comes to mind when I think of Felix Tshisekedi’s handling of the crisis in his country. It is my belief that too much global focus has been put on tackling insecurity and rebellion while not enough attention has been placed on solving the governance issues that I submit are at the very heart of the DR Congo morass. If the governance issues that have plagued our giant neighbour to the west could have been solved by foreign troops, peace and stability would have reigned since the 1960s. However, as any student of the history of the Great Lakes Region knows, despite the tens of thousands of troops that have set foot in Zaire (and then DR Congo), the citizens have rarely enjoyed a quiet moment. Dag Hammarskjöld, the only UN Secretary-General to die on a peace mission, passed away in 1961 attempting to negotiate peace between UN forces (UNOC) and Katangese rebels led by Moise Tshombe. These UN troops had been deployed on July 15, 1960. And mind you, the country had just received its independence on June 30, that very year. So, barely two weeks into its existence, foreign troops stepped into a vacuum where a Congolese sovereign army should have been. Unfortunately, it would seem that Hammarskjöld died in vain. Sure, the UN forces ensured that Katanga didn’t secede, but since 1960, to date, the country has seen only about two decades of peace and stability. Under Marshal Mobutu Sese Seko, the country was stable between 1968-1977 and 1979-1990. In between those periods of relative calm, there were rebellions in Bukavu (1962) and again in Katanga (1977-78). Following the fall of Mobutu and the assassination of Laurent Desire Kabila, another UN force was mustered and then deployed in 2000 – the Mission de l'Organisation des Nations Unies en République démocratique du Congo (MONUC). The latter was renamed MONUSCO (United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 2010. But did the UN Force, with thousands of troops and billions of dollars, bring stability? No. And how about the UN-FIB troops that battled and defeated M23 in 2013? The FIB, consisting of battalions from three SADC member states – Tanzania, South Africa, and Malawi, is a special component of MONUSCO. It was given a more robust mandate than the rest of MONUSCO, to enable it to mount offensive operations against the more than 130 armed groups that make the lives of people living in the eastern DR Congo miserable. But did it bring peace? No. Staring into the future, do I think that the EACRF will bring peace? No. And nor will the SADC forces. Why? Because these forces are attempting to deal with the symptoms and not the disease itself. Security (or insecurity in DR Congo’s case) is predicated on the state of governance in a country. When you have weak political and administrative structures, insecurity follows. When it makes more sense to pay bribes rather than taxes, insecurity follows. When the rule of law is non-existent, self-defense groups proliferate. Unfortunately, President Felix Tshisekedi’s intransigence gives me very little hope that his country’s governance challenges will be tackled in any kind of mature manner. All he wants is to show his military might by defeating the M23. As if the M23 is the problem rather than a symptom of the problem. Whether or not he succeeds is beside the case (after all, it is not as if they haven’t been defeated before). Some of the things that will give the Congolese people durable peace include answering the citizenship question, figuring out how to take back ownership of their mineral resources, and rebuilding their crumbling infrastructure. None of which foreign troops, especially the mercenaries from Eastern Europe, will help with. The writer is a socio-political commentator
