Gregory Mthembu-Salter
United Nations Security Council members are currently adding the finishing touches to a resolution on the deployment of a UN force in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
This follows a request for troops from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and an impassioned appeal for assistance from African heads of state and government representatives, including South African Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, during a debate about the Congolese war at the Security Council on Monday.
The resolution is expected to increase the number of UN observers on the ground from the current 79 closer to the originally envisaged 500, and to sanction additional UN military protection for them. But the resolution will not assent to the additional deployment of 5E000-odd troops with a more vigorous peacekeeping mandate, as hoped for by Annan and the African leaders. For this, the Security Council says it first needs to see more progress towards a negotiated settlement among the warring parties. Zambian President Frederick Chiluba, who brokered a peace agreement in Lusaka last August, complained that the Security Council was looking for “a perfect score on some performance chart”.
But the Security Council and UN member states are wary of making any major commitments. They are frightened that UN peacekeepers would be targeted by militia, as in Rwanda at the start of the 1994 genocide, with the express intention of generating such domestic anger within participating countries that their governments withdraw their forces immediately.
Sir Ketumile Masire, Botswana’s former president and the recently appointed mediator in Congo’s planned political negotiations, chose to listen rather than say much during the Security Council debate and the diplomatic discussions that followed it. But he did call for more money: “While resources are needed to sustain the military aspects of the agreement, adequate funding is equally critical for inter-Congolese political negotiations. If we falter in this regard, then the entire peace process will be in jeopardy.”
For her part, Dlamini-Zuma told the UN on Tuesday that South Africa was ready to provide troops for a UN or Organisation for African Unity peacekeeping mission to the country. Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota subsequently confirmed to the Mail & Guardian that South Africa was ready to send troops and equipment whenever it was asked to do so, but added: “There is a tendency to think we will act unilaterally. We will not.”
Lekota said that if the UN force had a mandate to pursue and disarm belligerents who did not sign in Lusaka, like Unita and Rwanda’s interahamwe, South African troops would still take part: “If we were asked to disarm militia, we would be prepared to do so.”
The regional heads of state in New York this week have been arguing that the Security Council’s wait-and-see attitude is one of the main reasons so little progress is being made in implementing the Lusaka Agreement, and accused the Security Council of undermining its chances of success. Although the Lusaka Agreement has not been the disaster that some analysts predicted – the joint military commission, which comprises all the main belligerents and which is supposed to oversee the implementation of the agreement, was established on schedule and is currently operational – there have been persistent ceasefire violations since the deal which in some parts of Congo amount to the full-scale resumption of hostilities.
Equally importantly, Congolese President Laurent Kabila has distanced himself in recent months from the key concession he made in Lusaka, which was that the Congolese government and the three main rebel movements be treated as equals during the ceasefire process and negotiations to reach a political settlement. Since the New Year, the rhetoric from Kinshasa against the rebels and their backers has stepped up, and Kabila made it a condition of his appearance at the UN debate that the rebel leadership be “kept in the corridors”. Rebel leaders subsequently refused to come.
During the UN debate, Angolan President Jos Eduardo dos Santos showed that he too had hardened his position, describing the Lusaka deal as flawed because “a government that has not been militarily defeated cannot accept capitulating at the negotiating table”.
Further evidence of Kabila’s shift from the concession he made in Lusaka was provided in his vehement attacks on South Africa at the UN talks. Kabila repeatedly accused South Africa of bias in favour of the Congolese rebels, pointing to the fact that the government has openly held discussions with their leadership, and accusing South Africa of providing arms to the rebels via their regional backers Rwanda and Uganda.
During her presentation to the Security Council, Dlamini-Zuma strongly denied that South African had any bias in the war, insisting that South Africa fully supported complete adherence to the Lusaka accords from all parties and a negotiated political settlement. She defended her government’s decision to hold top-level talks with the rebel leadership at their bases and in Pretoria, arguing that all parties to the war had to be included in consultations in order to secure their commitment to a negotiated peace.
Minister of Education Kader Asmal, who chairs the Directorate of Conventional Arms Control, this week denied Kabila’s claims about arms deals.
A South African government source said Kabila was irritated by South Africa’s commitment to a negotiated settlement, but an informed source in Kinshasa said that while there was a move away from negotiations within the Congolese government, not too much should be read into Kabila’s remarks at the UN.
The source suggested Kabila had also sought this week to make a name for himself during his first visit to the organisation, and to put South Africa on the diplomatic back foot. “At that level, I think he succeeded.”