Ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has underscored the difficulties of bringing lasting peace to this vast Central African country.
Nearly 3,5-million people have died, mostly from malnutrition and preventable diseases such as diarrhoea and malaria, since civil war first began in the DRC in 1996.
While an accord to end conflict was signed in South Africa at the end of 2002, lives are still being claimed. A fortnight ago, gunmen attacked Kigalama, a village in the eastern province of South Kivu, killing 13 people. South Kivu Governor Didace Kaningini Kyoto told journalists that the 5 000 villagers who normally live in Kigalama had fled.
The attack has been blamed on Hutu militants from neighbouring Rwanda who entered the DRC after the 1994 genocide in their country. Upwards of 800 000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were killed in the genocide, perpetrated by hard-line Hutus.
Tutsi rebels gained control of Rwanda after the killings, and fearing reprisals, Hutu militants took refuge in the former Zaire.
”The Hutu rebels are active in South Kivu. They hide in the forest and some of them have integrated into society,” says Pierre Kosmas of the Congo Support Group, an NGO based in Johannesburg, South Africa. ”If the Hutu rebels are not neutralised, they could ignite another Congo war.”
Cross-border incursions by Hutu militants prompted Rwanda and Uganda to assist Congolese rebels to overthrow president Mobutu Sese Seko, after a one-year campaign, in 1997. Laurent Kabila was subsequently installed as the new head of state, but a year later ordered all Rwandan soldiers to leave the country.
This sparked another round of fighting, which saw Rwanda and Uganda supporting a plethora of rebel groups, while Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe backed Kabila.
All foreign troops were officially pulled out of the DRC under the 2002 peace deal. But the Congolese government claims Rwanda still maintains forces in the east of the country — an allegation denied by Kigali.
”I think a lot needs to be done to disarm the Interahamwe,” says Dennis Kadima, executive director of the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa, a Johannesburg-based think-tank. (Interahamwe — meaning ”those who fight together” in Kinyarwanda — is the name given to militants who helped carry out the Rwandan genocide.)
”Congo has been victimised by this group since 1994,” Kadima adds. ”They have exported Rwanda’s problem to Congo, and they use Congo as a battleground. The Congolese are peace-loving people. They don’t have a history of violence.”
Kadima returned to Johannesburg last week from the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, which he had visited to discuss general elections scheduled to take place during the early months of 2006. A transitional government is currently ruling the country.
”The Hutu rebels should be persuaded to return home. We can’t hold elections when we have armed people intimidating voters. They know that when Congo has a legitimate government, they will be disarmed,” Kadima says.
It appears that a certain number of militants are going back to Rwanda, despite fears that they will be arrested for their alleged role in the 1994 massacres.
”When I was returning to Johannesburg via Nairobi, there were about 30 Rwandan refugees on a plane who were travelling home from Congo,” says Kadima. ”Their repatriation was arranged by the UNHCR [the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees]. So we now know that Rwandans can return home.
”Those who cannot be persuaded to return home, I’m sorry to say, force must be used to expel them from Congo.”
However, the DRC’s woes are not confined to South Kivu: they also extend to copper-rich Katanga, a province on the border with Angola.
Last week, MÃ