African leaders fall short in DRC talks agrement

The much-anticipated joint summit between the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and East African Community (EAC), which ended on Saturday, failed to agree on concrete measures to address the warfare in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Daily Maverick reports that the meeting of leaders from both regions notably refrained from explicitly calling on Rwanda to withdraw its forces from eastern DRC where they are providing substantial military support to the M23 rebels who have captured large swathes of DRC’s North Kivu and South Kivu provinces and are still on the march. One analyst said Rwandan President Paul Kagame was the big winner of the joint summit as it didn’t even explicitly mention Rwanda’s involvement in the fighting in DRC, let alone demand Rwanda’s withdrawal. The communique from the summit also showed a lack of urgency in addressing pressing issues. It said the chiefs of the defence forces of the SADC and EAC member states should meet within five days to ‘provide technical direction’ on matters such as an ‘immediate and unconditional’ ceasefire, humanitarian support including the repatriation of dead soldiers and evacuation of the wounded, and reopening supply routes and the vital airport at Goma, the capital of North Kivu province which is occupied by M23/Rwanda.

The summit gave SADC and EAC Ministers a further 30 days to meet to consider the report of the chiefs of defence on these urgent issues. This slow pace is likely to affect the 2 000-plus SA National Defence Force (SANDF) soldiers, some of whom are wounded, who remain trapped in their bases around Goma and nearby Sake in difficult conditions, notes the Daily Maverick. Fourteen SANDF soldiers, together with three from Malawi, one from Tanzania and one from Uruguay were killed in fighting with the M23/Rwanda or in crossfire between the rebels and Congolese troops, between 23 and 27 January around Goma. After tough negotiations, the remains of the South Africans, Malawians and the Tanzanian were finally released on Friday and arrived at Entebbe in Uganda on Saturday, the SANDF announced. Most of the SA soldiers, the Tanzanian and the Malawian had been deployed to eastern DRC as part of the SADC Mission in DRC.

The joint summit in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, was attended by the key antagonists, DRC President Felix Tshisekedi and Kagame as well as SA President Cyril Ramaphosa, Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and representatives of other SADC and EAC countries. The Daily Maverick says they agreed to merge the two separate and sometimes conflicting peace processes which have been addressing the eastern DRC conflict, the Luanda process led by Angolan President João Lourenço, and the Nairobi process led by former Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta. Stephanie Wolters, a senior research fellow and Great Lakes expert at the SA Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg, said Kagame appeared to be the winner at the summit ‘as there was no explicit mention of Rwanda’s role’, although the leaders had called for the withdrawal of uninvited foreign armed forces. She said the summit was ‘very mitigated’, and that merging the Luanda and Nairobi peace processes didn’t make sense as the Nairobi process was not going to happen because it was about negotiations among local armed groups who were not close to returning to the negotiation table. ‘I just think this was really weak. I don’t think it’s going to change anything on the ground. I don’t think a ceasefire is going to come into place any time soon.’