The Democratic Republic of Congo is back in the world news for the usual reason: Political instability.
One of the world’s most chronically mismanaged and dysfunctional countries, Congo once again is an Africa problem.
The curse of Congo’s geography
The common explanation for Congo’s crisis is bad leadership. But is this all there is to it? Might there be other explanations beyond their control?
Africa’s central region of the Great Lakes is plagued by problems that have to do with a combination of ethnic animosity and geography, and historical ethnic tensions exacerbated by high population density.
Most of Africa’s largest countries (Chad, Algeria, Libya, Somalia, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Mali, Niger) are at least two-thirds semi-desert or wholly desert in topography.
In these desert and semi-desert regions, the population is very thin and therefore there is no need for the government to bother with building infrastructure.
Technically, Libya, Algeria, Mali, Chad, and the other large desert and semi-desert countries are as much failed states as Congo.
However, Congo is different in that it is huge but also mostly densely forested. Green forested land naturally attracts settlement, and yet Congo lacks the resources to extend public infrastructure to these areas.
This explains why Congo is often described as being too large to govern in a different way from, say, Algeria or Chad.
There are no people for whom to build highways and high-rise buildings in remote desert.
In other words, while the desert oases of North Africa are so sparsely populated that their governments have no need to build infrastructure, Congo’s remote, fertile terrain makes it suitable for habitation.
In addition, Congo is about the size of Western Europe.
European governments have enough challenges running their states.
In Congo’s case, the governments since independence must govern an area equivalent to 20 Western European states but with a weak economy, little skilled manpower, and several dozen ethnic groups.
Given these geographical constraints, little wonder that it was more practical for President Mobutu Sese Seko to employ the politics of patronage and planning one region against another, than for him to attempt the nearly impossible task of building costly infrastructure across such a large country.
To better appreciate Eastern Congo, one can think of Karamoja in Uganda’s northeast which is Uganda’s driest region, and also Uganda’s least developed region.
Like eastern Congo, rich in minerals but for most of its post-independence history, it has mostly been neglected and has been plagued by armed conflict and insecurity from time to time.
The first obvious failure is by various Congolese governments since independence to appreciate the need to control the country’s entire territory.
It’s not enough to say Western commercial companies and other shady interests want Congo unstable in order to continue exploiting it.
Congo is not the only mineral-rich and resource-rich country. Qatar, Botswana, Kuwait, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, and others also have either oil and gas or minerals.
Even from a selfish, imperialistic point of view, it has been much more profitable to make money from these countries when they are stable with good infrastructure than with them in the state of eastern Congo.
Besides extracting minerals and precious stones, Congo’s vast size and underdeveloped state mean European, American, and Chinese companies potentially have much to gain in building new airports, hydropower dams, road highways, and large-scale agriculture projects.
International reaction to Goma’s fall
When a coalition of Congolese rebels backed by Rwanda and Uganda moved into the-then Zaire in October 1996, the country had decayed so much and President Mobutu ruled for so long, that this “new breed of African leaders”, as Museveni and Kagame were then regarded was widely seen as solving Congo’s impasse and decay.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 came as the biggest shock to the Western world since the end of the Cold War.
So jolting was it that it turned Western political and public opinion against any form of invasion of one country by another.
This partly explains why the M23’s claim about ethnic Tutsi being marginalised and in danger has mostly fallen on deaf ears and why Rwanda, which won wide Western sympathy in 1994 finds itself isolated today.
Even China, a country that is usually neutral in the internal matters of other countries and tends to be a little sympathetic to Third World countries, also joined the West in urging Rwandan troops to be withdrawn from Congo and for Kigali to stop supporting the M23.
Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the many reports and allegations in the late 1990s and early 2000s implicating Uganda and Rwanda in human rights abuses and the plundering of Congo’s resources had tarnished Rwanda as a welcome solver of the Great Lakes region’s problems.
Rwanda’s miscalculation
This, in turn, brings us to a major miscalculation by Rwanda.
Rwandan intelligence enjoys a reputation in the Great Lakes region as efficient and with agents and informers infiltrated at the highest levels of governments in the neighbourhood.
If so, then it failed to look beyond the eastern African region and gauge international opinion and how support for an M23 takeover of Goma would be received in 2025.
Since the tragic events of 1994, Rwanda had grown used to receiving international sympathy over the genocide and later after 2000, admiration for its government’s discipline and commitment to accountability in public finances.
Nothing could go wrong with Rwanda.
It was the leading country in Africa in the cleanliness of its streets, rule of law, respect for traffic rules, low levels of corruption, peacekeeping deployments in Africa, and embrace of digital technology and all things cutting-edge.
What was never pointed out was that several other African countries such as Namibia, Seychelles, Mauritius, Morocco, Botswana, and so forth were also much like Rwanda.
Kigali also assumed that the sympathy borne of its 1994 victimhood was still as strong as 30 years ago and that any incursion into Congo ostensibly to protect ethnic Tutsi from persecution would receive international support.
Uganda’s interests in Congo
As already stated, in the mid to late 1990s, NRM Uganda and RPF Rwanda were united in political and military purpose.
They had shared interests in neighbouring Zaire and jointly supported the Congolese rebel insurgency against the Mobutu regime.
However, it soon came to light that the two governments and their armies had long-simmering tensions going back to the early 1980s when their senior leadership was part of Museveni’s National Resistance Army (NRA).
These tensions erupted into the open in clashes between the Rwandan and Ugandan armies in the Congolese city of Kisangani in August 1999.
That first clash in Kisangani turned the two previously close governments into enemies or, at best, created mutual suspicion that has never gone away.
From time to time since 2005, each has suspected the other of housing or supporting groups intent on overthrowing their respective governments – Kampala suspecting Kigali of supporting the shadowy PRA group reportedly affiliated with Dr. Kiiza Besigye after 2001, and Kigali suspecting Kampala of supporting the Rwandan National Congress (RNC), an offshoot of the RPF in the way the FDC was an offshoot of the NRM.
Both the PRA and RNC have reportedly had training bases in Congo.
So, while Kigali publicly declares an interest in containing Habyarimana army remnants in Congo and Kampala publicly states its interest in Congo is to dismantle the ADF rebels opposed to the NRM government, what is not much discussed is this quiet tension over mutual support to groups that previously belonged to the ruling RPF and NRM.
In other words, is Rwanda in Congo to deal with Habyarimana’s former army or ex-RPF officers in the RNC?
Is Rwanda in Congo to train groups like the ADF opposed to Kampala?
And is Uganda in Congo to pursue the ADF or to support the RNC?
Why did Rwanda go to the trouble of closing its border with Uganda for three years from 2019 to 2022?
Following M23’s seizure of Goma, why did the Ugandan army deploy 1,000 troops close to M23 positions near Bukavu?
Was this deployment by Uganda to provide back up support to M23 or to counter M23?
If it was to support the M23, how come President Museveni since the fall of Goma to M23 has not said anything publicly in support of Rwanda but has maintained a vague and general call for Kinshasa and the M23 to talk?
In Congo’s last general election, Kampala supported Felix Tshisekedi’s candidature.
Clearly, then, Kigali perceives Kampala in recent years supporting heads of state with whom Kigali is on bad terms, first with the late President Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi and now President Tshisekedi.
The UPDF’s deployment near Bukavu can be seen in this light, of quiet tensions between Rwanda and Uganda.
