Rwanda wants war in DRC and other conspiracy theories
By Frederick Golooba-Mutebi
posted Saturday, October 26 2013 at 11:32
One of the most popular conspiracy theories in newspapers and on radio and Twitter in this part of the world goes like this: The government of Rwanda has a vested interest in perpetuating armed conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo. One hears this thesis bandied about by casual commentators, regional experts of one kind or another, and large numbers of Congolese in and outside Congo.
Indeed, attempts at resolving the crisis in the DRC’s Kivu region usually start from the premise that Rwanda’s interests in Congo revolve around keeping the DRC in a permanent state of war, thus the all-too-common threat of “targeted sanctions.”
This view is informed by the belief that a key motivation of the Rwandans is to loot the DRC’s wealth. Apparently, Rwanda’s economy cannot survive without massive injections of Congo’s minerals. It is even claimed that “all the development” one sees in places such as Kigali is the direct outcome of Rwanda’s “illegal activities.”
A recent report by the American-led Enough Project even alluded to a part of Kigali nicknamed “Merci Congo” (Thank you, Congo), presumably because it owes its existence to looted Congolese wealth.
In well over a decade of frequenting Rwanda, talking to Rwandans at length, including about the Congo wars and residing there from time to time, I have never encountered “Merci Congo.” Recent inquiries from a cross-section of well-informed Kigali residents also drew a blank.
But one must ask: What mechanisms or strategies does Rwanda use to execute the said burglary? Who exactly is executing the theft, and how exactly does it happen? And where in the Kivu region does it take place, under whose guidance or supervision?
The idea that Rwanda is up to no good in its relations with the DRC also forms the basis of another well-rehearsed story: Apparently, Rwanda wants to annex the Kivu region. Some of the international community’s experts have been heard to claim that it is actually not annexation that Rwanda is after, but the creation of a proxy state.
Presumably, this state would be led by M23, the group the government of Rwanda is said not only to have created, but also to support with arms and, some insist, troops from the Rwanda Defence Forces.
Again, these claims raise some very elementary questions that even someone with fleeting knowledge of Congo and what is going on there should ponder.
For some reason, repeaters of these claims never pause to wonder why, given the international community’s commitment to preserving national borders, Rwanda’s leaders would imagine that their country can simply annex the Kivus and get away with it. To believe this, one would first of all have to believe that they are daft. Are they?
The idea of Rwanda creating a proxy state is just as intriguing. Rwandophones who would presumably govern it are a very tiny and fractious minority in the Kivus. Some are hardly fans of the
government in Kigali. Also, not only are the larger groups, such as the Bashi, Bahunde, Banande and Bafulero hostile towards the Rwandophones, some already have militias they would unleash against a Rwandophone-led proxy state.
Creating such a state would amount to Rwanda literally sleepwalking into assuming responsibility for defending it against multiple internal insurgencies. What advantage would it derive from such a development? It is also instructive that despite Rwanda’s leaders saying so repeatedly, the story of Rwanda wanting peace rather than war in the DRC has not attracted as much attention. According to Rwandan officials, there are several reasons why a peaceful DRC serves their country’s interests better than one in armed conflict. The most important one is economic.
Over and above what the Rwandans themselves say, a 2010 study by the NGO International Alert of informal trade between the two border towns of Gisenyi in Rwanda and Goma in the DRC, provides clear pointers to why a peaceful DRC is important to Rwanda. The DRC is a huge market for Rwanda’s informal traders dealing in agricultural produce, and therefore a key factor in its efforts to
reduce poverty among its smallholder farmers.
The statistical evidence is sobering: 320 tonnes of tomatoes, 340 tonnes of vegetables and 350,000 litres of milk leave Rwanda for the DRC every month, through just this one border point. That is in addition to large quantities of beef, pork, goat, chicken and fresh fish.
While DRC traders also sell their products in Rwanda and pay taxes there, the study says “the direction of flow (of traders and goods) is predominantly from Gisenyi to Goma.” That can only happen in the absence of war, when the border is open.
Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: fgmutebi@yahoo.com
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