SADC meets on DRC, Zimbabwe
Bathandwa Mbola
7 November 2008
South Africa is to host a regional summit on Sunday to discuss the renewed outbreak of violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the stalled power-sharing deal in Zimbabwe.
Leaders from the 15-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) will meet for an extraordinary summit, to be chaired by South African President Kgalema Motlanthe.
According to Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, high on the agenda will be a discussion of the current political situation in the DRC as well as the ongoing facilitation efforts in Zimbabwe.
The power-sharing deal between Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has stalled over the allocation of key cabinet ministries.
Regional leaders have held two summits over the last three weeks to press the rivals into a compromise.
At their last meeting in Harare on 27 October, Mugabe and Tsvangirai agreed only to bring the dispute before an emergency SADC summit.
According to the United Nations (UN), nearly half of Zimbabwe's population needs international food aid. This has been worsened by the country's high inflation rate, which is estimated to be around 231 million percent.
DRC skirmishes 'could spiral out of control'
In the eastern region of the DRC, meanwhile, clashes between rebels and pro-government militia have been continued for weeks, displacing tens of thousands of people.
The International Red Cross said on Wednesday that it had started distributing 365 tons of food to the displaced people around Kibati, just north of Goma, which is surrounded by rebel forces.
Dr Kathryn Sturman of the South African Institute of International Affairs told BuaNews on Friday that the skirmishes in the eastern DRC had the potential to spiral out of control into full-blown ethnic violence.
"It is of interest to note that the African Union has put the DRC back on their agenda," said Sturman, who returned from a visit to Kinshasa in the DRC two weeks ago.
She said that despite the UN having a force of 17 000 peacekeepers stationed in the DRC to protect civilians - the biggest deployment of UN peacekeepers in the world - the badly equipped and trained Congolese army had proved little match for the rebel forces of General Laurent Nkunda.
Roots in Rwandan genocide
The relationship between the DRC and Rwanda, the cause of the conflict, originated after the Rwandan genocide of 1994, when 1.2-million refugees flowed over Rwanda's border into the eastern DRC.
Both Rwandan Hutu genocide perpetrators and Tutsi victims crossed the border into the DRC and were housed and protected in UN refugee camps.
However, the Rwandan government now wants the Congolese government of President Joseph Kabila to expel Hutu refugees from the DRC to force them to return to Rwanda to face trial for genocide crimes.
The North and South Kivu provinces in the east of the DRC are still a hive of illegal mining activity as Rwandan refugees, as well as locals, mine for diamonds and coltan. Coltan is a vital component for mobile phones, laptops and pagers, and a 10-fold jump in the price of coltan led to a "coltan rush" in 2000.
This, it is believed, is fuelling tensions in the area, as the illegally mined minerals are allegedly transported over the border into Rwanda.
Reports coming out of the DRC, Sturman said, indicated the possible involvement of the Rwandan government in the supply of General Nkunda's rebels - an involvement the Rwandan government has denied.
"The 2003 Sun City Peace Agreement, which saw the withdrawal of Rwandan troops from eastern DRC, ended fighting but did not address economic issues [such as that of illegal mining]," Sturman said.
According to Sturman, the eastern region of the DRC is a heterogeneous mix of Congolese government fighters, Congolese rebel forces, Mai Mai child milita, and even forces from Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) using the eastern DRC to launch attacks into Uganda.
She said the SADC leaders, in their meeting on Sunday, were likely to examine what role Angola could play in the resolution of the conflict, as Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has a good relationship with Joseph Kabila, and there was a chance that Angolan troops could be sent into the DRC.
"The deployment of Angolan troops could, however, further escalate the conflict," Sturman added.
The British and French foreign ministers are in the process of organising a meeting between Kabila and Rwandan President Paul Kagame, to take place under the auspices of the African Union, in Nairobi, Kenya at the end of next week, she said.
South Africa's Cabinet, in its meeting on Wednesday, expressed "extreme concern" at the conflict in the DRC, as well as the lack of progress in the power-sharing deal in Zimbabwe.
Source: BuaNews
