Rwanda-South Africa Diplomatic Row Threatens Congo Peace Process

Rwandan President Paul Kagame is at the center of talks aimed at de-escalating thetense situation in Eastern Congo due to his government's alleged patronage of the M23 rebel group responsible for capturing Goma, the largest city in the region.

Currently, it looks as though Kagame is in a combative stance after calling out South African PresidentCyril Ramaphosa as "pretending to be playing a peacemaker role," amongst other somewhat hostile comments calling out Congolese PresidentFelix Tshisekedi, former Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, and Angola's PresidentJoão Lourenço.

Addressing six other presidents during the emergency East African Community summit on Wednesday, Jan. 29, Kagame accused theSouthern African Development Community Mission in Congo (SAMIDRC) of working with the rebel group Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), with the permission of Tshisekedi. The FDLR is active in Congo and was formed by surviving perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide in 1994 – making the group a threat to Kagame.

"I wasn't surprised, but I was shocked," Chris Ogunmodede, associate editor at World Politics Review, says of Kagame's constant denial of supporting M23 and accusing Congo of working with FDLR. "These remarks aren't surprising or unusual or all that different from what [Kagame] has said in the past. What was different this time was calling out South Africa by name."

Yesterday, in response to a statement issued by Ramaphosa, Kagame said his South African counterpart's accounts of their conversations "contains a lot of distortion, deliberate attacks, and even lies." In his statement, Ramaphosaimplicated M23 and the Rwandan Defence Force (RDF) for thedeaths of 13 soldiers in SAMIDRC between last week and Monday. The South African president also said his government welcomes the UN Security Council's position for an immediate ceasefire.

Kagame's response featured a handful of assertions, like branding the SAMIDRC an illegitimate peacekeeping force, stating that Ramaphosa said the Congolese army killed the soldiers from South Africa, and declaring that Rwanda was prepared for confrontation if South Africa were to go that route.

"That takes the bilateral relationship between the two countries back to its nadir of the mid-2010s whenPatrick Karegeya was murdered in Johannesburg," Ogunmodede says. "I'm not saying it's analogous, but this is certainly a major escalation in the sense that it's [questioning South Africa's role in Congo] and its impartiality."

Ogunmodede adds that South Africa has been a part of the conflict for a while due to its population of Rwandans and Congolese people, many of them refugees from conflicts in their countries in the past three decades. "If nothing else, that gives South Africa a prominent role, and also as one of the wealthiest countries on the continent."

Kagame's stance makes it difficult to predict how soon the situation in Goma will be resolved. M23 has taken over the international airport in the city, a feat it did not achieve when it first took over Goma for ten days in late 2012. This gives the rebel groupunprecedented control that might make diplomatic solutions more complex than 12 years ago when international pressure on Rwanda from foreign donors led to the rebels' withdrawal.

While Ogunmodede doesn't believe Kagame controls M23, he considers the Rwandan president "a primary actor in the sense that M23 essentially depends on the patronage of the Rwandan armed forces," making international pressure a viable tool.