In the DRC, an ugly history of war risks repeating itself - East African leaders are mobilising armies to intervene in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Decades ago, Zimbabwean soldiers came to Kinshasa’s aid and learnt harsh lessons
But his East African allies had turned against him, and were supporting rebel militias that were closing in on the capital, Kinshasa. He needed help. So he looked to the Southern African regional bloc for assistance. Troops from Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe answered the call and, by August 1998, the Second Congo War had begun.
Congolese troops have been powerless to halt the rebel advances. A longstanding United Nations peacekeeping mission, Monusco, is active in the area but has no mandate to go on the offensive. It includes soldiers and police from more than 20 countries, including large contingents from South Africa, Morocco, Tanzania and Malawi.
If the talks don’t work out, Kenya’s President William Ruto has promised to send nearly 1 000 Kenyan soldiers into action to “enforce peace”.Clever Gunyani* was a Zim-babwean soldier in the DRC as part of the intervention force in the late 1990s. Davestone Nyoni*, also a Zimbabwean soldier, spent three years in the eastern DRC. He said he would go back if he had to. “God forbid, but if Zimbabwe is attacked today, we will need support from other nations, alliances have always existed. Of course, other interests are at play, like economics, for example. We went to war so that Zimbabweans could trade with the Congolese and vice versa.”
But some Zimbabweans were profiting, or profiteering, from the war. As an incentive to intervene, Kabila had dangled mining concessions and profit-sharing deals to Zimbabwe’s politically connected elite. Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa played a key role in overseeing these deals: as minister of justice, he visited the DRC’s Kasaï region to check in on Zimbabwe’s business interests, according to a United Nations report into how the Second Congo War was financed.The stakes are even higher this time around.
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