DRC crisis: Can Africans stand up to Western nations’ perpetuation of the tragic status quo?

A peaceful, prosperous Great Lakes region is not only possible but could be within immediate reach, were it not for the intervention of Western nations, trumpeted by Western media organisations and individuals and encouraged by a servile response from the African Union and the regional bloc itself. For the Great Lakes region of Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a running sore that generations of Congolese have inflicted upon themselves — a perverse act of extreme self-harm encouraged by Western nations, for whom the very idea of a peaceful Congo has always seemed like anathema. How else does one explain these powers’ determined effort to direct attention away from the underlying causes of the DRC crisis?

Add to that what is a virtually inherent characteristic of most Africans — to defer to the West on issues that affect the continent or be absent, in abdication of any responsibility to seek solutions to crises in their own countries — and what remains are nations on whom the West’s hold is not far off what it was during full-blown colonialism. And as under colonialism, Western nations seek to direct the course of African countries in a direction that serves not the interests of those countries but those of the respective Western nations. There is often an argument that derides the notion of “Western interests” on the basis that the West is not a monolith, any more than Africa is.

It is an argument that disintegrates on any proximity with reality. While it is accurate that different nations of the West pursue their own national interests in Africa, often even in competition with each other, there is nonetheless a shared outlook in their dealings with the continent. When hyenas pursue weakened prey, it is each attacker for itself, yet they all attack in concert.

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The demonstrably pernicious consequences of Africans ceding their responsibilities to Western powers, combined with these powers’ readiness to condemn African countries to any form of misery if it serves Western interests, have been playing out in Congo for well over a century, since Belgium’s Leopold II was granted it as his personal possession. The then Belgian king’s salivating at his “magnificent African cake” not only resonates with his Belgian successors but with all of today’s powerful Western nations. Where Leopold II and his representatives all but pruriently wallowed in the unspeakable cruelty needlessly visited upon the Congolese, his successors now veil such dehumanisation behind a wall of incessant, cacophonous platitudes claiming regard for human rights.

For their part, the Congolese seem to masochistically prefer to entrench the Western grip on their country. There is now a plethora of agreements, processes and accords, all supposedly designed to bring about peace in Congo. The word “complex” has rarely been more overused.

Yet anyone of average intelligence with the slightest interest in understanding the DRC crisis will need no more than a few minutes to be left wondering why the crisis persists and why it is regarded as intractable. Far from resolving a “complex” crisis, the many processes are an exercise in avoidance — so much so that the assertion of complexity is an insult to that average intelligence. Listen to any Western politician, commentator or journalist discussing the crisis in the DRC and among the first words mentioned will be Rwanda and minerals.

But there are three – and only three, causes of the DRC crisis: lack of governance worthy of the description in the DRC; the persecution of Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese; and the transformation of the country — especially the eastern part, the Kivus — into little more than a mirror image of the genocidal so-called Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). The lack of any semblance of governance is at the root of the decades-old persecution of Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese, which forced them to take up arms to defend their communities.

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