Mwene Rugwe 🇧🇮
@Lionel_SN • 9,512 subscribers
The wealthiest place on the planet is the cemetery. There lies buried the greatest treasure of untapped potential:Myles Monroe
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Reports that #Angola has withdrawn from the inter-Congolese dialogue, citing Kinshasa’s refusal to honor its commitments. If confirmed, Angola would become the second mediator in the #DRC crisis, after Ruto’s #Kenya, to openly state that Kinshasa is to blame for the continuation of the war. Kinshasa rejected dialogue with its armed opposition and has now rejected dialogue with its non-armed opposition as well. It is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the extent to which Washington’s support has emboldened the regime to believe it can act without consequences. The US’ failure to hold Kinshasa accountable for violations of the Washington Accords and ceasefire commitments made in Doha and Luanda means that the risk of a major military escalation is increasing, not decreasing.
Mwene Rugwe 🇧🇮19,541 次观看 • 7 天前
🔴 Who is plundering Congo’s minerals? For this Congolese, who has visited mines in Maniema, North Kivu and Ituri and conducted his own field research, one of the biggest looters of Congolese minerals is not Rwanda, but South Africa! "Why were South African troops protecting Goma's international airport?" he asks rhetorically. He explains that it's because there are South African helicopters bringing minerals from Walikale (North Kivu) to Goma airport. These minerals belong to a global mining company called MPC, which has offices and representatives in South Africa. He says he has known MPC since 2003. Since then, he says, the South Africans have taken unquantifiable quantities of coltan and casserite minerals. Why don't we talk about South Africa, he asks? “Why don't we talk about the Lebanese and Indian traders who are based in Goma?” He concludes that the only reason the Congolese talk about Rwanda is because Rwanda is their number one enemy. Rwanda is a trigger for the Congolese, he insists. He also dismisses claims that Rwanda is plundering DRCongo. He argues that there are no Rwandans in Congolese mines, not even in the Rubaya mines controlled by the M23. "They know they are not welcome," he says. "The Congolese take these minerals to Rwanda willingly, so how is Rwanda looting us?" These revelations also explain why South Africa is reluctant to withdraw its troops from Goma and continues to demand that the M23 withdraw from the city and reopen the airport. It is not even about the well-being of the SANDF troops who are trapped in their bases and dependent on the M23 for their basic supplies of food and water. It's about Ramaphosa's business interests.
Mwene Rugwe 🇧🇮96,983 次观看 • 1 年前
Once again, Rwanda is vindicated. In his briefing for the upcoming joint SADC-EAC summit, Uhuru Kenyatta, the facilitator of the Nairobi process, says that only close coordination between the Luanda and Nairobi processes can bring the DRC crisis to an end. Ten months ago, in May 2024, in an interview with Jeune Afrique, President Kagame asked that the two processes be brought closer together instead of being run separately and, sometimes, in different directions. He also called for a meeting of EAC and SADC leaders to discuss and coordinate their response to the DRC, rather than allowing Tshisekedi to create divisions within and between the regions. One can't help wondering how many lives would have been spared if SADC and EAC leaders had responded positively and earlier to Kagame's proposals.
Mwene Rugwe 🇧🇮70,291 次观看 • 1 年前
The story about the “looter” of the Congo’s minerals gets one thing wrong: the identity of the looter. The Financial Times ran a story yesterday about the Congo that tells us two things: First, the Congo is still, in many ways, a Belgian colony. Second, unlike Rwanda, the Congo has yet to take meaningful steps to free itself from colonial control, even though it has the means to do so. So, what’s this all about? FT reports a growing dispute over millions of colonial-era geological records held at Belgium’s Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren. These records include detailed maps of Congo’s mineral wealth from the colonial period—data that is extremely valuable today, given the country’s copper, cobalt, and lithium reserves. Kinshasa, together with US mining company KoBold Metals (backed by Bill Gates), agreed to digitise these records to better identify and exploit the resources. BUT Belgium said no. Instead, it launched its own EU-funded digitisation project, promising that the Congo will *eventually* gain access. At its heart, this story is about control. Whoever controls the data shapes investment, profits, and, yes, dependency. The FT frames it as a geopolitical and economic standoff between Belgium, the DRC, and a US-linked firm. But for ordinary Congolese, it’s another reminder that even knowledge about their own land is still being negotiated elsewhere. What’s perhaps more striking is the contrast with Rwanda. The small neighbour, often dismissed for having NO minerals, is in the process of finalising a national digital database of all its mineral wealth. Rwanda’s Mining Board has already begun deploying a system designed to give investors and regulators transparent, online access to mining licences and geological data. Meanwhile, the “giant” Congo is still effectively begging colonial powers for access to its own information. As we’ve said, the West does not need Rwanda to access the Congo’s minerals. That only becomes clear when westerners start squabbling over who controls the information about the Congo’s wealth.
Mwene Rugwe 🇧🇮16,439 次观看 • 4 个月前
Listening to the SA debates in parliament about the SA intervention in the DRC. Many talk about the lack of resources and preparation of the SANDF, but no one questions the purpose of the mission, which is to suppress people fighting for their rights. Or how they found themselves fighting alongside a genocidal force. Then there are the clowns in between.
Mwene Rugwe 🇧🇮44,835 次观看 • 1 年前
AFC/M23 point out that in 2012, similar reports emerged and were used to justify the use of force and block any discussion of the conflict’s root causes. AFC/M23 welcome an independent investigation into alleged massacres reported by Human Rights Watch. “Be careful, war is a business.”
Mwene Rugwe 🇧🇮27,624 次观看 • 9 个月前
The Congo is a perfect example of how the US simultaneously claims to want something and actively works against it. You cannot claim to want good governance, security, and the rule of law so that your investors can compete fairly while propping up a regime that openly spits on those very principles: arming genocidal militias, promoting genocidal ideology, recruiting mercenaries, looting the country’s wealth, weaponising justice, outsourcing security. You cannot profess to uphold certain values while working tirelessly to suppress a revolutionary movement that aims to make them the guiding principles of governance. The truth is that the US wants to have its cake and eat it too. It wants a failed state it can manipulate into ceding mineral rights for a pittance, without facing the consequences: insecurity, rebellions, mass displacement (migration crisis from the West’s perspective), and a predatory elite that makes the rule of law impossible. This man, Neema, said something that makes perfect sense: economic deals should benefit the people; they should be designed for their benefit, not primarily as geopolitical manoeuvres. Indeed, but how can that happen if Congolese citizens are denied the space to find their own organic solutions to governance? How does US interference, which hinders well-meaning actors from rebuilding the state, help achieve America’s stated objectives? How does keeping the Congo perpetually dependent on NGOs and UN missions (since the 1960s, mind you) help the Congolese establish governance conducive to sustainable business? In this hearing, they lament China’s monopoly on mineral supply chains. But China is not the problem, the Congolese failed state is. China will thrive anywhere, law-abiding or corrupt alike, for the reasons I explained in this article. ( Where laws are not stacked against them, Chinese entrepreneurs dominate both in law-abiding countries and in lawless Congos, because China’s interests come first, profit second. In capitalist states like the US, by contrast, private interests rule, state interests come second, and while ordinary Americans have been convinced that the two are one and the same, they are not. Perhaps this is the core challenge for US foreign policy. A corrupt elite unable to distinguish between state interests and corporate interests, and therefore unable to differentiate between long-term strategic aims (serving the state) and short-term profits (serving corporations and billionaires). The elites in both the US and the Congo may make a quick profit out of all this nonsense, but always at the expense of their own nations. If they were not corrupt, or driven by outright ideological hatred, they would realise they want the same things as the AFC/M23. In fact, the AFC/M23 is the solution to the Congo’s crisis.
Mwene Rugwe 🇧🇮10,640 次观看 • 4 个月前
AFC/M23: “Yesterday, we were Rwandan invaders. Today, we are Congolese backed by Rwanda. Tomorrow, we will be Congolese liberators.” Who writes history? Who shapes our perspectives? “Until the lion has his own historians, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”
Mwene Rugwe 🇧🇮19,701 次观看 • 10 个月前
Rutendo Rutendo Matinyarare on being misled by anti-Rwandan and anti-Tutsi propaganda, and on having to unlearn the Hamitic teachings he himself helped spread. In the Great Lakes region, there are no Africans more African than others, only Africans caught in the colonial trap.
Mwene Rugwe 🇧🇮25,190 次观看 • 1 年前
Forget the infantilizing narratives about the DRC conflict. Minerals are not the central issue for those fighting for survival. At the heart of the conflict is a governance crisis, which takes on genocidal forms as it searches for scapegoats for its failures. Bojana Coulibaly, Ph.D. ⤵️
Mwene Rugwe 🇧🇮14,529 次观看 • 8 个月前
As the M23 advances towards Walikale, it's safe to assume that it's not the Congolese army that's fighting. From Kibua to Walikale, the real enemy is the FDLR. Behind the mineral conflict narrative lies a dirty secret that neither the UN nor Western capitals want to face.
Mwene Rugwe 🇧🇮19,705 次观看 • 1 年前