Corneille Nanga, coordinator of the AFC-M23 movement, attends a meeting organised by M23 at the Stade de L'Unite in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, February 6, 2025.
Matters have come to a boil in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Tens of thousands of well-trained, disciplined and heavily armed M23 soldiers have come out of some bush and given the hapless Congolese army a hiding, seen off Africa’s best armed, biggest and most sophisticated – among other adjectives – South African military and escorted out of DRC tens of mercenaries who had been hired by various interested parties to kill and suppress the Congolese for one reason or the other.
As a result, DRC is once again at an inflection point and I see three possible outcomes: the first is that Felix Tshisekedi negotiates a peace deal with M23 and other armed groups and is able to continue with business as usual.
The second is the pie in the sky option. It is more likely that Father Christmas’s white beard will catch fire than that President Tshisekedi will be able to drive this agreement. When it comes to negotiations, he is a bad hombre, accused by his rivals of never keeping his word and many claiming to fear for their lives after he allegedly sought to assassinate them. Others claim that after a deal is signed, he never bothers to carry his copy of the agreement to read, internalise and enforce because for him, signing the agreement and getting what he wants is the whole purpose, he has no intention of following what it says.
A more likely scenario is a national dialogue to create a loosely federated Congolese state which is perhaps what most of the more serious regional leaders would want. The dream of a vibrant, prosperous Congo beats in the heart of many and they would probably go for this option.
National dialogue
As a matter of fact, the peripheries seem to hold a lot more promise than the centre as homes of culture, peace and prosperity. Of course, the regions would insist on having their own strong armies, just in case someone thought of bringing back the mercenaries.
The final option is that M23, aware that what some are saying could be true, that a good part of the Congolese army exists only on paper, the big part being snugly fitted in the stomachs of officials and corrupt generals, decides to go for the decisive solution – drive up to Kinshasa and depose President Tshisekedi.
Ideally the differences ought to be ironed out through a national dialogue. But negotiations have consistently failed because DRC is poorly led, the people are deeply divided and fighting amongst themselves. And there are always greedy foreigners, drawn by the famed riches of the Congo, ruthlessly meddling and creating more chaos. Many African leaders are running rackets in the Congo: mining, farming, ranching or smuggling. When they look at the Congo, they don’t see the suffering of the people, they see dollar signs.
Since the fateful day when the Belgians invaded their land – perhaps even before, given the operations of slavers and other profiteers – the people of Congo have been ill-used and horribly treated by their leaders and the colonialists before them. Belgium did not leave behind a well educated nation. Even their hero, Patrice Lumumba, was a mission school graduate and was a postal clerk, albeit a clever one. Had the West left Congo alone at independence, perhaps the outcome would have been different. Now they have to salvage a nation out of the fires of war, tribalism and poverty.
***
Those who came into contact with the Aga Khan, especially journalists, are feeling a deep loss at his death. He was not just a business mogul, he was also a very decent and intelligent man who invested his considerable learning and intellect to the development of journalism in East Africa. First was his commitment to quality. Speaking to journalists in March 2005, he told them he was aware that the easiest way to make money was by selling sleaze and tabloid fare, but he wasn’t going to stand for it and he wasn’t sending anyone to make money for him.
And sure enough, he closed many profitable newspapers because they didn’t meet quality standards. His “superficiality index” which he used to smoke out fluff in content was famous in editorial circles, as was his aversion to redesigns and other cosmetic improvements to his papers. He held firm that readers were best served by “familiarity rather than experimentation with form”.
Secondly was his commitment to the values in the policies that guided his media empire. Editors would not get away with disrespecting or commodifying women in their publications, neither would he allow them to relent in their defence of minorities and the weak in society or their commitment to a market economy, human rights and democracy. He also loved and championed Kiswahili.
I think perhaps his greatest disappointment was that African journalism didn’t do enough to inspire the continent’s teeming youth to extract it out of the morass of poverty and suffering. But he tried, more than anyone else.
African journalism has lost its most important thinker and benefactor.
Mr Mathiu, a media consultant at Steward-Africa, is a former Editor-in-Chief of Nation Media Group. [email protected].
