Amid the cacophony of war over Goma, the capital of North Kivu in eastern DR Congo, Kenyan President William Ruto announced on Monday that his Rwandan and Congolese counterparts have agreed in principle to meet over the crisis.
With the conflict raging and the situation in a state of flux, President Ruto meeting with his peers in Nairobi over the future of the African Union indicated that the two leaders will take part in a meeting on Wednesday as the East African Community seek a way to end hostilities.
However, distrust between President Tshisekedi and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame runs skin deep, prompting many to question whether such proposed talks will result in any tangible results on the ground in eastern DRC?
Reports suggesting that the March 23 Movement rebels have captured Goma are still being hotly disputed by the government of Felix Tshisekedi which has vowed that the ill-equipped Armed Forces of the DRC (FARDC) will repulse the invasion.
Ruto’s attempt to put a gloss over this tension could not paper over the cracks in DRC-Rwanda relations which had been on ice since 2022.
Several attempts in the past by Angola’s President João Lourenço the special negotiator for the DRC and world powers to bring Mr Tshisekedi and Paul Kagame in the same room for a negotiated settlement of the protracted conflict had failed woefully.
The latest happened last December when their proposed meeting was called off at the eleventh hour over preconditions from both sides. Both men last met in Paris three months earlier at the behest of French President Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of a heads of state summit of Le Francophonie of which Rwanda and DR Congo are members. Nothing concrete followed by way of a mutually agreed commitment to ending hostilities.
Tshisekedi rejected Rwandan demands that DRC should negotiate with the M23 leaders without intermediaries seeing the movement as a Rwandan proxy.
The latest escalation of the conflict has led to severed diplomatic ties between the two neighbours as Tshisekedi maintains that Rwanda’s troop presence inside DR Congo is tantamount to a declaration of war by Kigali.
The authorities in Kigali have not denied the presence of their troops inside DR Congo but saw this as a justified move against the unrest spreading towards the Rwandan borders, threatening its own security and the Great Lakes Region in general.
There is no love-lust between Tshisekedi and Kagame. Both men reportedly detest each other’s sight, a theory which looks all the more vindicated the longer it takes to make them shake hands over a deal to end one of Africa’s most enduring flareups blamed for the deaths of tens of thousands of people, the displacement of up to three million more and a humanitarian crisis worsening by the day.
Over 400, 000 have been displaced since the January 2025 flareup.
Tshisekedi accuses Kagame’s Rwanda of sending troops to his country to back rebels of the March 23 (M23) Movement to destabilise much of eastern DR Congo and reportedly played an active role in wresting Goma from Congolese troops many of whom have surrendered to the advancing rebels despite some pockets of resistance.
Rwanda has denied this allegation and fired its own allegation back at Kinshasa, alluding to Tshisekedi’s alleged support for Hutu rebels of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), fighting to overthrow Kagame. The Congolese leader in turn denies the charge.
But years of investigations by UN officials and corroborations by witnesses on both sides of the conflict divide have shown that the traded allegations between Kinshasa and Kigali may be well founded.
Kigali has also named a third party, the MONUSCO peacekeeping mission to the fray, accusing it of taking the side of the FARDC despite its declared neutrality in the conflict. If there is one thing both DRC and Rwanda agree, it is that MONUSCO has been morally compromised. The Congolese government maintained that the peacekeeping mission has eschewed its duty to protect civilians from armed militias and should therefore leave DR Congo.
Goma a city of some 2 million people is the most important in North Kivu and its capture by the rebels if confirmed could deliver a blow to the prestige of the Congolese army and weaken Kinshasa’s leverage over Rwanda.
Could this force Tshisekedi to swallow Congolese pride and reach out to Kagame if this overture presents the only hope for stability in his country? The answer to this will be left to time.
