November 10, 2025
S’installant très lentement dans le débat européen, la notion de charge raciale se heurte encore aux préjugés et amnésies opportunes....
With their dazzling capture of the city of Goma, the M23 militiamen associated with the Rwandan armed forces caused fear and threw thousands of Congolese onto the roads. Is the eternal war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) over “blood minerals” taking a new turn? Are we heading towards an effective counter-offensive from the DRC or towards a regional conflagration in the heart of southern Africa? In the meantime, civilians are dying under machine gunfire and bombings. Nearly 3,000 people have already lost their lives in Goma and its surroundings, under the indecisive or indifferent eye of the United Nations Security Council…
After a week of very violent fighting which saw Goma, the capital of the province of North Kivu (DRC), fall under the almost total control of the M23 and Rwandan soldiers, the UN listed at least 700 killed. “The World Health Organization and its partners, with the government, conducted an assessment, between January 26 and January 31, and reported that 700 people were killed and 2,800 injured,” declared Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesperson for the United Nations, on February 1.
Relayed by Fernando Murhola, National Coordinator of the Technical Unit for Human Rights (CTDH), another assessment resulting from “a preliminary compilation of information received from humanitarian sources, health structures and Civil Society actors”, reported a “real carnage” perpetrated in Goma from January 25 to 30, 2025: “More than 1,250 dead, 2,300 injured, 540 missing. and several thousand internally displaced persons perpetually wandering.”
On February 5, the United Nations revised their toll upwards: 2,900 deaths… “Some 2,000 bodies have been recovered in the streets of Goma in recent days, and 900 bodies are in the morgue,” said Vivian van de Perre, deputy head of the UN mission in the DRC. A provisional assessment which could further increase…
While M23 soldiers were seen moving towards Bukavu, capital of the South Kivu province, the war escalation has made several observers fear a regional conflagration in the heart of Africa; i.e. a third war in southern Africa opposing, mainly, the DRC (allied to Burundi and South Africa) to Rwanda (allied to Uganda).
The uncertain Congolese response
Four days after “the fall of Goma”, Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi decided to address his people and the diaspora. In a serious and solemn tone, “Fatshi” called for “resistance” and promised “a vigorous response”:
“The east of our country – in particular the provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri – is facing an unprecedented worsening of the security situation. The Rwandan defense forces, in support of their M23 puppet, continue their terrorist enterprise on our territory, sowing terror and desolation among our populations […] In these difficult times, I call on you for resilience and above all for resistance! Faced with this situation, allow me to reassure you: a vigorous response against these terrorists and their sponsors is underway. Our valiant armed forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC], symbols of courage and patriotism, are fully mobilized, ready to defend every inch of our territory.”
If this martial speech comes too late, the presidential speech nevertheless produced the desired effect across the country and in the diaspora. Of course, many Congolese demand action after these promises, but, for the most part, stand behind their head of state, faced with an aggression-invasion of murderous proportions that are as staggering as they are “rapid”.
For his part, Evariste Ndayishimiye, the president of Burundi (a neighboring country of Rwanda and Congo-Kinshasa), expressed his fears regarding “a generalized regional war” if Rwanda and its allies continued their invasion of the DRC.
Added to this is the hardening of relations, already tense, between South Africa and Rwanda. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa accused the M23, supported by Kigali, of having killed 13 South African soldiers from the United Nations contingent during their lightning advance towards Goma. Africa’s most powerful state has warned that any new attack on its troops would be judged as “a declaration of war”. In return, the President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, accused South Africa of being a “belligerent force”, involved in the fighting in the East, seeking to help the Congolese government “fight against its own people”…
30 years of war in the East
Concerned about remaining anonymous for security reasons, a Congolese personality close to the government gives us an overall figure: “All minerals combined, the wealth of the Congolese subsoil is estimated at 24,000 billion dollars. This was summed up by the title of a recent press article: “Mendeleev’s entire painting is in the Congo basement.”
However, the plundering of the most strategic minerals would be impossible without the assistance of the failing Congolese state, weighed down by endemic corruption, a poorly paid, disorganized army, “infiltrated” by Congolese Tutsis under orders from Kigali and at the head of which succeed one another generals and commanders as venal as they are incompetent. To summarize: the “BMW (Beer-Money-Women)” state of mind, consolidated under the dictatorship of Marshal Mobutu (1965-1997), continues to produce its dysfunctional and deadly socio-political effects…
Since coming to power in 2018, Thisekedi and his successive governments have tried to correct this grotesque and criminal situation, inherited from 49 years of dictatorships [that of Mobutu Sese Seko (32 years old), then that of Joseph Kabila (17 years old)]. Both timid and too slow, their attempts remained largely insufficient as demonstrated, at the beginning of 2025, by the lightning attack on Goma and, before that, on several mining villages in North Kivu by the M23 and the Rwandan armed forces.
Ultra-rich but alone in the world
To better understand this African territorial conflict, almost 30 years old, we need to break down the central object of all desires: “blood minerals”.
Or, mainly, coltan, cobalt and gold, present in industrial quantities in the subsoil of Kivu, plundered for more than two decades, via various armed and bloodthirsty groups including the M23, supported by Rwanda. Strategic minerals which, let us remember, remain essential for the manufacture of telephones and laptop computers, electric batteries or missiles, rockets and planes.
Who has an interest in peace in Eastern Congo? Except for the “diggers” of the mining soil – including children aged 6 to 12 – added to the other 75 million Congolese “damned of the earth”: “No one! », replied, in 2022, the Cameroonian journalist Alain Foka.
In the light of future global energy crises as well as environmental electricity crises, the 24,000 billion dollars of the Congolese subsoil increasingly whet the appetites of Western multinationals and a host of rapacious exploiters, Chinese, Indian or Lebanese.
“This permanent state of war in Eastern Congo,” continues Foka, “benefits multinationals in the mining sector such as Anglogold or Glencore [to which we can notably add Apple, Bayer, Sony, Samsung; Intel, etc.]. For example, this Anglo-Saxon consortium, Glencore, owns 50% of the Mutanda mine in Katanga; that is to say the largest cobalt mine in the world!”
With 75,000 tonnes per year, the DRC is the world’s leading producer of cobalt (used in new generations of smartphones, electric batteries, etc.); the leading African producer of copper with more than one million tonnes produced per year; the world’s largest reserve of coltan (with 60 to 80%) as well as a major producer of gold (23,000 kilos per year) and diamonds (19 million carats per year).
In 2019, Rwanda acquired a gold refinery at a cost of $5 billion; in 2022, Kigali sold $637 million worth of gold to the United Arab Emirates. Problem: this small country in southern Africa does not have any gold mines. Unlike the DRC, in its provinces of South Kivu, Ituri or Maniema, part of whose extraction is regularly plundered or diverted to… Rwanda and Uganda.
Based on this data, former BBC journalist Alain Foka concludes:
“Instead of reacting as one in the face of predations and continued security instability, the Congo is sinking into rivalries, divisions and ethnic clashes. In the DRC, we often feel like we come from Katanga, Maniema, Equateur, Kasaï or Ituri before being Congolese. In a country the size of the European Union (2.345 million square kilometers) and where 75% of the population survives on less than $2 a day, these divisions are the political cancer of the country. These had already played a role in the assassination of Lumumba [first Prime Minister of the independent Congo] in 1961, perpetrated in the secessionist Katanga of Moïse Tshombe [puppet politician supported by the United States and Belgium at the time].”
Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde
In Europe, there are successive official calls to “stop the fighting” but devoid of any coercive threat against the aggressor country. With honor and isolation, certain deputies questioned the procrastination or refusal of their leaders to sanction Rwanda; yet a ferocious dictatorship with expansionist aims, responsible for a series of massacres, rapes and pillaging in the DRC, documented by a number of UN reports and journalistic investigations.
Calls to “put pressure on Rwanda”, to “stop all financial complicity” or to “prevent a humanitarian catastrophe” were launched by Lydia Mutebele (PS) in front of the Belgian Federal Parliament; by Carlos Martens Bilongo (LFI) in the French National Assembly or by deputies Rima Hassan (LFI) and Marc Botenga (PTB) in the European Parliament.
Only Belgium finally pushed the cursor by calling on the European Union for “sanctions against Rwanda”. But the flat country does not have the weight of the French or German Executives, who are silent in all languages. Even if, by sending its Minister of Foreign Affairs to “talk” with the Congolese and Rwandan presidents, Macron’s France played diplomatic “muscles” without, as is often the case, producing a notable effect on the battlefield…
Basically, according to our Congolese personality, there persists, in the DRC and its riches, a “Western hypocrisy”: “The Western community, particularly its most powerful countries, seems to suffer from a pathology known in psychiatry: bipolarity. On the one hand, this community speaks positively about the DRC and, on the other hand, it makes negative socio-economic choices. To put it another way, we are dealing with Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. For example, in the Mister Hide phase, the European Union has decided to sign, in 2021, a trade agreement with Rwanda on minerals. In 2023: sales of coltan from Kigali explode… without this country having a single coltan mine! Today, these gentlemen and ladies are vituperating over a situation that they themselves contributed to worsening.”
However, on the side of Great Britain – outside the EU and now led by Labor – we see more firmness emerging towards Kagame. “Rwanda has jeopardized a billion dollars of international aid by participating in the invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo,” declared British Foreign Minister David Lammy, promising “a review” or even a withdrawal of English financial aid to Rwanda.
Towards a balkanization of the DRC?
After the Goma massacres and the return to the spotlight of the war in the DRC, the M23 and the AFD (Congo River Alliance; political showcase of the M23 led by Corneille Nangaa) announced… a “ceasefire for humanitarian reasons”. This will not last more than 36 hours! A new episode which shows the little credibility to be given to the words of the M23 or the AFD and which reinforces the Congolese authorities in their refusal to dialogue with those they describe as “terrorists”.
In 2023, after recalling the disappearance of Yugoslavia [in the mid-90s], the balkanization of Libya [in 2011], now divided into three tribal regions in endless wars, as well as the partition of Sudan [again in civil war since April 2023], the Congolese journalist Dieudonné Kwebe Kimpele warned:
“The Congo balkanization plan has existed since 1972. It is a major danger! Several chancelleries and embassies around the world have this plan for the balkanization of Congo with a view to creating a “Tutsi Land”. That is to say “a Tutsi national home” which would include the former district of Tanganyika, South Kivu and North Kivu as well as part of Maniema (and the other part of which would be annexed by Uganda). This is the annexation and partition plan to establish this Tutsi Land and its borders. This plan exists! And every day, yesterday, today and tomorrow, Tutsis work there, patiently, tirelessly.”
With a feeling of “acceleration of History”, the Congolese tragedy is nothing new. And still struggles to find a definitive exit from the “tunnel of horror”. Without a real united, Congolese and pan-African surge, other deaths will once again be added to the 10 million deaths that have bloodied the country for almost thirty years.
Olivier Mukuna
© Finkape Roots
Graduated with a Master’s degree in Journalism and Communication from the Free University of Brussels (1997), journalist and essayist Olivier Mukuna has worked for around fifteen Belgian, French and Luxembourg media and signed several audiovisual productions. He specializes in themes linked to systemic racism, decolonial issues and the socio-political news of Afro-descendant citizens in Europe.