Ever eager to project his importance on the international stage, Kenya’s president William Ruto took to X on Monday to say that he’d had a call with Emmanuel Macron about the war in DR Congo – boasting that his French counterpart had given his blessing to regional efforts to end the fighting. But in his eagerness to be seen as a ‘big-league’ player, Ruto – who is also Chair of the East African Community – seems to have forgotten some basic facts.
France is accused of having had a hand in the ongoing instability of the DRC, due to its complicity in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. It supported the genocidal regime, training and arming its soldiers under the guise of a United Nations Security Council humanitarian intervention, dubbed Operation Turquoise. With France’s support, the perpetrators of the genocide were able to escape into DRC.
Former French Colonel Guillaume Ancel – in his book ‘Rwanda: End of Silence’ (2018) – admits that when the Rwandan perpetrators escaped to the DRC, they were provided with arms by France in the refugee camps. “I witnessed one of these deliveries in the second half of July 1994,” he writes, adding that “the commanders explained that we were delivering weapons to those who had carried out massacres to prevent them from turning against the French army. It became clear they were following directives from the highest levels of the State.”
Today, France continues to support Rwanda and – by extension – the Kigali-backed M23 rebels, who have committed atrocities against the people of the DRC. Hence, Ruto’s tone-deaf post on X has rightly drawn heavy criticism from Africans questioning why he is even reaching out to France for support, at a time when Francophone countries are cutting ties with Paris and freeing themselves of its neo-colonial influence.
Sources:
https://thegreatlakeseye.com/post?s=France%27s–stance–on–DRC–crisis–a–big–concern–_1327
https://www.theafricareport.com/373043/what-remains-of-the-fdlr-in-eastern-drc/