The conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has boiled over in recent days.
The M23 rebels, backed by Uganda and Rwanda, encroached on Goma city on 27 January, forcing hundreds of thousands of residents to flee to safer areas. Then, in the capital, Kinshasa, anger over the escalation erupted on 28 January as protesters attacked several embassies. The collapse of the December 2024 peace talks between the leaders of Rwanda and the DRC has only intensified the crisis.
During a 2 April 2024 episode on African Stream’s flagship podcast, ‘Pan-African Attitude,’ Pan-Africanist scholar PLO Lumumba highlighted how international powers have never wanted to help resolve Congo’s conflict. Lumumba added that Western governments have always used Africans to sow division in the mineral-rich Congo to facilitate the exploitation of its resources. He gave an example of how US and Belgian intelligence services groomed the DRC’s longtime president, Mobutu Sese Seko (1930-97), to overthrow revolutionary leader Patrice Lumumba (1925-61) and take power from 1965 until 1997. Lumumba also said the West has used proxies throughout modern times.
Sources:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyv4606y4jzo
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c134kgdpd6do
https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n24/118/80/pdf/n2411880.pdf