President Cyril Ramaphosa and southern Africa have managed to get former South African President Kgalema Motlanthe appointed to a panel of ex-presidents who will try to mediate peace in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
His appointment helps to balance the panel. The original panel included no representation from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), even though it has a major stake in the outcome with many troops still trapped in eastern DRC.
The decision to add Motlanthe was taken at a virtual joint summit of SADC and the East African Community (EAC) on Monday. The leaders announced a five-person Panel of Facilitators, which included former presidents Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, Catherine Samba Panza of Central African Republic and Sahle-Work Zewde of Ethiopia.
At their previous summit on 8 February, the SADC and EAC leaders had chosen Obasanjo, Kenyatta and former Ethiopian prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn to be the facilitators, according to a leaked report.
‘Anti-SADC bias’
SADC leaders were unhappy at what they saw as a bias favouring the EAC. Though the fighting in eastern DRC has basically been between the DRC military and ethnic Tutsi Congolese M23 rebels, there has been an important inter-state dimension because Rwanda has been providing substantial military and other support to the M23.
Rwanda is a member of the EAC which has been more sympathetic to Rwanda’s cause, while DRC is a member of SADC which in December 2023 sent a military force to eastern DRC to defeat the M23, largely because it saw Rwanda’s support for the M23 as an invasion of the territory of a fellow-SADC member.
However, SADC’s intervention force, the SADC Mission in DRC (SAMIDRC), suffered a military defeat by M23/Rwanda in January. Its troops remain virtual prisoners of war in and around the city of Goma.
So at Monday’s virtual summit – also attended by President Ramaphosa – a balance was achieved between SADC and EAC representation on the Panel of Facilitators. The communique from Monday’s virtual summit said the new panel of five ex-presidents had taken into account the need for “gender, regional and language inclusivity”. Panza and Zewde are both women and both speak French.
Sources said Zewde had also replaced Desalegn because DRC President Felix Tshisekedi had insisted on a panel of ex-presidents, whereas Desalegn had been Ethiopia’s prime minister.
