Open letter to Thabo Mbeki on the crisis in the DRC

Mail & Guardian

06-06-2025

Former president Thabo Mbeki.
Your Excellency Thabo Mbeki,
It is never easy to address publicly a figure of your stature, former president of the Republic of South Africa, architect of the New Economic Partnership for African Development (Nepad) and moral heir to the pan-African struggle of Nelson Mandela. Your life's journey stands as a testament to the historical fight for the dignity of African peoples, the sovereignty of African states and a vision of peace grounded in justice.
Precisely because of this extraordinary legacy and the moral authority you represent, your recent remarks in Tanzania, which have been perceived as an implicit endorsement of former president Joseph Kabila's narrative on the crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, have caused deep concern.
These statements urgently call for clarification historically, politically and morally, given the responsibilities that come with preserving regional stability. At a time when some manipulate pan-African ideals to legitimise subversive agendas, it is imperative that respected voices on the continent demonstrate strategic discernment and ethical coherence.
In a nation at war, words carry weight. They are never neutral. Spoken by a continental authority figure, each word becomes a weapon in the information battlefield. Speech often precedes action. It guides, legitimises and sometimes triggers conflict.
What you recently expressed goes beyond neutral commentary. It carries the tone of pre-hostile rhetoric laced with accusatory language, ethnic insinuation and indirect justification of violence.
This was not a neutral political analysis. It laid the foundation for a latent
casus belli
, activating well-known levers in the playbook of information warfare:
• Emotional mobilisation through references to ethnic exclusion;
• The implicit identification of a Congolese political actor as an obstacle to peace; and
• The suggestion that violence may be legitimate when carried out by a 'frustrated' or 'ignored' people.
As an expert on regional dynamics, you know full well that such rhetoric in such a volatile context functions as a precursor to violent escalation. In this instance, your words resonate as a veiled forecast of conflict.
Your statements reawaken unhealed wounds. The implicit and explicit references to the Luba people of Kasaï and Katangan communities evoke painful memories of the 1992–94 ethnic violence in Katanga, a tragedy many historians consider an attempted ethnic cleansing that displaced more than 800,000 Kasaïans. That violence was, in part, orchestrated by individuals now close to Joseph Kabila, including General John Numbi, currently a fugitive.
Your speech risks legitimising a new spiral of tribal violence in a region already on edge. This is not merely a misreading of history, it is a grave political error, one that gives strategic momentum to armed destabilization agendas.
What is most striking is the dissonance between the peaceful tone of your speech and its martial undercurrent. On the surface, you call for peace, dialogue and protection of certain communities. Yet beneath that, you echo albeit indirectly justifications often invoked by the M23 rebel group, backed by Rwanda.
This dual posture — peace on the surface, mental preparation for war underneath — is a well known tactic in influence strategy. It rests on a simple principle: those who shout loudest against violence before a conflict often turn out to be its most active architects.
This is not the legacy of Mandela. It is rather the rhetoric of geopolitical manipulation, where the suffering of Congolese Tutsi communities is exploited for strategic gain. While the concerns of these communities deserve recognition and justice, they cannot under any circumstances justify military aggression against a sovereign state.
Excellency, in speaking as you did, you did not speak as a statesman working for continental peace, but as a discursive vector of a war project. Where we expected the voice of a Mandela disciple, we heard instead the voice of a factional tribune tacitly justifying the political overthrow, or even elimination, of a sitting, democratically elected president.
At this point in your journey, your moral and political responsibility demands that you weigh every word with the precision of a continental mediator. Today, words can kill literally. It bears repeating, a single word voiced in the press in Dar es Salaam or Johannesburg today can reverberate with tangible consequences in Goma or Kinshasa.
Pan-Africanism is not symbolic solidarity or a shared colonial memory. It is built on cooperation between sovereign states, equality among peoples, justice, peace and mutual
respect. The role of a pan-African elder is not to choose sides in an armed conflict, but to serve as a moral and diplomatic compass.
But what we heard in Tanzania was not a voice of peace. It was a factional narrative, a coded endorsement of destabilization, potentially aimed at a sitting head of state.
Let us be clear: the current crisis in eastern DRC is neither a mere governance failure nor a case of 'ethnic marginalisation' . It is a transnational hybrid war disguised as a rebellion, in which the M23 plays the dual role of armed proxy and political facade for Kigali's ambitions.
By publicly endorsing Kabila's concerns without simultaneously condemning M23's atrocities you strengthen this hybrid strategy. You grant political credibility to a movement responsible for thousands of deaths and more than seven million displaced people.
Even worse, your statements help invert the narrative: any criticism of the rebellion is now recast as ethnic hatred, while the rebellion itself is framed as a legitimate 'popular aspiration'. This manipulation erodes Congolese sovereignty and seriously jeopardises any hope for sustainable peace.
Excellency, Africa is entering a new era of hybrid conflicts fueled by identity-based frustration, economic rivalries and manipulated narratives. In this context, our leaders must be more vigilant than ever.
The Great Lakes region does not need rhetoricians of conflict disguised as diplomats. It does not need moral sponsors of violence. It needs peace, truth, justice and reconciliation. It needs bridge-builders not grave-diggers.
We solemnly urge you to clarify your statements, to denounce all rhetoric of war, and to reclaim your rightful place among Africa's peacemakers.
The world is watching. So is History.
Respectfully,
Roger B Bope
Roger B Bope is a security analyst and strategist.