It is three months since Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) signed a peace agreement that purported to bring about an end to their brutal 30-year conflict.
Sitting with US secretary of state Marco Rubio in Washington, foreign ministers Olivier Nduhungirehe and Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner symbolically put pen to paper on the US-brokered “Washington Accord”. Soon after the signing, President Donald Trump proudly wrote on Truth Social that June 20 would come to be remembered as “A Great Day for Africa and, quite frankly, a Great Day for the World”.
However, as regular readers of this column will know, politics is rarely exactly what it says on the tin. What followed in the Treaty Room at the US state department was what Trump might describe as “a big, beautiful act of thanks”.
In front of the world, Rubio took it upon himself to lavish praise on the “superstar” diplomat Dr Massad Boulos, Qatar and (somewhat cursorily) the AU for their roles in the negotiations. Boulos, the father-in-law of Trump’s youngest daughter, Tiffany, was singled out for his vital contribution in bringing the two sides together.
In the absence of his commander-in-chief, Rubio proclaimed the agreement was the latest indicator that the incumbent president was one who “prioritises peace above all else”.
On that note, it seems peculiar that, since his inauguration, Trump has repeatedly attempted to dismantle the US Institute of Peace, the nation’s predominant federally funded peace-building organisation. Stranger still, he recently issued an executive order to rebrand the department of defence as the department of war.
This is on top of the continued cuts to billions of dollars in foreign aid funding, which the BBC has reported could cost more than 14-million lives. A more accurate description of the Trump doctrine would perhaps be “peace for a piece” — a profitable slice of the pie, often in a mineral-rich region, in return for the provision of security.
While an end to the conflict in the DRC is certainly welcome, a peace agreement that serves to enrich the US at the cost of the continued impoverishment of two countries in east and central Africa falls short of what we should be aiming for. Such diplomacy has been called many names in recent months. America First. Populist. Transactional. Extractive. Unfortunately, “effective” is not a term that is bandied about too often.
At the time of writing, the crisis in the DRC is very much ongoing. Implementation of the peace framework has been lacking, and Rwandan-backed M23 rebels continue to carry out deadly attacks in North Kivu and South Kivu provinces. As Jonathan Este has astutely observed in The Conversation, “economic incentives alone can’t solve a crisis rooted in politics, security and social grievances”.
Given the complexities of this conflict and its wide-reaching implications for the rest of the continent, Pretoria must step up and play a stronger role. Diplomatically, it has been a mistake to allow non-African diplomatic pathways to take precedence over internal solutions. Statistics from a 2017 study in the publication International Peacekeeping found that “African third parties outperform non-African in terms of concluding peace agreements”.
African presidents can and must step up to manage internal conflicts. It is time to take up this leadership mantle ourselves, rather than let others take advantage of our continent for their own material gain
While the Luanda and Nairobi peace processes merged in February, little of note has happened since. South Africa must take up the mantle. Since negotiating our settlement as part of the liberation from apartheid, South African leaders have an admirable track record of mediation and diplomacy across the continent. In 1999, after the death of Tanzania's former president Julius Nyerere, former South African president Nelson Mandela was invited by the AU to take on the role of lead mediator in the Burundian civil war negotiations.
Mandela understood that dialogue, not the total domination of one side over the other, is the most effective way to end conflict. After intense negotiations, Mandela brought the government of Burundi, the National Assembly and 17 political parties together to sign the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement in August 2000. Carrying on Mandela’s legacy, former president Thabo Mbeki helped to broker the Sun City Accord, which ended four years of civil war in the DRC. Mbeki had a further hand in bringing an end to hostilities in Ivory Coast in 2005 and Zimbabwe in 2008.
In fact, since leaving office, Mbeki has become a highly successful career mediator. Mbeki’s recent African Peace and Security Dialogue Conference was well attended, with a strong emphasis on developing “African solutions to African problems”. This thinking is along the right lines, even if President Cyril Ramaphosa, not the former president, is the right man to drive the implementation of the Rwanda-DRC peace agreement. In Ramaphosa’s own words, “we have a responsibility to support all efforts to bring peace and stability to our fellow African nation, which has been racked by war for more than three decades”.
The year is 2025. Historical trade partners have chosen to look inward. Now is the time for South Africa and the continent to usher in a new era of stewardship. African presidents can and must step up to manage internal conflicts. It is time to take up this leadership mantle ourselves, rather than let others take advantage of our continent for their own material gain.
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