Diplomatic tensions between Pretoria and Kigali escalated this week, with Rwandan President Paul Kagame warning that his country is prepared for confrontation with South Africa over the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) crisis.
Kagame issued a stark warning late Wednesday night, accusing President Cyril Ramaphosa and his government of distorting facts about the ongoing conflict in eastern DRC.
In his official account on X, Kagame stated that he had held two conversations with Ramaphosa this week regarding the situation in eastern DRC, including one earlier on Wednesday.
“What has been said about these conversations in the media by South African officials and President Ramaphosa himself contains a lot of distortion, deliberate attacks and even lies,” Kagame said in response to a statement issued by Ramaphosa on Wednesday.
Ramaphosa and other South African officials have blamed the escalating violence in eastern DRC on the M23 rebel group and the Rwandan Defence Force.
Ramaphosa had stated that the fighting was the result of “an escalation by the rebel group M23 and Rwanda Defence Force militia engaging the Armed Forces of the DRC and attacking peacekeepers from the SADC Mission.”
Ramaphosa’s statement followed the death of 13 South African soldiers deployed as part of the Southern African Development Community Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (SAMIDRC).
Kagame dismissed Ramaphosa’s claims, insisting that SAMIDRC is not a peacekeeping mission but a “belligerent force” supporting the Congolese government.
“If South Africa wants to contribute to peaceful solutions, that is well and good, but South Africa is in no position to take on the role of a peacemaker or mediator.
And if South Africa prefers confrontation, Rwanda will deal with the matter in that context any day,” Kagame warned.
He accused SAMIDRC of working alongside the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), a militia with historical ties to perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Kagame claimed that the FDLR targets Rwanda “while also threatening to take the war to Rwanda itself.”
Addressing the notion that he had been cautioned by Ramaphosa, Kagame said, “President Ramaphosa has never given a ‘warning’ of any kind, unless it was delivered in his local language which I do not understand.”
He claimed instead that Ramaphosa had requested logistical assistance to ensure that South African troops had electricity, food and water, which Rwanda would help facilitate.
Kagame also stated that Ramaphosa had personally acknowledged that M23 was not responsible for the deaths of South African soldiers, but rather the Armed Forces of the DRC.
JN/APA