Critically injured SA soldiers return from DRC, fate of those who remain unclear

South African soldiers critically injured in fighting with Rwanda-backed M23 rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo between 23 and 27 January 2025 have returned to South Africa.

The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) announced on Tuesday, 25 February, that the soldiers who needed urgent medical attention “have been successfully repatriated… and will receive high level medical care”.

SANDF spokesperson Siphiwe Dlamini said the rest of the wounded soldiers were scheduled to arrive in South Africa during the course of the week. He declined to say how many critically wounded soldiers had returned. 

The remains of 14 SANDF soldiers who were killed in the action against the M23 were repatriated on 13 February. 

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It is still unclear what will happen to the remaining soldiers — numbering between 1,000 and 2,000 — who remain trapped by M23 in difficult conditions in their bases around Goma, the capital of DRC’s North Kivu province, which the M23 captured on 27 January. 

They were deployed in eastern DRC as part of the UN peacekeeping mission Monusco or the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Mission in DRC (SAMIDRC). The latter included Tanzanian and Malawian contingents. 

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The fate of the soldiers seems to depend on mediation by the SADC and the East African Community (EAC), which met at the summit level on 8 February to consider how to resolve the crisis.

They mandated their defence chiefs to meet to discuss a ceasefire and other aspects. The two organisations announced that the defence chiefs were meeting on Monday in Dar es Salaam and that cabinet ministers of the SADC and EAC would meet there on Friday to consider the defence chiefs’ report. 

They also announced that the EAC and SADC had decided to appoint former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta and former Ethiopian prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn as mediators of a new eastern DRC conflict mediation process. 

The three leaders will manage the new peace process, which merges the Luanda process, which was led by Angolan President João Lourenço who was the mediator appointed by the African Union, and the Nairobi process led by Kenyatta.

It is not surprising that Lourenço has been replaced as the mediator as he had indicated recently that his duties as the current AU chairperson would not allow him enough time to do the DRC job. DM