Africa

Africa, South Africa

DRC debacle batters SA’s standing as an actor in African peacekeeping

A woman carries belongings as people flee the Masisi territory following clashes between M23 rebels and government forces near Sake on 7 February 2024. (Photo: Aubin Mukoni / AFP)

By Stephanie Wolters

18 Mar 2025

The withdrawal of the SAMIDRC force from the eastern DRC has significant negative ramifications for South Africa and SADC’s standing as a player in African peacekeeping. It leaves the DRC scrambling for African allies at a critical moment.

South Africa’s disastrous deployment to the eastern DRC has come to an abrupt and ignominious end, with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa suggesting that an imminent resolution of the conflict justified the withdrawal of the SADC Mission in Democratic Republic of Congo (SAMIDRC).

Grossly misrepresenting the situation on the ground, Ramaphosa said “the decision to finally withdraw from the eastern DRC by the three troop-contributing countries is also based on the fact that the ceasefire that we have sought to install in that place is now being embraced”.

Nothing could be further from the truth: the situation in eastern DRC today is substantially worse than it was when SAMIDRC deployed in late 2023. SADC appeared to have understood that when it extended SAMIDRC’s mandate in late November 2024, on the basis of “concern at the continued deterioration of the security and humanitarian situation in the country”.

Today there is no ceasefire in place while fighting between M23 and the Congolese army continues, and the M23 continues to capture new territory. Negotiations between the various parties are stalled while the conflict continues to exacerbate the humanitarian crisis and refugee flows – with an estimated seven million people displaced by the conflict in the past three years.

In this context, SADC’s decision on 13 March 2025 to withdraw the SAMIDRC force from the eastern DRC has significant negative ramifications for South Africa and SADC’s standing as a player in African peacekeeping, while it also leaves the DRC scrambling for African allies at a critical moment in the ongoing conflict with the Rwandan-backed M23 rebel group.

How did we get here?

South Africa, Tanzania and Malawi, who formed SAMIDRC, deployed to eastern DRC in late 2023, replacing the East African Community Regional Force (EACRF) which had been deployed in late 2022 under the umbrella of the East African Community.

Less than six months into EACRF’s mandate, the Congolese government had fallen out with EAC member states over the exact nature of the force mandate: Kinshasa argued that EARCF troop should be going after the M23, while the EAC argued that its troops were there to safeguard areas that had been recaptured by the Congolese army.

DRC Felix Tshisekedi President of Democratic Republic of Congo Felix Tshisekedi. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Christophe Ena)

In addition, Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi was unhappy that the EAC remained unwilling to point a finger at Rwanda over its support of the M23. As a result, EACRF was asked to leave.

After four years of close contact with East Africa, especially with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, in 2023 Tshisekedi pivoted to southern Africa, which he had largely ignored during his first mandate. Lobbying SADC, and South Africa in particular, Tshisekedi successfully made the case that the DRC needed their military support.

SADC had been relatively hands-off throughout the first three years of the conflict and few expected it to step into the breach opened by EACRF’s departure.

The official line from South African officials was that the deployment to the DRC was necessary under SADC’s own defence and security pact, which requires the body to come to the defence of a member state if it is attacked.

Scepticism over motives

Many were sceptical that this was the full story – not least because the SADC engagement started three years into the conflict, but also because the ANC’s history of corruption scandals, coupled with the DRC’s mineral wealth and own corruption issues, had everyone suspecting that a hidden pot of gold was the real motivation for the deployment.

But South Africa has always considered the DRC to be part of its sphere of influence, and it has a long history of diplomatic and military engagement in the country. When the first M23 crisis erupted in 2012, Tanzania, Malawi and South Africa – who also formed SAMIDRC – fielded the Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) which deployed in eastern DRC in 2013 under UN leadership, and with UN financing.

Tshisekedi Kagame DRC Felix Tshisekedi (right) of Democratic Republic of Congo and Paul Kagame (centre) of Rwanda during a 2022 summit in Luanda, Angola. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Ampe Rogerio)

By that point, international diplomatic pressure on Rwandan President Paul Kagame had weakened the M23, and the FIB was able to relatively easily defeat the armed group. In the past 12 years, the FIB has been deployed along the DRC’s eastern borders with Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda, where the success of its operations has been mitigated.

The nature of the SAMIDRC deployment in 2023 is substantially different from that of the FIB in 2013: first, the troop-contributing countries, as well as SADC and the DRC, bear the costs of the deployment, estimated in 2023 to be $500-million a year.

Second, SAMIDRC is not part of a neutral UN peacekeeping force, but is rather a stand-alone regional peace enforcement force deployed to protect a member state. SAMIDRC had an offensive mandate to go after the M23 rebels, and SADC’s analysis clearly recognised Rwanda’s role in supporting the M23, and the presence in eastern DRC of Rwandan Defence Force (RDF) troops fighting alongside the M23.

Although Rwanda’s role has been established since 2022 by the UN and numerous other international organisations, as well as the intelligence agencies of several countries, Kigali denies its support of the M23 as well as the presence of its troops in eastern DRC.

The fact that SADC openly recognised the role played by Rwanda provided the DRC with significant diplomatic support at a time when many African and Western nations, and even the AU, were reluctant to speak plainly about Rwanda’s involvement.

M23 emboldened

The context of the conflict is also different: the M23 first re-emerged in 2021, and the conflict is now in its fourth year. In 2012, international actors exerted pressure on Kagame within months of the outbreak of the conflict, which meant that it was contained, and that Rwandan support was withdrawn quickly, leaving the M23 a largely spent force.

In this crisis, it has taken international actors much longer to react, emboldening the M23 and its Rwandan backers, whose military strength remains undiminished.

Whatever SADC and South Africa’s intentions, it was clear from the outset that SADC and South Africa had underestimated and even misread the situation.

In early 2022, Bintou Keita, the head of the UN Peacekeeping Mission in the DRC, told the UN Security Council that “should the M23 continue its well-coordinated attacks against FARDC and Monusco with increasing conventional capabilities, the mission may find itself confronted by a threat that goes beyond its current capabilities.”

Indeed, during the first year of its deployment, SAMIDRC proved unable to make a difference on the battlefield. According to the UN, the M23/RDF expanded its territorial control by 30% between January and December 2023, while SAMIDRC troops remained stationed in their headquarters at Sake, some 30km west of Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu province. By January 2025, 70% of North Kivu province was under the control of the M23 and the RDF.

drc sake A woman carries belongings as people flee the Masisi territory following clashes between M23 rebels and government forces near Sake on 7 February 2024. (Photo: Aubin Mukoni / AFP)

In addition, the Congolese army, one of the most corrupt and dilapidated on the continent, was an unreliable partner which could neither contain nor push back the M23. Many of its commanders have links to various armed groups or are involved in the illicit minerals trade, while FARDC troops are notorious for committing human rights violations.

As the M23 advanced on SAMIDRC headquarters and towards Goma, many FARDC soldiers simply fled. SADC and South Africa, who have been on the ground for 13 years, should have been aware of the significant challenges involved in working with the Congolese army.

Warnings

Meanwhile, South African defence analysts had already started warning that the SANDF could not support such a deployment and that the lack of training, preparedness and equipment was putting South African soldiers in harm’s way.

Perhaps most importantly, the conflict in eastern DRC required a political resolution, not a military one. But SADC and South Africa’s approach was purely military.

Although Jeff Radebe was appointed South Africa’s Special Envoy to the Great Lakes in late 2023, he remained largely on the sidelines of political efforts to resolve the conflict, while South Africa deferred the political negotiations to other actors, such as Angola and the EAC.

There was another fatal miscalculation: the deployment of SAMIDRC to the eastern DRC was bad news for Rwanda’s President Kagame, who knew that he could not influence SADC or South Africa in the way he had influenced the EAC and EACRF. Kagame made this plain from the outset: in early 2024, Rwanda lobbied the UN Security Council to vote against providing logistical support to SAMIDRC, and it lobbied the African Union Peace and Security Council to prevent it from endorsing the force.

It failed on both counts: the AU endorsed the force and the UNSC voted in favour of limited logistical support to SAMIDRC through its DRC peacekeeping mission.

When that approach failed, the M23 and the RDF targeted SAMIDRC, and South African troops in particular, from the start: SAMIDRC troops repeatedly came under heavy enemy fire, both from across the Congolese border and from M23 positions in North Kivu.

Kagame has an exceptionally shrewd political mind and is usually 10 steps ahead of his enemies – especially when it comes to games of smoke and mirrors. He adeptly anticipated that a discredited ANC would struggle to explain casualties incurred in the DRC to a general public already sceptical of South Africa’s hefty investment in a far-away country.

By targeting SAMIDRC troops, he shone the spotlight on the deployment and on the poor state of the SANDF, then watched as the ANC, and President Ramaphosa, started to wriggle.

Cascade of debacles

Public outrage in South Africa reached a fever pitch in January 2025 when the M23 and the RDF overran the SAMIDRC base at Sake and captured Goma the next day, killing 14 SANDF soldiers.

In the weeks following the battle, Ramaphosa argued that this was the nature of peacekeeping efforts and made the case for South Africa’s role on the grounds that “the territorial integrity of the DRC must be respected in accordance with the United Nations Charter on the respect of sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of other states… The presence of the SAMIDRC forces demonstrates a commitment of SADC member states to supporting the DRC in its efforts to achieve lasting peace and stability.”

Then one debacle followed another. With the airport in Goma closed and under M23 control, SAMIDRC troops who had left their positions in Sake for Goma airport, hoping for help from their countries, became de facto prisoners of the M23 and the RDF for 48 days without any logistical support from South Africa, while it took 31 days to repatriate injured soldiers.

The bodies of the dead soldiers could not be flown home until early March after the South African government had negotiated their passage via the Rwandan capital Kigali. It was a humiliating, ignominious defeat, and South Africa started scrambling to find a way out of its commitment.

DRC exposed

On the ground, SAMIDRC’s defeat, the M23/RDF’s capture of Goma and then a week later, of Bukavu, have exposed the extent of DRC’s military weakness. This undermines Kinshasa’s position in negotiations, whether with Kigali or the M23.

In late January, the EAC and SADC held a joint summit at which they decided to work together to resolve the crisis. The two proposed several initiatives, such as the merger of regional and domestic negotiations between armed groups, and the deployment of a joint military force composed of SADC and EAC troops.

Whether the latter ever happens is unclear, but the fact that SADC has agreed to it means that it has gone from being an ally of the DRC government to being a neutral institutional player. The EAC, of which Rwanda is a member state, is highly unlikely to come out openly about Rwanda’s support of the M23 and the RDF presence in eastern DRC.

Kinshasa has now lost its most significant African ally, while Rwanda can count on the EAC to block any initiatives that are critical of its actions.

The damage to South Africa’s standing as an actor in African peacekeeping is also significant: it pledged support to a SADC member state on the basis of principles, invested public resources and South African lives in the operation, but was ultimately incapable of providing what it promised.

When its incapacity was exposed, it buckled under domestic pressure, abandoned all principles and withdrew its support, playing into the hands of Rwanda, the main protagonist in the conflict.

In an attempt to save face, it then misrepresented the withdrawal as the natural evolution of the conflict towards a negotiated political settlement.

It will not be easy to come back from such a wholesale failure. DM

Stephanie Wolters is a veteran Great Lakes analyst and the director of Okapi Consulting, which specialises in media in conflict zones.

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