DR CONGO : Open letter to his Excellency THABO MBEKI, former Président of South Africa,
Mister President,
I apologize for the liberty I am taking in writing this Open Letter to you, but also for the timing, as I am not sure whether it is appropriate or not. However, as a patriot, I have no choice but to respond to your last year´s embarrassing statements, made during your speech at a joint initiative of the University of South Africa (UNISA) and the Thabo Mbeki Foundation, called the AFRICAN SCHOOL of Public and International Affairs, composed mainly of African students, as illustrated in the video below.
This video of your March 2024 speech continues to this day to be used as a propaganda tool by official and unofficial Rwandan circles and all enemies of the Democratic Republic of Congo, in order to disseminate throughout the world, particularly on social medias and networks, all the inaccuracies and untruths it contains about the social, societal, cultural, and political history of this country. Thus, the time that has passed since then does not detract from the seriousness of your words, which remain relevant to this day. This is as unfair as it is unacceptable, because it is self-evidently in the best interests of the DR Congo, the victim of yet another unjustified war of aggression by Rwanda for three years. Hence our present reaction, which we consider appropriate.
Mr. President,
This gives me a sad opportunity to give you my point of view after your biased and erroneous speech, on a subject that you clearly do not master at all, and which in reality is nothing other than the repetition of fallacious rhetoric by Rwandan leaders with whom you are a close friend, even an accomplice to a certain extent. Do not worry Mr. President, since We, Congolese, are aware of this fact. In other words, your links with the masters of the place in Kigali, as well as with the Rwandans operating on the ground in South Africa, which explain your biased attitude and the peremptory tone you use about problems you are clearly ignorant of.
On one hand, as a former prominent African leader who had been having high responsibilities on the top of an important and friend country of our continent, namely South Africa, you deserve all regards due to your rank. On the other hand, as a cadet raised in pure African/Congolese culture, you also deserve from me all the consideration and respect due to our elders whom we most often venerate. So, I’d like to salute you as a sign of respect before getting to the heart of the matter.
Beyond that, I will not refrain from expressing myself correctly and unambiguously, as you did in your speech to the audience present at the gathering to which I refer, where you were the keynote speaker. Given that your statements and the intentions behind them were clear and unambiguous for us Congolese patriots.
This is to tell you, Mr President, that my remarks may seem discourteous to you, that is why you are begged not to take it as offensive, because my intention is far from the idea of offending you publicly for all the reason I have mentioned above, but rather aims to correct a certain number of untruths contained in your statements about the historical, sociological and political situation in my country, namely the RD of Congo. Obviously, you are being manipulated by your Rwandan friends to use you as a mouthpiece for their confused propaganda on a global scale.
In this regard, in order not to waste your precious time, I will try to briefly summarize my reaction within the limits of what was said in your intervention by making some historical reminders, and this to avoid going deeply into the long history of relations between the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Rwanda.
So please Mister President, be disposed to hear the truth.
Firstly, although you are a well-educated personality, apart from all the responsibilities you have had in the South African and African high political spheres, I can unfortunately see that you show a clear ignorance of the quintessence of the situation in the DR of Congo instead. Which is dangerous for both the young public listening to you during the conference and those watching the video of this meeting. Because, you are just misleading them with false information, where you’re trying to rewrite and tell the RD of Congo´s history according to your own interpretation or imagination, completely unconnected with it´s political, sociological and social realities.
The risk of such baseless statements is that these young people easily end up believing these untruths, simply by referring to the important positions that you have occupied in the past in your country and within the African Union. It is nothing more nor less than an argument of authority. In other words, argumentum ad verecundiam (verecundia, « respect for someone, something »). In the manner of a syllogism : « since these words come from the mouth of the Great THABO MBEKI, the latter was the president of the Great Republic of South Africa, twice Honorary Doctorate in 1999 and 2000 at two universities ; and named African of the Year 2012, so it is true ». This is exactly what we fear for these African youth and for public opinion in general.
No, Mr. President, we Congolese patriots will not allow anyone or you as it’s indeed the case, to spread such falsehoods about DR of Congo and its people as during your speech and let you get away with it cheaply, without us reacting accordingly.
You argued that the colonial borders explain the so-called conflict between the Congolese and Rwandan-speaking population hosted or adopted as citizens in DR of Congo.
Let us, Mr. President, tell you that you are completely wrong. That is far from being the case. The issue of borders and Rwandan population was finally adjusted and settled on May 14, 1910, by an agreement between the former colonial powers, the so called : « European Convention of Brussels », namely the Germans for the Kingdom of Rwanda, the Belgians for the present DR of Congo and the British for Uganda. From that day on, it was considered that there was no longer a border problem between Uganda, and particularly between the DR of Congo and Rwanda.
It was in fact within the framework of this colonial arrangement that a large part of eastern Congo, namely Gisenyi (land of the Bahunde tribe) including the entire of Lake Kivu – which was an inland lake of the DR of Congo – and Cyagungu (land of the Bashi tribe), two main towns in western Rwanda, passed into the current Rwandan national territory. Thus, populations living within a radius of 10 kilometers on either side of the new border had six months to move with their chattels and livestock to the Congolese or Rwandan side. The purpose of the terms of these colonial agreements was to avoid any ethnic, cultural and linguistic mixing and confusion between the subjects of the Kingdom of Rwanda – existing within its well-defined borders for a long time (about 200 years) before the creation of the Congo Free State on July 1, 1885 following the Congo-Berlin Conference – and the populations of Congolese culture of the Belgian Congo, newly created on November 15, 1908. After this period, those who remained in their original places of settlement were now considered foreigners.
Mr. President,
This explains why today, we have in the overall population of Rwanda, Bashi people belonging to the same origins as those of the DR of Congo, in the territories of Walungu, Kabare, Ngweshe, Mwenga, Kalehe or Uvira, but living rather on the land of their ancestors on the national territory of Rwanda, as citizens of this country. My thoughts go directly to the small kingdom of Bukunzi, also known as Mbirizi, founded by the Bashi people as part of their larger territory called Bushi. Bukunzi remained separate from the DR of Congo until the military campaign led by colonial Belgium in 1926 divided it and merged it with Rwanda. Thus, the area of the former kingdom of Bukunzi is now part of the Rusizi district of Rwanda. Who can dispute this real fact ?
Last year in July 2024, during the electoral campaign of the « candidate » Paul KAGAME in this region of Bukunzi (or Mbirizi), we were able to see these Bashi people, citizens of Rwanda, singing and dancing in their Mansi language in honor of the latter for his yet another re-election.
A large part of the territory of the West coast of Rwanda, starting with Nkombo Island on Lake Kivu, extending to the tip of Nyamirundi hill, passing along the entire ridge of the Rusizi/Ruzizi river to Bugarama, has a Congolese origin. The Belgians will not contradict us on this point.
Eloquent illustrations of the presence of a part of the Congolese and their lands on the other side of the border. This is the consequence of the Congo-Berlin Conference in 1885 to which you refer, Mr. President. So, it´s in reality the DR of Congo that has got lands and populations to claim in Rwanda, and not the contrary. These are historical facts that cannot be changed by the lying propaganda of the Rwandan authorities and the ignorance of those who believe to them.
Unlike the DR of Congo, Rwanda has land and people (Bafumbira people composed of (ba)Hutu, (ba)Tutsi and (ba)Twa, the three sociological components as exactly in Rwanda) to claim in Uganda – which it has never done – in the Bufumbira region located in Kisoro district, southwest Uganda along the Rwandan border. This is the result of that agreement I referred to concluded on May 14, 1910 between the three European colonial powers, in order to settle the border issue.
Following the defeat of the German Empire in World War I (1914–1918), two territories in German East Africa (Deutsch Ost Afrika), Rwanda and Burundi, were ceded to Belgium by League of Nations (ancestor of the United Nations) mandate in 1922. This means that the Rwandan speaking population living in the DR of Congo are those who initially came to the DR of Congo as migrants within the framework of the Belgian authorities policy of Transplantation, in other terms, the Banyarwanda Immigration Mission (MIB), which consisted in importing Banyarwanda labor within the mining and agriculture sectors. In other words, the so-called « Les Transplantés » or « The Transplanted » in English from 1922 to 1940. Transplanted to a foreign country, particularly in the territories of Masisi (the Tutsi), Rutshuru (the Hutu) belonging to Congolese Bahunde tribe, where they have no ancestral land or chiefdom to claim.
In the aftermath of the First World War (1914-1918), the Belgian colonial administration thus subtly succeeded in sowing the seeds of the current destabilization of the DR of Congo in the former province of Great Kivu, when it decided against the will of the natives (Bahunde), to establish the Hutu chiefdom of Bwisha in Rutshuru in 1920, to reward Mwami Daniel NDEZE for his contribution in porters and food supplies to the Force Publique during its military campaign to reconquer Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania from the domination of the German Empire.
And later, from what they called the « Peasant Revolution » in 1959 after the last Rwandan monarch was overthrown by the Hutu majority, other waves of Banyarwanda Tutsi migrated to DR of Congo as refugees in the 1963, following the seize of republican power by the so-called Hutu Grégoire KAYIBANDA, but in reality a Mushi belonging the Bashi tribe of « Rwanda », and finally the 1994, to escape the brutality and oppression of the regime in place, inter-ethnic massacres and the war of The Rwandan Patriotic Front of Paul KAGAME.
Here is a brief overview of the history of the Democratic Republic of Congo with the presence of people of Rwandan origin on its soil.
Mr. President,
Allow us tell you that the DR of Congo is by definition : an addition or a fusion of nearly 450 different tribes and their lands together that make it up, where each tribe has its own land. It´s important to emphasize that, throughout the history of this country, none of them fights against the Congolese state or kills members of other tribes or countrymen in order to be recognized as Congolese of origin or simply as citizen of the DR of Congo. Because everyone is Congolese from the simple fact of possessing uncontested and incontestable land and chiefdom within the limits of national territory of the DR of Congo. Thus, the Tutsi, former immigrants and refugees from Rwanda, renamed Banya-Mulenge, do not have any ancestral land or any chiefdom to claim in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Do you really think for a moment that Leopold II, the little king of the Belgians, was powerful enough to go and tear away from the powerful German Empire lands and populations in what was one of its possessions in Deutsch Ost Afrika (German East Africa), namely present-day Rwanda, to annex them and incorporate them into the Congo Free State ?
That being said, there is therefore no reason to go around massacring one’s own compatriots by the hundreds of thousands, even millions, and to destabilize one’s own country in collusion with foreign powers for more than three decades for this purpose, if one is truly of Congolese descent and possessing an ancestral land and chiefdom. Especially since the Congolese tribes are for the most part related to each other (by kinship links), regardless of the distance that separates them between their different localities or provinces within the immense DR of Congo.
Furthermore, I would like to respectfully ask you, Mr President, a question in two complementary parts :
- How many « tribes » have you recognized, during your nine years in office, as South African by origin or at least South African citizens, after an armed struggle against the South African state that resulted in millions of deaths among your compatriots ? The Zulus ? The Sothos ? The Ndebeles ? The Tswanas ? The Afrikaners ? The Indians ? The Swazis, or your own Xhosa tribe ?
- Alternatively, how many Zimbabwean Ndebeles, Lesotho Sothos, Iswati Swazis or Botswana Swanas, who have emigrated and lived from generation to generation in South Africa, who in their madness of seizing other tribes land by force with military support from their homelands ; after fighting the South African state/army, committing atrocities and killing millions of other populations, originally South Africans, you have protected and granted land and citizenship during your nine year´s presidency ? Since we all know that South Africa shares these mentioned cross-border tribes as its neighboring countries.
Of course, you will answer us “none”. Simply because there is no doubt that all these ethnic groups : Black, Indians or White, have their own ancestral lands and eventually chiefdom within the territory of South Africa, thus it does not matter that you will find all these cross-border tribes in the neighboring countries of South Africa. Consequently, this automatically makes them South Africans, and they do not need to resort to armed struggle to protect themselves or to be recognized as such. And these same tribes from neighboring countries living in your country, know that they do not own a single piece of land within South African national territory. Is that right ?
Mr. President,
Are you personally ready to accept such as unfair and barbaric things, if it comes to your own country, your own Xhosas tribe´s land Mister President ? If you have the sense of sincerity, you would respond NO. But why do you thing that the Congolese tribes and people must have to accept the unacceptable, if you and your countrymen are not prepared to accept the same nonsense ?
So, Mr. President, in view of the above, you would better have told the audience during your speech and the whole world the following :
- Where do our fellow citizens whom you call “Banya-Mulenge” or this population of Rwandan origin/expression, have their own ancestral lands located geographically within the national territory of the DR of Congo, or at least where in the province of Grand Kivu ?
- And if this chimerical land really exists in the DR of Congo, can you then tell the public what is it called ? Furthermore, what is the name of their « kingdom » or at least of their chiefdom ? Would you gently like tell the public opinion ?
This has nothing to do with the borders drawn by the colonialists as you claim. If that were the case, there would never have been any problem or land conflict between them and the indigenous tribes, namely the Bafulero, Banyindu, Babembe, Barega and Bavira. Thus, our fellow citizens identifying themselves as « Banya-Mulenge » would then have had their own and undisputed lands in DR of Congo, just like many other cross-border tribes that we share with our eight other neighboring countries, as is the case elsewhere in other African countries including yours, where we all have cross-border tribes living in peace and harmony with other neighboring tribes on their ancestral lands on both sides of the boundaries.
The simply reality that you refuse to acknowledge or admit is that the DR of Congo welcomed them as immigrants (in the 1920s-1940s) and refugees in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and collectively re-granted them Congolese citizenship, during the Sun City « Inter-Congolese dialogue » on 19 April 2002, organized by your government and under your presidency. While the DR of Congo, which had no other choice, was militarily occupied by the Rwandan and Ugandan armies, and forced into unacceptable concessions by these so-called unfair agreements.
Therefore, the nationality of origin that one automatically acquires at birth through one’s parents is intrinsically linked to the aforementioned aspects, namely the possession of ancestral lands and chiefdom in DRC. Therefore, we do not request it. In clear terms, we do not request from anyone our membership in our respective tribes or ethnicity that form the Congolese Nation. Our tribes and ours lands constitute par excellence, the foundation and source from which we draw our Congolese nationality of origin that no one, nor any authority, however powerful, could take away from us. Congolese nationality of origin is ad vitam aeternam (forever), only death can take it away from us.
You have gone far in making gratuitous allegations, even going so far as to tarnish the memory of President MOBUTU Sese Seko and the Congolese people, in a matter of which you are clearly ignorant.
Mr. President,
For your information, it is worth noting that no other Congolese leader in the history of the DR Congo has shown as much generosity and as much interest and protection towards the Tutsi community as former President Mobutu Sese Seko. The latter, again for your information, has been accused by Parliament and the Government, not to mention the Congolese people, for being the one who encouraged illegal and fraudulent acts that violate the Constitution of the country, in favor of the Banyarwanda, in other terms, the immigrants and refugees from Ruanda-Urundi.
In May 1969, three years after the bloodless military coup d’État of the late former President MOBUTU Sese Seko on 24 November 1965, a former Rwandan refugee from the Cyagungu region (prefecture), former student and president of the Rwandan students’ association at the University of Louvanium (now the University of Kinshasa) by the name of Bartelemy BISENGIMANA Rwema – he used to be called : Mister 10% or 30 %, because of the percentage commission he demanded to proceed and complete your case – was surprisingly appointed to the position of Head of the Bureau of the President of the Republic, a position he held until February 1977, before being dismissed from his post following allegations of bribery from a textile factory in the city of Kisangani.
A position with the value of Prime Minister, given that the post of Prime Minister had been removed from the State’s organizational chart some time previously, after having been briefly occupied by Colonel/General MULAMBA Nyuni Léonard, one of the thirteen Companions of the Revolution (of the coup d´État), according to the terminology of the time, before the First Commissioner of State MPINGA KASENDA came to occupy it again from July 1977 to March 1979.
Bartelemy BISENGIMANA Rwema, ambitious, cunning, and strong in the total and almost blind trust to the point of bordering on naivety that he benefited from President MOBUTU, set about scheming behind his back, the development of an Ordinance-Law number 71-020 of March 28 1971, signed by the latter as a simple token, collectively granting Zairian (Congolese) citizenship to his fellow refugees and Banyarwanda immigrants, that is to say nationals of Ruanda-Urundi. And this, without the knowledge of the parliamentarians (people’s commissioners equivalent to the current deputies), who had gone on parliamentary leave. He thus believed that he had succeeded in his identity hold-up. But that was without taking into account their determination to thwart this vast identity theft and forfeiture.
In November 1973, once their Congolese nationality had been acquired under the conditions described above, notably under the influence of the same Bartelemy BISENGIMANA Rwema, President MOBUTU Sese Seko launched the famous Zairianization. That is to say, the nationalization of foreign capital in the former Zaire (DRC). All foreign companies and assets were transferred to the Congolese. This was the beginning of the economic collapse of the DR of Congo.
The Banyarwanda or Banya-Mulenge, who had recently become Congolese, were the largest beneficiaries of it (acquéreurs in French), accounting for 72% in Great Kivu (North Kivu, South Kivu and Maniema), and 38% in the whole of the former Zaire (DR of Congo). This gave them considerable economic and financial power that none of the other 450 Congolese tribes possessed. This was obviously another financial and economic hold-up against the majority of indigenous Congolese. This is what you call discrimination (against who) ? Definitely, against the Congolese of origin of course. Thus, through its Public Debt Service, the Congolese State had to reimburse all of these capitals confiscated from the victims of this nationalization.
Mr. President,
The parliamentarians (people’s commissioners) will react to this vast fraud and large-scale usurpation of Congolese (Zairian) identity by law number 72-002 of January 5, 1972, to denounce this famous Ordinance-law of BISENGIMANA/MOBUTU and thus declare it null and void, by confirming instead the provisions of the Constitution of Luluabourg (Kananga) promulgated on August 1, 1964, which, in its article 6, stipulates the following concerning the Congolese :
Those whose ancestors belong to a tribe or part of the tribes established on the Congolese national territory before October 18, 1908.
We are therefore Congolese by origin according to the constitutional provision mentioned above and not individually. And it says « part of the tribes » because of the fact of the tribes shared between different countries by the Western colonial powers. If there were individuals from the Kingdom of Rwanda who were on Congolese soil at that date, they were therefore fugitives from the exactions of their barbarian kings including Kigeli IV Rwabuguri, who is considered the greatest king of Rwanda. An expansionist, he was defeated and killed in his escape to his kingdom by a Mushi warrior, after having attempted to seize the Congolese lands of the Bashi chiefdom in 1895. Let it be said in passing that : « this is indeed the common fate that the destiny of the Congo has automatically reserved for any other Rwandan leader who would take this path of madness ».
Because these people were only foreign residents, nationals of the Kingdom of Rwanda created at least two hundred (200) years before the creation of the Congo Free State on July 1, 1885, which later became the DR of Congo on June 30, 1960. However, they could become Congolese by marrying a Congolese of origin. That is to say, of father and mother. It is therefore not enough to be the grandson or great-grandson of someone who lived in the Congo in those distant times to declare oneself Congolese. The time that has passed does not change anything.
Parliamentary law number 72-002 of January 5, 1972 having not been followed up with effects against those concerned, the People’s Commissars (deputies) will once again nine (9) years later to request its execution without further delay. Thus, on June 29, 1981, President MOBUTU Sese Seko recognized his error and parliamentary law n° 81-002, countersigned by him, was unanimously adopted, thus correcting this fraud by withdrawing from the Banyarwanda this Zairian/Congolese nationality acquired fraudulently and collectively. And this, for among others the following reasons :
Why did this famous Ordinance-Law number 71-020 of March 28, 1971 of Bisengimana/Mobutu only concern Rwandans and Burundians, refugees of 1959, 1962, 1972 and not the other communities, notably the larger Angolan ones – which had been in the Congo for much longer than the Rwandans and Burundians – or the Sudanese community, and those of our nine (9) bordering neighbors present on Congolese soil ?
Finally, on April 19, 2002 in Sun City in South Africa, the DR of Congo militarily occupied after a long and murderous war of aggression by Rwanda and Uganda launched on August 2, 1998 in which the Banyarwanda/Banya-Mulenge actively participated alongside them against the Congolese Nation, a so-called Sun City agreement was signed between certain Congolese parties and representatives of the Rwandan Occupation, at the end of a so-called « Inter-Congolese dialogue », which collectively granted them Congolese nationality again. Which is also contrary to the spirit and letter of the Law on nationality, which would rather have you apply for it individually. Once again, another forfeiture.
In short, it was an unusual and unprecedented fact in the history of our country where no other tribe, apart from the community you are referring to, has ever felt the need to wage war on the State to be granted Congolese citizenship on « its own territory », through a « so-called agreement ». This was the consequence of the fact that the DR of Congo was in a weak military position. Something that our people will never again allow in the future, whatever the cost. The Congolese will never again allow anyone to intimidate them or impose the unacceptable on them.
And to top it all off, a so-called Constitution of belligerence, a real Charter of the Occupation of the Congo drawn up in Liège, Belgium by Belgian and Western constitutionalists, with the active and complicit involvement of two pro-Rwandan professors of Rwandan-Congolese origin, was imposed on DR of Congo to this day. This is partly one of the causes of the current instability.
You claim that the Banya-Mulenge community is not protected by the Congolese State, so it has no choice than to defend itself.
Mr. President,
We sincerely wonder where these baseless and gratuitous allegations that you are making come from ? You would have done better to say things accurately, rather than talking like this in the air, repeating the lies of the criminal regime of Rwanda as its spokesperson, without supporting your statements with tangible evidence, concrete examples and credible sources to refer to.
On Sunday, January 19, 2020, taking advantage of his official visit to London, in Great Britain, during an exchange with the Congolese diaspora from all over Europe and even the world, did not Félix Antoine TSHILOMBO Tshisekedi, President of the DR of Congo and First institution of the country, declare loud and clear to the world that : « the Banya-Mulenge were Congolese ? » What other voice, in your opinion Mr President, would be the most authorized if not that one, to recognize their famous Congolese citizenship ?
Once again, following the predominant involvement of many of them within the M23 alongside the Rwandan army (RDF) in the attacks and massacres of civilians in Goma and Bukavu, on March 10, 2025, during a press briefing broadcast on the national television channel RTNC, President Félix Antoine TSHISEKEDI emphasized in substance that « the Banya-Mulenge are part of the Congolese people and that no form of discrimination will be tolerated during his mandate against any community whatsoever, in the interest of national cohesion which is crucial for peace and stability in the DR Congo ». Mr. President, are you trying to make the world believe that all this is not to protect them?
When and where did you see this population of Rwandan origin, generously welcomed in the DR of Congo, harassed or persecuted by the Congolese encouraged by President MOBUTU Sese Seko ?
Mr. President,
You, Mr. President, are spouting unfounded allegations and outrageous falsehoods, thus tarnishing the happy memory of the late President MOBUTU Sese Seko, in the name of a community to which he had given everything. Among other things: hospitality in the name of African solidarity, collective citizenship, and economic and financial power, to the detriment of the law and the Congolese people.
Mr. President, I urge you to respect the memory of this great statesman, who is no longer with us to defend himself against the false accusations you have leveled against him. Allow us to remind you of the role he played in supporting the African National Congress (ANC) both politically and financially to the tune of several million US dollars and in contributing to the election in 1994 of our Great continental leader, the late President Nelson MANDELA, whose memory I respectfully salute, in the fight against the brutal system of Apartheid in South Africa. At least, for that, you could have thought twice before making your baseless and ungrateful allegations in his memory.
You dare to justify the aggression and violence of Rwanda under the cover of the M23, in the name of a so-called legitimate defense of a certain community ?
Mr. President,
For any sensible person, this terrorist and criminal organization born on March 23, 2009, hence its name M23, is Rwandan. Now, if this is the reason you are putting forward, relating to the alleged non-recognition of the Rwandophone Community to which you refer as Congolese, I will remind you immediately that it was under your presidency and your political-diplomatic pressure that Congolese citizenship was collectively granted for the second time to the Banyarwanda that you call Banya-Mulenge, on April 19, 2009, and this, at the end of the « Inter-Congolese Dialogue » in Sun City in South Africa, in your country.
This was their main demand and they had won their case during the above-mentioned meeting. In this regard, what can then explain the creation and existence of M23, seven years after having obtained what they were « fighting » for ? The M23 is not the Banya-Mulenge affair. This is not true. Let us recall that the Banya-Mulenge affair ended in 2002 during the “inter-Congolese dialogue” in Sun City in South Africa, under your presidency.
The M23 is actually a detachment of the Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) deployed in the DR Congo by Paul KAGAME, supported by certain Western business circles and their mining companies, to further his economic, geopolitical, and expansionist objectives. The Banya-Mulenge may have become Congolese citizens, but they arrived in the DR OF Congo, in the Kivu region, as immigrants and refugees at various times in history.
The truth is simple : the Banya-Mulenge are landless in the DR of Congo. That is why they (with their native Rwanda) use all sorts of lies, manipulations and subterfuges with the support of Western sponsors, in order to create according to their lunar-year agenda within the DR of Congo : a « Tutsiland », which they do not even have in Rwanda. And this, to the detriment and in the bloodbath of millions of Congolese indigenous tribes who see their rich ancestral lands occupied by those they once generously welcomed. So, Mr President, the real victims of this tragedy are rather Congolese, and not those you are making out to be victims.
Unfortunately, this is a reality that you, like some other African politicians, intellectuals (such as the Kenyan lawyer, activist and impostor Patrice Loch Otieno LUMUMBA) and journalists (as the Congophobic Cameroonian journalist and propagandist of KAGAME´s criminal regime, namely Louis Magloire KEMAYOU), refuse to admit because of your ignorance of the historical truth on the one hand ; and on the other hand, because of the mass manipulation on a global scale of Banya-Mulenge and of the Rwandan authorities and those who support them for obvious reasons.
What is this Congolese State which, according to you Mr. President, does not protect them ( against who ? ), if at the head of this same State, one of them, that is to say a Rwandan subject namely alias Joseph KABILA, remained there for 18 years (January 2001 – January 2019) as President of the Republic and Supreme Commander of the armies (FARDC) and the Congolese National Police (PNC), without forgetting to specify that they also had a Vice-President of the Republic, in the person of RUBERWA Azarias ?
Currently, the Commander-in-Chief of the Third Defense Military Region of the Congolese Army (FARDC) is General Pacifique MASUNZU, a Muanya-Mulenge, who is currently fighting the terrorist organization M23 in the occupied cities of Goma och Bukavu, and more broadly in the both regions of North Kivu and South Kivu.
The reality is rather that the Banyarwanda are truly privileged in the DR of Congo.
And this is the case to remind you Mr. President, that none of its 450 indigenous tribes has ever in the history of the DR of Congo, been represented as much in its national institutions, army and police as the Banyarwanda, who are nevertheless an allogeneic community.
Indeed, during the 18 years of alias Joseph KABILA in power to date, in the name of the so-called peace agreements imposed on the DR of Congo by the international community, within the framework of two illegal and illegitimate notions called : « Mixage/Mixing and Brassage/Brewing », the Banyarwanda community (from both RD of Congo and Rwanda) alone, was able to total within the Congolese national army (FARDC), out of a total strength of 140,000 men, 25 generals including alias Joseph KABILA, 535 senior officers and non-commissioned officers, and approximately 37,000 troops. This is actually a second Rwandan Defence Force (RDF), but this time within the Congolese army (FARDC), larger than the official RDF (nearly 33 000 troops) in Rwanda. Is this what you call discrimination or oppression against a privileged population of foreign origin ? It is a real upside down world that you are describing to us.
The Congolese National Police was for several years under the authority of one of them, namely BISENGIMANA Charles, not to mention other security and intelligence services, but other institutions, the central bank and administrations controlled from top to bottom by them alone. So, what protection do you want to talk about to the African public opinion, Mr. President ? Given the above, one must ask who the so-called International community is ultimately making fun of ? The answer is, of course, the Congolese people.
Thus, falsely accusing the Congolese State and its hospitable people of all this nonsense represents the height of ingratitude on the part of the Banyarwanda-Tutsi that you call Banya-Mulenge. Under the instigation of the criminal Rwandan regime in Kigali, they are eternally dissatisfied, constantly asking for God’s beard in the DR of Congo under false and non-existent pretexts, playing the victims while killing their hosts. And during these times, a certain so-called international Community supports them in this upside-down world.
Mr. President,
We are curious to know how you would have reacted when you were in office as President of the Republic of South Africa, if ever a population of foreign origin that you had welcomed on South African soil, decided by killing millions of human lives, in active complicity with the government of their country of origin, to illegally occupy a piece of land at the foot of the famous Drakensberg mountain range, to make it an exclusively foreign enclave or exclave on South African soil, by de facto proclaiming themselves an ethnic or tribal component of the Republic of South Africa, by giving themselves a fanciful name such as : Children of the Drakensberg ? This is exactly the story of what you call the Banya-Mulenge.
We assume that you would not have let this happen for 30 years, without taking responsibility by taking the necessary measures to put an end to this madness. I therefore assume that you would not have denied the South Africans, natives of this place, victims of abominable atrocities and usurpation of their ancestral land, their right to defend themselves with the means at their disposal against this barbarity and injustice. This is the story of what is called the Mai-Mai militias. The Mai-Mai are only members of these indigenous Congolese tribes composed of the Bafulero, Babembe, Banyindu and Barega, victims of this bloody usurpation of their ancestral lands, organized in self-defense groups in order to defend themselves against it.
This is the story of Mulenge, which is in fact the name of the hill where these former Rwandan Tutsi refugees were, frightened, starving and fleeing the exactions of the new Hutu masters of the place, located in the province of South Kivu in the community (ancestral land) of the Bafulero tribe, in the territory of Fizi, in the highlands of the Itombwe forest massif, also covering the territories of Mwenga and Uvira.
For your information, Mr. President: Banya means Children or People, Mulenge is the name of the hill and area where they were received as indicated above. But it is inexplicable that the disputed locality of MINEMBWE, located about 250 km from the Mulenge hill from which they claim to originate, is at the center of bloody armed clashes for its control between, on the one hand, what you call the Mai-Mai or indigenous tribes: Babembe, Bafulero, Banyindu, Barega; and on the other hand, the Banya-Mulenge militias operating since 2019 within a twin armed organization comprising GUMINO and Twirwaneho, thus carrying out ethnic cleansing in the aforementioned territory.
This name Banya-Mulenge is misused to manipulate and completely infiltrate the DRC.
Mr. President,
This unusual term, which came out of nowhere and originated from the « Banya-Mulenge, » has nothing to do with the list of Congolese tribes inherited from either Belgian colonization or independent Congo. Rather, it was invented in 1977 — for reasons related to his Banyarwanda community — by a former Rwandan refugee from 1959, who became a national deputy during the legislature (1977-1982), named Frédéric GISARO Muhoza, father of the current Minister of Infrastructure and national deputy for the Uvira constituency, namely Alexis GISARO, who is a Munya-Mulenge. The latter, let us recall, was elected by all Congolese, regardless of their tribe. Is this discrimination ?
Despite this, the neologism « Banya-Mulenge » which is contested as non-existent by Rwandans themselves (refer to general James KABAREBE of Rwanda Defense Forces (RDF), who serves as Minister of State for Regional integration in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during a meeting in Kigali on 15, November, 2012), was first discovered and known by the majority of Congolese and Rwandans in 1996, during the war of aggression waged by Rwanda and Uganda under the cover of the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo/Zaire (AFDL), led by President Laurent-Désiré KABILA. Rwandans, whether Tutsi or Hutu (including those from Burundi) of Congolese nationality, are and were in reality called Banyarwanda.
So, calling our fellow citizens Banya-Mulenge or Congolese Tutsis is absurd, because it amounts to the same thing when a person belongs to the Shona ethnic group, passing themselves off as a native South African. Now, we all know that the Shona people, as a tribe or ethnic group in Africa, belong mainly to Zimbabwe (about 85%), but also to Zambia and Mozambique. A Shona, or a group of Shonas, can choose to become a South African citizen, but without having origins in the Republic of South Africa, nor owning ancestral lands there. Therefore, no pure-bred Shona can claim to be of South African origin.
The problem with this ready-made name of « Banya-Mulenge » for the Congolese lies in the fact that any person belonging to the Tutsi ethnic group of Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda or even Tanzania, or at a pinch, those who have lived from generation to generation in the DR of Congo, once they enter Congolese soil, automatically becomes a Manya-Mulenge and proclaims themselves Congolese and claims Congolese nationality. In fact, for many of them, they have a Congolese citizenship that varies according to the circumstances that are favorable to them from one country to another.
The people of the Democratic Republic of Congo have never shown hatred towards any foreign community living on their soil, and even less towards the Banya-Mulenge. All of them, or at least those who live far from politics and respect the laws, territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Democratic Republic of Congo, coexist in peace and harmony with our people.
But when it comes to the Banyarwanda (Tutsi), far from any idea of generalization or stigmatization, most of them are supremacists who want to impose their hegemony on the Bantu peoples whom they consider, according to their racialist ideology, as inferior to them, and whom they must dominate and govern as is currently the case in Rwanda and as was the case in the past in Burundi with the Hutu (Bantu people). That is the simple truth !
The DR of Congo, although it has about 450 tribes, none of them benefits from any exceptionalism.
Mr. President,
All ethnic groups or tribes are equal before the law, and they are all supposed to respect it. Why do you think that the population of Rwandan origin with Congolese nationality should benefit from preferential treatment ? Is this an attempt to subjugate and impose or to want to establish in the DR of Congo, the ethnic particularism and the harmful ethnicity with disastrous consequences that we deplore among our eastern neighbors, particularly in Rwanda with their venomous antagonism between Hutu and Tutsi ?
Because, you tell us things that we have difficulty understanding, given that they are imaginary and unfounded, and do not correspond in any way to the sociopolitical realities of the DR of Congo, except that by chance to the highly mendacious and falsifying rhetoric of the historical truth of your Rwandan criminal friends in power in Kigali, source par excellence of all the problems of destabilization of the DR of Congo and the entire African Great Lakes region.
You should have told these young people under your speech : why the honorable South African Parliament forced you to resign ?
Mr. President,
The Congolese people and the South African Parliament are still well aware of your involvement up to your neck, in close collaboration with the genocidal and criminal regime of Paul KAGAME, in the systematic plundering of the mineral resources of the DR of Congo.
Let us remind that it was notably because of this involvement in large-scale fraud and corruption cases that compromised you, and which forced South African deputies, but especially the majority of your own comrades from the African National Congress (ANC) party in 2008, to dismiss you well before the end of your presidential term.
The African people, wherever they are, remember that it was under your presidency that the term xenophobia was born, and has taken on worrying proportions to this day.
Mr. President,
We believe that you are very poorly placed to try to set yourself up as a great African sage and giver of lessons in solidarity against « hatred ». Because, all of Africa as well as the whole world is not unaware that South Africa, this brother country of legendary hospitality, had seen its brand image tarnished by this new phenomenon of xenophobia, with all the unfortunate consequences that still result from it today at times, against sub-Saharan Africans, engendered precisely by your particular governance which left a lot to be desired.
Finally, Mr. President, if your famous expertise, which seems to be so sought after in terms of conflict resolution in Africa, is just limited to making such biased and unfounded allegations, and above all denoting a disconcerting partiality, well, we unfortunately note that you have devalued it yourself. As a result, you have discredited yourself in the eyes of the Congolese people and many people of good sense across Africa and elsewhere in the world.
To conclude this open letter, I respectfully urge you, once again, Mr. President, to stop spreading falsehoods throughout Africa and the world, about the wonderful people of the DR of Congo, through your statements which have a certain impact on our African opinions in particular, or even beyond.
The territorial integrity of the DR Congo cannot be sold or ceded by its inhabitants, nor can it be the subject of any negotiation with usurpers and plunderers from Rwanda, to satisfy their selfishness and their excessive ambitions.
Finally, if you feel that the tone I used offended you, that my reaction has no legitimacy or that I am insisting on false arguments, I ask you to be indulgent with me.
Please accept, Mr. President, the expression of my highest consideration.
Stockholm, Maj 22, 2025
Pépin LULENDO
