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SADC to hold extraordinary summit on eastern DRC situation

By Wycliffe Nyamasege
On 30 January 2025 at 03:13

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) will convene an Extraordinary Summit of Heads of State and Government on Thursday to address the ongoing crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The SADC secretariat said in a statement on Wednesday that the extraordinary meeting, to be chaired by SADC Chairperson and Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa, will be preceded by meetings of the SADC Standing Committee of Senior Officials and the SADC Council of Ministers.

The regional economic community comprises 16 member states, including the DRC. The other members are Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zambia.

The extraordinary summit comes at a time when SADC soldiers on a mission in the DRC have sustained several casualties, including 13 from South Africa alone in the past week, as they helped the Congolese army combat the M23’s advance toward the city of Goma, which eventually fell to the rebels on Monday.

SAMIDRC, comprising South African, Tanzanian, and Malawian troops, was deployed in the country in December 2023 with a robust mandate to defeat M23 and other rebel groups.

In November 2024, SADC extended the mandate of its mission in the DRC by one year amid continued fighting between the Congolese army and the M23 group which is fighting against a systematic persecution of the Tutsi minority community.

The meeting also comes a day after leaders from the East African Community (EAC) convened a similar summit on Wednesday night. They urged the government of the DRC to engage directly with M23 rebels and other armed groups in an effort to resolve the escalating crisis in the country’s east.

In a post-summit statement, the leaders emphasized that a peaceful settlement is the only viable solution to the ongoing crisis.

"The summit called for a peaceful settlement of the conflicts and strongly urged the government of the DRC to directly engage with all stakeholders, including the M23 and other armed groups that have grievances," the statement read.

Notably absent from the summit was DRC President Félix Tshisekedi, who has previously resisted direct negotiations with M23, labeling them a terrorist group. His absence has raised concerns about Kinshasa’s willingness to embrace dialogue, even as pressure mounts for a political resolution to the conflict.

Beyond the push for dialogue, the summit also demanded an immediate ceasefire and unrestricted humanitarian access to affected populations.

Acknowledging SADC’s role, the EAC summit proposed a joint EAC-SADC meeting to coordinate responses.

"The summit decided on a joint EAC-SADC summit to deliberate on the way forward and mandated the chairperson to consult with the chairperson of SADC on the urgent convening of the same in the next few days," the leaders resolved.

The SADC secretariat said in a statement on Wednesday that the extraordinary meeting, to be chaired by SADC Chairperson and Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa, will be preceded by meetings of the SADC Standing Committee of Senior Officials and the SADC Council of Ministers.

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