The bodies of fourteen South African soldiers who were killed in the past two weeks during the capture of Goma by the armed group M23 in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo will be repatriated this Wednesday, South Africa’s Defense Chief announced on Tuesday.
The repatriation of the bodies is particularly awaited in South Africa, eleven days after the first deaths of South African soldiers in M23 attacks in Rwanda. Some of them were sent as part of the United Nations peacekeeping mission MONUSCO, while others were deployed under the SAMIDRC mission of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
In South Africa, calls for the withdrawal of the forces are growing. The Democratic Alliance (DA), the second-largest party in the country and a member of the coalition government, “strongly reiterated its call for the immediate withdrawal of South African troops from the DRC” in a statement released after the hearing of the case. “Our soldiers are being sent into unclear and unsupported circumstances,” the DA condemned, one day after President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that they would remain in the DRC.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame has called for the SADC mission (called SAMIDRC) to leave DRC, stating that it “is not a peacekeeping force” and “has no place in this situation.” Rwandan government spokesperson Yolande Makolo accused Cyril Ramaphosa on Twitter of sending troops “for personal gain.” “Please tell your people the truth about your interests in the mines you have in the DRC,” she wrote, without providing any evidence for her remarks.