The SA Recce sniper steadied his breathing while his spotter calculated the odds of making a long-range kill from their observation post to M23 rebel rocket batteries.
The batteries were located in the crater of an extinct volcano nicknamed Triple Towers for the communications masts that topped it.
It was a good 2km across the valley from the sniper’s position on a hill overlooking the Munigi base of the Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) — consisting of SA, Tanzanian and Malawian peacekeepers — on the northern outskirts of Goma, northwards to the M23 positions where they were dug in with 107mm and 122mm rockets.
The SA National Defence Force (SANDF) observation post had been established after the FIB base took M23 mortar-fire earlier in the month — similar to that which killed three out of 13 SA soldiers at Goma this month — and the Recce captain had arrived earlier that day, August 13 2013, as leader of a 5 Special Forces Regiment sniper team.
As the wind picked up during the day, the spotter made his calculations. The captain was armed with a bolt-action Denel NTW-20 anti-materiel rifle. On that fatal day he squeezed its trigger only six times, on each occasion killing a distant M23 officer.
But one kill-shot, verified by his spotter, entered the record books as the then-sixth longest-distance confirmed sniper kill in history, an astounding 2.125km.
Then, on November 4, two SANDF Rooivalk attack helicopters from 6 Squadron in Bloemfontein, deployed to the FIB, racked up their own kills, flying their first combat mission through heavy defensive fire to wipe out a rebel 14.5mm gun battery and an ammunition bunker near the Rwandan border with 70mm rocket salvos.
The following day, the outgunned and outfought M23 rebels agreed to lay down their arms, ending a 20-month rebellion, and engage in a peace process. A proud SANDF could rightly claim its Recces and Rooivalks played a crucial role in that victory.
But those days are long gone.
In the interim, the Kigali-backed M23, claiming the peace deal was violated by its Kinshasa-backed opponents, has rebuilt and been comprehensively rearmed by Rwanda, supposedly an SA ally. It is now a credible threat — on the very verge of a Southern African Development Community intervention force led by the SANDF replacing the UN’s FIB peacekeepers in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Our death-toll there has now surpassed the democratic-era highs of 11 dead (and 17 wounded) for 134 dead opponents in the mutiny-suppressing invasion of Lesotho in September 1998, and matches that of the 13 dead (and 27 wounded) for 2,700 enemy dead in the brave, yet doomed tooth-and-nail defence of Bangui in the Central African Republic in March 2013.
On June 12 2023, the UN’s group of experts on the DRC reported to the Security Council on the rapid expansion of the revived M23 in the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu. It had doubled its territory in only four months in clashes against the armed forces of the DRC and allied militia and mercenary companies, with a resulting “catastrophic deterioration of the humanitarian crisis, including the displacement of more than
1-million civilians,” they said.
That figure has now surpassed 7.2-million.
Humanitarian aid convoys and FIB and East African Regional Community peacekeeping operations were severely curtailed, with food supplies in the region disrupted as a result.
“M23 also continued to operate and develop its parallel administration and to tax civilians and economic actors in territories under its control,” acting in this respect as a nascent state.
Rwanda has consistently denied it is involved in the multifaceted yet ethnically fault-lined conflict that the UN observers warned has militarised the region.
But with elements of the Rwandese 201st and 301st Brigades under overall command of Maj-Gen Emmy Ruvusha and special forces under Capt Jean-Pierre “Gasasira” Niragire conducting combat operations within the DRC against a mélange of ethnic Hutu militia, it seems possible that Kigali is attempting to establish an ethnic Tutsi buffer state in the region.
The UN observers, however, stated that two Rwandese intelligence officers and sources close to M23 agreed that the objective of the Rwandese operations in the region was “to reinforce M23 by providing troops and materiel and to use them to secure control over mine sites, gain political influence in the DRC and decimate FLDR”, one of the primary ethnic Hutu militia., commanded by Gen Pacifique “Omega” Ntawunguka, who was reportedly killed recently.
The Rwandese backing substantially stiffens the M23, which is estimated at only 3,000-strong (compared to the 1,198 SANDF soldiers deployed there as part of a 16,316-strong UN contingent), and much of their equipment, including vehicles and uniforms, is new. Their weapons, including heavy machine-guns, recoilless guns, mortars and rockets, provides some insight into the significant firepower of M23.
No air cover
Thomas Mandrup, an associate professor at Stellenbosch University’s Security Institute for Governance and Leadership in Africa, warns that the overstretched and under-resourced SANDF has “only one operational C-130 transport aircraft. It has only a few helicopters available for all domestic and international missions — five Oryx (utility helicopters), out of an initial 39, and three Rooivalk, out of 11. Hence it will not be able to provide the much-needed air transport and air cover for offensive operations.”
This lack of both air transport and air cover proved disastrous in the 2013 Battle of Bangui. Even the Recces and Parabats “are overstretched to such an extent that it negatively affects their operational readiness,” he says, cautioning that the SANDF “is in worse shape than it was in 2013”.
With a bewildering array of 252 local and 14 foreign armed groups active in the region — among them the jihadist Allied Democratic Forces for which the UN experts presented documentary evidence of funding from, and recruiting by, Da’esh (Islamic State) cells in Johannesburg — and with repeated military incursions by neighbouring countries, the new SANDF intervention force will face immense challenges.
Over the past two decades, peacekeeping interventions by the international community have proven incapable of cutting the Gordian knot, not least because of the rich mineral and forestry resources in the region, competition over which has fuelled the multi-conflict, and even drawn in Chinese commercial and military interests.
Associate professor Felix Mukzwa Ndahinda of the University of Rwanda said that the “revolving door of military interventions” has failed because none of them have addressed the root causes of the conflict.
He argued that while Kinshasa had “committed to guarantee security for different communities, to resolve identity, citizenship and land issues, to oversee the return of refugees, and to a demobilisation process that addresses the concerns of belligerents,” in what was termed the “Nairobi Process,” DRC President Félix Ttshisekedi had instead narrowly focused on war against the M23 to shore up his popular support.
President Cyril Ramaphosa met his Rwandese counterpart Paul Kagame on Tuesday and “agreed on the urgent need for a ceasefire and the resumption of peace talks by all parties to the conflict,” according to the presidency.
That might just work as Kigali has turned off the taps on its proxy forces in the eastern DRC before, thereby enforcing dialogue — but now with Goma having reportedly fallen to the M23, isolating the FIB elements to their Munigi base and the Goma airport, the hard-pressed SANDF’s task seems more Sisyphean than ever.
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