WeeklySA_AdminIMPERIALISM: Trump’s Congo-Rwanda deal is hailed as diplomatic triumph. But behind the photo opportunities lies a familiar exchange – African resources for Western power…
By Marjorie Namara Rugunda
Peace deals are often announced with handshakes, photo ops, smiles, and celebratory headlines. They are moments of spectacle that are framed as victories of diplomacy and stability.
While some peace deals ought to be celebrated, behind the press conferences and applause, we must also ask: What is actually being exchanged in the name of peace? Whose lives continue to be disposed of in the name of peace deals?
During a press briefing on June 27, US President Donald Trump announced that a peace deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda has been signed.
In his announcement to the press, Trump stated that though he does not know much about the conflict in eastern Congo, it was one of the worst wars he has seen and that he also happened to have someone who was able to settle it—his senior Africa advisor, Massad Boulos. He then asserted that as part of the deal, the United States will also be getting the mineral rights from the Congo.
While there is much to unpack in the details of the deal, Trump’s casual remark about securing mineral rights cannot be overlooked, especially as this agreement, like many before it that have failed, is being celebrated as a victory, not just for the people of eastern Congo, but for the world.
But if war has truly ended, why must peace always come in exchange for minerals?
This deal, which was finalised in Washington, raises critical questions about the meaning of peace. Trump claims the conflict has ended, yet mineral extraction in the DRC has long functioned as a form of war, one waged not just with weapons, but through dispossession.
For decades, the Congolese people have lived with the consequences of violent extraction: displacement, environmental degradation, forced labour, and the erosion of community life. The minerals being handed over in this agreement have already been at the centre of a war, one that dispossesses people of land, health, and future. What is framed as peace is, in fact, the continuation of imperial violence, where the tools of war this time will be contracts and Western corporations.
In her book Remaindered Life, Neferti X M Tadiar writes that “we live in a time when every day brings ample evidence of the disposability of human life. It is a casual use of the word—human—for the very disposability of this life.”
Dispossession, in this context, is not only historical, it is ongoing.
“A war of dispossession,” Tadiar reminds us, “is the mode of accumulation dominantly understood as the ‘original’ or ‘primitive’ basis of the rise of capital, even as those who struggle to survive in this moment know intimately well that a racist, sexist war of dispossession is the beating heart of contemporary global capitalism.”
The DRC, with the world’s largest reserves of cobalt, diamonds, zinc, and uranium, continues to be a site of imperial hunger, where the lives of the Congolese people are rendered expendable in service of global supply chains and Western profit.
More than 40 000 children alongside adult mining workers continue to work in mines under toxic, inhumane conditions. These children and the communities they are part of what Tadiar calls “remaindered lives”: lives marked as disposable, wasteful, or necessary only insofar as they serve capital. Peace deals in this global system are often nothing more than a pause in direct confrontation so that the violence of extraction may continue uninterrupted.
Tadiar writes that “waste is the object of the new imperialism,” and in the Congo, both the land and its people have long been treated as waste, exploited, paid below minimum wage, and left behind. The mines that produce cobalt for phones and electric cars are surrounded by devastated ecosystems, sick workers, and impoverished communities. Trump’s so-called peace deal cements a long-standing imperial relationship: the extraction of value from African soil without regard for the people who live on it.
The assertion that this peace deal has finally culminated the conflict in the DRC distracts from the real terms of the deal: a reinforcement of Western control over Congolese land and labour. Tadiar reminds us that capitalism “sustains its dominance, often at the cost of intensified inequality and environmental degradation.”
In the DRC, the cost is borne by children and communities who inhale dust and dig for minerals to power devices and enrich Western economies. To declare victory while announcing rights to minerals is to declare the rights to the human lives in Congo. Mineral extraction cannot be separated from the Congolese people, who labour under extreme conditions to produce that wealth.
Tadiar observes that “people constantly make do to get by; it is they who have to fine-tune the art of revaluing modernity’s waste into the arts of life making.” In the DRC, mining has become survival. Entire communities rely on artisanal mining not out of choice but out of necessity, forced to convert waste—environmental, economic, and social—into survival.
Tadiar pushes us to see that “capital has for centuries profited from the disposability of human and nonhuman lives.” Trump’s announcement is not a rupture from this history; it is a continuation of it. The DRC does not need peace deals that convert its minerals into bargaining chips. It needs sovereignty, environmental justice, and a world that stops treating African life as collateral damage in the pursuit of global convenience.
To call this a successful peace deal and a final end to war is to misname the ongoing violence in the DRC. The war over minerals in Congo has never ceased; it has only taken different forms.
Today, it is waged not only through armed conflict, but through the quiet violence of environmental degradation, economic exploitation, and peace deals that continue to prioritise imperial gain over human lives. – Africa is a Country* Marjorie Namara Rugunda is a writer, researcher, and PhD student at the University of British Columbia
Comment
APPLY THE RULE OF LAW
Allegations, however credible they may be, would remain allegations in a democratic State until they had been tested in a court of law and a verdict pronounced by the presiding officer.
It is therefore important to treat people allegedly implicated in criminal offences as suspects until they are convicted or acquitted in a court of law after both the State and the defence had submitted their evidence – through witnesses – as well as arguments. This is the rule of law in a democratic State. Scores of South Africans, especially opposition political parties, went for the jugular when President Cyril Ramaphosa recently announced that a Commission of Inquiry should be launched to investigate the serious allegations made by KwaZulu-Natal provincial commissioner, Lt.-Gen. Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, against Police Minister, Senzo Mchunu.
The allegations included that Mchunu interfered with sensitive police investigations, colluded with a murder accused and business people, disbanded the Political Killings Task Team based in KZN. A police investigation had also allegedly unmasked a syndicate controlled by a drug cartel which involved politicians, the judiciary, law enforcement officers and officials from the Correctional Services. Ramaphosa has since placed Mchunu on leave of absence while the matter was being probed. Another senior officer, Lieutenant- General Shadrack Sibiya, who has also been implicated in the allegations , has also been placed on special leave. The National Assembly Speaker, Thoko Didiza, has referred the matter to the relevant police portfolio committees for investigation. Most opposition political parties and members of the community however, felt that Ramaphosa should have dismissed Mchunu from his job based on the evidence produced by Mkhwanazi. The KZN provincial commissioner must be commended for being brave enough to expose the explosive allegations of the rot in the top SAPS management.
However, in terms of the law, these allegations need to be tested in a court of law or Commission of Inquiry where the accused would also give their side of the story. Those who are against the President’s decision and were calling for Mchunu’s head, seem to forget that the Police Minister was not the only person allegedly implicated. Politicians, certain members of the judiciary, Metro police and some officers from the Correctional Services were also fingered in the alleged crimes. Who are they ?
An independent and credible Commission of Inquiry would help establish the facts to ensure fairness, accountability and safeguard public confidence in the police service. South Africans are urged to exercise patience and await the outcome of this inquiry instead of calling for the summary dismissal of a single person based on allegations only to eat humble pie at a later stage.
Both Mchunu and Sibiya, who have denied the allegations, have now indicated that they were prepared to testify before the Commission of Inquiry and state their side of the story. It is their right to do so. In a democratic State, justice is not just about law enforcement but also about upholding the principle of fairness and the rule of law. The Audi alteram partem rule is a fundamental principle of fairness and justice in law. No one should be condemned without being heard.
