MALAIKA MAHLATSI: Kagame and Ramaphosa must remember that in war, there’s no winner

“War does not determine who is right, only who is left”. I found myself thinking of this profound statement made by British philosopher and mathematician, Bertrand Russell. An active pacifist during World War I, Russell was strongly opposed to war, believing that it is the greatest evil.

While he supported the military defeat of Adolf Hitler in World War II, arguing that his expansion across Europe was a serious threat to democracy, and would later make an argument that a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union might be necessary (an argument that has been subject to different interpretations by various scholars, with some arguing that he was not advocating for the actual use of nuclear weaponry, but merely its diplomatic use as leverage against actions of the Soviet Union; and other contending that he was advocating for a first strike) most of Russell’s works on war make an argument against it.

He was particularly opposed to the use of nuclear weapons, and became the first president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).

The organisation opposed military action that may result in the use of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, as well as the construction of nuclear power stations in the United Kingdom and across Europe.

Russell, who died in Wales in 1970, had lived through both World Wars and several other violent conflicts. He had borne witness to the horrors of war and knew too well that even for the victor, the results are always devastating. At the time of his death, the Vietnam War was still ongoing.

The Vietnam War was especially brutal, with a death toll estimated at between 1.3 million and 3.4 million casualties on all sides. Most of the deceased were Vietnamese civilians.

And while North Vietnam, supported by the Soviet Union and China, would win the war, the devastation that it left in its wake was incalculable. Just over a year ago, I visited Phnom Penh in Cambodia, where the remnants of the brutal Cambodian Civil War can still be gleaned.

The Khmer Rouge, which ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979, had also been involved in the Vietnamese War, supporting North Vietnam. The tactics that they used in that war were repeated on the people of Cambodia, resulting in some of the worst genocides the world has ever seen.

To this day, many still remember the terror they lived through, and as one war survivor told me: “You can never erase the memories of war”.

These same sentiments have been shared by anyone who has ever lived through war. My friend, Darice Rusagara, who was only a child when her family escaped from the horror that was the Rwanda Genocide, shared with us how war left a permanent wound in her family.

Though she now lives in Europe where she is thriving as a citizen of Belgium, she has been permanently scarred by that horrific war that left 1 million Rwandese civilians dead, many of them from the Tutsi ethnic group.

Another friend, Victor Ochen, tells an even more horrific story about the impact of war on children. Born in northern Uganda, he spent 21 years living amid violent conflict that displaced more than 3 million people and forcefully recruited more than 60,000 children as soldiers.

Victor’s own brother was one of the children recruited in the conflict. Victor spent many years living in refugee camps in Uganda. In 2015, he became the first Ugandan and youngest-ever African nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for the work that he’s doing providing reconstructive medical rehabilitation and support for more than 25,000 war survivors in northern Uganda.

He speaks of violent conflict as an evil that dehumanises and animalises people, leaving bleeding wounds in children. That children are casualties of war has been evident in Israel’s war in Palestine, where nearly 20,000 children have been killed. It’s a horror that no words can describe.

No one who understands the cost of war would speak casually about starting a war. This is why the statements of Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, in his public confrontation of President Cyril Ramaphosa, are chilling.

Kagame, in a strongly worded statement published on X (formerly Twitter) responding to one put out by Ramaphosa giving an update on the situation in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where violence has escalated, stated: “If South Africa wants to contribute to peaceful solutions, that is well and good, but South Africa is in no position to take on the role of a peacemaker or mediator.

And if South Africa prefers confrontation, Rwanda will deal with the matter in that context any day”.

Kagame was responding in particular to the argument by Ramaphosa that “the fighting is the result of an escalation by the rebel group M23 and Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) militia engaging the Armed Forces of the DRC (FARDC) and attacking peacekeepers from the SADC Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (SAMIDRC)”. The fighting has claimed the lives of at least 13 South African soldiers.

The genesis of the conflict in the DRC is historical and complex, and it’s not my intention to delve into it. It is also not the intention of this article to debate the merits of either president’s argument around what the ongoing discussions have been about.

My intention is merely to highlight that there’s a need for the de-escalation of tensions between Kigali and Pretoria, because war, or threats of it, do not benefit either country.

Many South Africans have taken to social media to mock the ability of Rwanda, a very small country, to successfully wage war in South Africa. It’s irrelevant whether Rwanda may or may not succeed. The point is that war or threats of war should never be used as a tool for negotiating.

Kagame knows too well the horrors of violent confrontation, having fought in the Rwanda Genocide as a commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the rebel armed force that ended the genocide in 1994.

He saw the incalculable devastation that claimed the lives of a million Rwandese people and resulted in widespread violence, with between 250,000 and 500,000 women being raped.

Such a man should never be so casual as making threats of violent confrontation, no matter how aggrieved he may be.

As South Africans, we must also desist from the temptation to trivialise or joke about violent confrontation. We are still reeling from the aftermath of colonial and apartheid violence and know too well what happens when violence becomes the order of the day.

People die. Women are raped. Many Black women endured horrific sexual violence during apartheid, particularly in the period of violent confrontation of the African National Congress (ANC) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).

Our mothers and grandmothers bear the scars of jack-rolling, the systematic gang rapes that happened to township women in the early 1990s. It’s an experience to which no woman should ever again be condemned.

The governments of Rwanda and South Africa must do everything possible to prevent any further escalation.

Talks of war should never be visited. In war, there’s no winner. And to reiterate the words of Russell: “War does not determine who is right, only who is left”.