Nothing was more revealing yesterday evening than watching Kinshasa’s troll army spiral on social media over Gen. Sultani Makenga’s “resurrection.”
The man they had confidently declared “dead by drone strike” calmly reappeared, promoting three battalions into the special forces ranks of the Congolese Revolutionary Army (ARC).
What followed was a spectacular meltdown: disbelief, hysteria, rage, and finally denial, a textbook procession through the stages of grief, performed in real time by regime propagandists who, clearly, had celebrated too early. Their reaction exposes everything wrong inside this cabal.
First, they genuinely believe that the struggle for Congo’s liberation rests on one man. Much like the Americans who convinced themselves that killing an 86-year-old cleric would collapse an entire system, Tshisekedi’s paid trolls imagine that eliminating Gen. Makenga would make the ARC, and the political movement behind it, evaporate overnight.
They are profoundly mistaken. But perhaps it is wise to let them cling to that fantasy. When your opponent insists on misunderstanding the battlefield and digging his own grave, the most strategic response is to hand him the shovel.
Second, they are confused, and dangerously so. They blame Rwanda for every military humiliation they suffer, yet the name that unsettles them most belongs to a Congolese: a son of Masisi, born and raised. Deep down, they know that the skills Makenga forged both as a rebel commander and as an officer within the FARDC make him an adversary they cannot dismiss or caricature away.
If they were honest, they would admit the truth: what they resent is not his competence — they would give anything to have a commander of his caliber in their ranks. What they resent is his background, his cultural heritage. Their disease is tribalism. His mission is to cure the disease.
Finally, instead of scrambling to “debunk” a video that clearly shows him promoting 1,500 new special forces into the ARC, they would do well to reflect on what those promotions actually mean.
While they celebrate supposed diplomatic victories, their primary adversary is expanding, reorganizing, and hardening. Those new units are a promise that military provocations and daily violence against unarmed civilians will not go unanswered.
By now they should understand a simple reality: no external actor is coming to save them if the balance shifts decisively on the ground.