Uvira falls, promises fade, and the DRC Lake grows restless once more today

 

By Adonis Byemelwa

Uvira fell like a thunderclap, sudden and impossible to ignore. It happened just as the region was still exhaling after a highly publicised peace pact between Rwanda’s Paul Kagame and the DRC’s Félix Tshisekedi, signed before former US President Donald Trump. Hope filled the room, cameras rolled, pens moved, but on the ground, the guns never fell silent.

That contradiction is what makes Uvira so alarming. While diplomats spoke of a “new chapter,” M23 pushed closer to Lake Tanganyika, turning words into smoke. For those of us who have followed the DRC conflict for years, this pattern feels painfully familiar.

 Agreements are signed far from the mud and fear of eastern Congo, while armed groups keep redrawing reality with rifles.

Uvira is not just another town on the map. It is a hinge, connecting eastern DRC to Burundi and opening directly onto Lake Tanganyika. Whoever controls Uvira gains leverage over movement, trade, and security across the Great Lakes. Its seizure by M23 places an armed force uncomfortably close to Tanzania’s western shoreline, and that proximity changes everything.

Along the Tanzanian side of the lake, from Kagunga and Mwamgongo to Kagongo Ziwani, Kibirizi, and deep into Kigoma South, anxiety is no longer abstract. Fishermen talk quietly about strange boats at night, about armed men who do not speak Kiswahili like locals. These are not rumours born of panic; they are the lived edges of a conflict creeping across water.

The timing sharpens the unease. The Kagame–Tshisekedi pact was sold as a turning point, a moment when regional rivalry would finally give way to cooperation.

However, M23’s advance suggests either a collapse of trust or a deliberate test of that agreement’s limits. If a pact cannot restrain an allied rebel movement days or weeks after its signing, what is it really worth?

Mussa Lugete, a political analyst based in Dar es Salaam, puts it bluntly. “In the Great Lakes, peace deals often function as diplomatic theatre,” he says. “They calm donors and international partners, but they rarely discipline actors on the ground. Uvira shows us the gap between paper peace and lived insecurity.”

That gap matters deeply for Tanzania. Lake Tanganyika is not just water; it is a livelihood, border, and buffer. Instability on its western shore does not stay there. Arms move easily by boat, fighters melt into fishing communities, refugees arrive not as statistics but as families with nothing left to lose.

Ibrahim Rabi, another Dar-based analyst who has studied cross-border security for over a decade, warns against underestimating the ripple effects. “When an armed group reaches the lake, the conflict becomes regional by default,” he argues. “You cannot fence off water. What happens in Uvira today shapes Kigoma tomorrow.”

Rwanda’s role lies at the heart of this unrest. If M23 asserts control over Uvira, Kigali enhances its influence on multiple levels. Politically, it strengthens its presence in eastern DRC. Economically, it dominates routes long linked to illegal trade. Strategically, it moves potential threats farther from its borders while increasing its international bargaining power.

An international scholar on African security, Professor Helen Marks of King’s College London, frames it in colder terms. “This is classic strategic depth,” she notes. “By shaping outcomes in Eastern Congo, Rwanda externalises its security concerns and negotiates from a position of strength, regardless of what is signed at summits.”

For Burundi, the implications are existential. Uvira has long been a corridor for Burundian forces cooperating with FARDC and allied Mai-Mai groups. Its loss constrains Bujumbura’s options and raises fears of increased pressure from armed opposition groups operating across porous borders. A destabilised Burundi would not be a local problem; it would be a regional shock.

Tanzania cannot pretend to be a distant observer. History has taught hard lessons about what happens when the Great Lakes tilt too far in one direction. The balance of power matters, and when it breaks, consequences spill outward. This is not paranoia; it is pattern recognition built from decades of crisis.

What makes the current moment more unsettling is the international mood. With global attention fragmented by wars elsewhere, African conflicts risk sliding down the priority list. Peace pacts become symbols rather than instruments, while enforcement quietly evaporates.

Jean-Paul Okello, a Ugandan-born scholar teaching in South Africa, sees this as a dangerous drift. “When high-level mediation is not matched by credible pressure and monitoring, armed groups learn the wrong lesson,” he says. “They learn that violence still pays, even after the handshakes.”

For communities along Lake Tanganyika, these dynamics are not academic. Every shift in control across the water changes daily calculations. Do you fish today or stay home? Do you report what you saw last night or stay silent? Security, here, is felt in the body before it is debated in parliament.

Tanzania’s response, therefore, must be sober and strategic. Heightened lake security, deeper intelligence cooperation with neighbours, and sustained diplomatic engagement are not acts of aggression; they are acts of prevention. The goal is not escalation but insulation, keeping regional fires from jumping the shoreline.

At the same time, Dar es Salaam must read the Kagame–Tshisekedi pact with clear eyes. Its implication is not that peace has arrived, but that a new phase of contestation has begun, one in which influence is quietly exercised while violence continues through proxies. Ignoring that reality would be costly.

Mussa Lugete reflects on this tension with a note of frustration. “We keep celebrating agreements as endpoints,” he says, “but in this region, they are often just intermissions. The real test starts after the photos, when nobody is watching.”

International partners also carry responsibility. Witnessing a pact, even at the highest level, is not the same as guaranteeing its outcomes. Without follow-through, monitoring, and consequences for violations, ceremonies risk becoming cover for continued instability.

As someone who has tracked the DRC conflict through failed ceasefires, shifting alliances, and recycled rebel movements, the sense of déjà vu is heavy. Uvira feels less like a surprise and more like a reminder that peace in the Great Lakes is never declared; it is enforced day by day.

The danger now is complacency. Believing that a signed document, however prestigious the witnesses, can substitute for complex security realities. The lake does not read communiqués, and armed groups do not pause for applause.

Tanzania’s strength has always been its ability to think long, to absorb shocks without panic, and to act with a steady sense of the region it inhabits. That habit of patience and strategic calm matters now more than ever, especially as memories resurface of past accords, Lusaka, Sun City, Nairobi, Addis Ababa, all signed with hope, all followed by new mutations of the same conflict. The lesson, learned the hard way, is that peace in eastern Congo has never been secured by signatures alone.

The seizure of Uvira is therefore not just a Congolese problem, and the Kagame–Tshisekedi pact, however grand the setting before President Trump, is not a guaranteed shield. Between those two facts lies the unglamorous work of security, diplomacy, and vigilance.

 As former Tanzanian foreign minister Liberata Mulamula has often warned, “The DRC crisis is regional by nature, its solutions must be regional in discipline, not just regional in rhetoric.” She has repeatedly argued that without honest enforcement and shared responsibility, agreements risk becoming pauses rather than endings.

For those of us who have watched this cycle repeat, the feeling is sobering. The region is watching quietly, not for speeches, but for who truly understands that difference and is prepared to act on it.