Pretoria – President Jacob Zuma on Tuesday prolonged the mandate of over 1 300 SANDF members as part of a UN peacekeeping force in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
The deployment “has been extended from 1 April 2014 to 31 March 2015”, Pretoria said in a statement on the same day regional leaders met to discuss the conflict.

South African soldiers are part of a UN intervention brigade in the conflict-torn region, which has an unprecedented mandate to battle the armed movements long active in eastern Congo.

Zuma also increased the force by six to 1 345.

Meanwhile, Great Lakes leaders at a mini-summit in Angola condemned the actions of rebels in the DRC’s mineral-rich North Kivu province.

“These harmful incidents have to be controlled by the relevant authorities… to prevent them from becoming a threat to regional stability,” Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos said in the capital Luanda.

He urged the neutralisation of “negative forces” from especially two rebel groupings, the ADF-Nalu, a Ugandan Islamist group, and the FDLR, a Rwandan Hutu militia that includes some the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide.

Leaders from the Congo, the DRC, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda also attended the summit.

AFP