A humiliating misadventure in the DRC has left South African peacekeeping troops trapped by rebels, exposing longstanding problems.
JOHANNESBURG—Deadly clashes in a balmy, rundown mining town in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have confirmed what defense experts have known for a long time: South Africa’s army, once the continent’s most respected fighting force and backed by its only military-industrial complex, is in shambles.
The reputation of the South African National Defense Force (SANDF) is smothered under the mud and blood and shattered concrete, melted inside smoldering buildings and burnt-out armored vehicles, in the streets of Goma near the DRC–Rwanda border.
Here, M23 rebels recently defeated the Congolese army and a United Nations-mandated “peacekeeping” force consisting mostly of 2,000 South African soldiers.
The DRC government says 7,000 people have been killed and 450,000 displaced in eastern Congo since January.
Over the past few months, the SANDF’s decline has been emphasized by the offloading of more than 20 body bags at an airbase near Pretoria.
Now, surviving South African troops are hunkered down near Goma airport, 15 miles from the…
[…]
