Pastor Theoneste Ngirinshuti, 53, a resident of Rusizi District, looked beat, but so happy to have made it back home in one piece, on Sunday, February 16, when The New Times bumped into him shortly after he cleared with immigration at Rusizi 1 Border Post.
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It was at about 09:25a.m, shortly after the first AFC/M23 troops showed up at the Rwanda side of the border post. According to his account, he got stuck in Bukavu, the capital of DR Congo's North Kivu Province, soon after the city was engulfed in chaotic scenes of looting and other forms of criminal activity that started on Friday, February 14.
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It all started when the 53-year-old resident of resident of Karambo Village, Cyangugu Cell, Kamembe Sector, in Rusizi District, set off from home, early Friday, and headed to Bukavu for one of his regular prayer sessions with his congregation. Besides being a pastor who regularly travels to and from Bukavu for his evangelical duties, he also runs a lucrative business - a smart phone shop - in the Congolese city.
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On Friday, however, he was compelled to spend the night in the shop. Events had quickly evolved in a manner no one had expected, he recalls.
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Ngirinshuti was not able to return home because of the heightened insecurity in the city.
That same day, AFC/M23 rebels had captured Kavumu airport, a strategic airbase located about 25 kilometres north of Bukavu.
Hours after its capture, videos circulated on social media showed Congolese and Burundian troops fleeing southwards and in other directions. In Bukavu, a chaotic situation was unfolding.
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The war between a Congolese army coalition comprising FDLR, a DR Congo-based terrorist militia founded by remnants of the masterminds of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, as well as more than 10,000 Burundian troops, 1,600 European mercenaries, and South Africa-led SADC forces, against M23 rebels, started in 2021.
M23 is now part of a larger rebel coalition, Alliance fleuve Congo (AFC), created in December 2023.
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The AFC says it is fighting for governance that supports basic human rights, secures all citizens, and addresses the root causes of conflict. Its leaders have vowed to uproot tribalism, nepotism, corruption, and genocide ideology, among other vices, widespread in DR Congo.
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That same day, on the streets of Bukavu, Ngirinshuti interacted with Congolese and Burundian soldiers and some of their militia allies who were fleeing from the battle with the AFC/M23 rebels.
He said: "I spoke to Burundians and the Congolese of the FARDC, and all of them told me that they were heading to the plains [Ruzizi Plain in South Kivu Province] in the areas of Kamanyola, towards Burundi and Uvira. When I asked them why they were abandoning us, they showed signs of disorientation.
"Some of them confided in me that 'when we move a distance away from here, we shall remove these clothes because we have noticed that the government in Kinshasa abandoned us. It is not supplying us with anything. It is sending us to the [battle] field but we don't have the means, we are not paid, and we can't allow our families to lose us."'
That evening, he said, everyone he called in the city was hoping that the rebels would show up to liberate them - seeing that all government security agencies had fled.
It is due to this security vacuum, he explained, that looting and vandalism started.
Luckily, his shop which is located about 15 kilometres from the Rwandan border, was not attacked.
On Saturday evening, seeing that there were only few looters outside the shop, he finally mustered up courage to open the door, evade them, and rush into a residential neighbourhood, before he later found his way back to Rwanda.
