Goma, one year on: a defeat without accountability - DefenceWeb

Ricardo Teixeira

The first anniversary of the Second Battle of Goma should have been a moment of sober reflection for South Africa. Instead, it has passed in near silence. No official reckoning. No parliamentary urgency. No public accounting of what went wrong, why it went wrong, or what will be done differently next time.

That silence matters, because the fall of Goma in January 2025 was not an unfortunate accident of war. It was the foreseeable outcome of a poorly conceived mission, executed by an underprepared force, sustained by political wishful thinking rather than strategy.

By the end of January 2025, the Rwanda-backed M23 movement had seized Goma during a rapid and decisive offensive. Congolese forces collapsed. The Southern African Development Community Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (SAMIDRC), including South African troops, was unable to prevent the city’s capture. Within days, a regional military intervention had been rendered strategically irrelevant.

A year on, the uncomfortable truth is this: the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) has not meaningfully interrogated its failure, and the political leadership has shown little appetite to force that conversation.

A Mission Built on Assumptions, Not Reality

From the outset, SAMIDRC rested on a fragile premise. It assumed that a lightly resourced regional force could deter or contain an adversary with external state backing, combat experience, and clear operational objectives. That assumption was wrong.

The 2025 Goma offensive demonstrated that M23 was not operating as a ragged insurgent group but as a disciplined force capable of combined manoeuvre, supported by intelligence, logistics, and firepower beyond what SAMIDRC was equipped to counter. Warnings about this shift existed well before the offensive began. They were not acted upon.

Instead of adjusting force posture or mandate, South Africa doubled down on diplomatic language about stabilisation while deploying troops into an increasingly hostile and contested battlespace. This was not strategic courage. It was strategic denial.

Soldiers Sent Forward Without the Basics

Perhaps the most damning evidence comes not from think tanks or analysts, but from SANDF personnel themselves. First-hand accounts from soldiers deployed under SAMIDRC paint a picture of institutional neglect bordering on indifference.

Troops arrived in theatre without adequate personal equipment, communications systems, or logistical support. Essential items such as boots, sleeping equipment, and basic field gear were, in some cases, sourced privately. Radios were unreliable. Protective equipment was insufficient. Resupply chains were fragile and slow.

This was not the result of sudden battlefield chaos. It reflected long-standing weaknesses in procurement, planning, and sustainment that have been flagged repeatedly in defence reviews and parliamentary briefings. The difference in the DRC was that these weaknesses were exposed under live combat conditions, with predictable consequences.

Combat losses and serious injuries followed. Yet on return, many soldiers encountered minimal psychological support and no formal public recognition of their service. A single short counselling session is not an adequate response to sustained exposure to combat trauma. The absence of ceremonial acknowledgement sends an even clearer message: the institution would rather move on than look back.

Leadership Failure, Not Just Resource Constraints

It is tempting to attribute SANDF’s performance to budget cuts alone. That explanation is convenient, but incomplete.

Yes, South Africa’s defence budget has been hollowed out over decades. But limited resources make leadership, prioritisation, and realism more important, not less. Sending troops into a mission without the means to succeed is not a funding problem. It is a command and political judgement problem.

At no point did the SANDF leadership publicly articulate a credible theory of success for SAMIDRC. What conditions would constitute victory? How would escalation be managed if M23 intensified operations? What contingencies existed if Goma came under direct threat? These questions were either unanswered or ignored.

When Goma fell, the response was not institutional introspection but managed retreat. SAMIDRC forces, including South Africans, began withdrawing from the area without having secured durable gains or meaningfully altered the balance of power. Withdrawal may have been unavoidable, but the absence of a serious post-mortem was not.

Strategic Consequences Beyond Goma

The implications of this failure extend well beyond Eastern Congo. For more than two decades, South Africa has presented itself as a credible African security actor and a leading contributor to regional peace operations. That claim rested on the assumption that the South African National Defence Force could provide not just manpower, but command capability, logistical depth, and professional leadership in complex environments. The events of 2025 significantly weakened that assumption.

The collapse of the mission around Goma exposed a gap between South Africa’s strategic ambitions and its actual military capacity. Regional partners have now seen, at close range, a force that struggled to sustain itself in a high-intensity operating environment, lacked adequate logistical resilience, and appeared constrained by unclear political direction. This is not a reputational issue that can be managed through diplomatic statements. It is a practical concern for any state contemplating future joint operations with Pretoria.

As a result, future missions under the Southern African Development Community framework will inevitably be shaped by the memory of Goma. Partners will be more cautious about mandates, force structures, and command arrangements that assume South African leadership by default. They will also be less willing to accept optimistic assessments of readiness that are not backed by demonstrable capability. Unless those assumptions change, similar missions risk reproducing the same structural weaknesses that doomed SAMIDRC.

The diplomatic consequences are equally significant. South Africa has traditionally paired its military deployments with a strong emphasis on mediation, dialogue, and negotiated settlements. That approach depends on the credibility of force in the background. In 2025, that credibility collapsed alongside the mission itself. Calls for restraint and de-escalation rang hollow after a force intended to stabilise the situation proved unable to defend its own operational objectives.

This matters because diplomacy without leverage is not diplomacy. It is aspiration. When South Africa speaks about conflict resolution in the region now, it does so under a cloud of doubt created by Goma. Rebuilding that credibility will require more than reaffirming commitment to peacekeeping. It will require honest acknowledgement of failure, tangible reform, and a willingness to align strategic ambition with actual capability.

Until that happens, the shadow of Goma will extend far beyond the Eastern Congo, shaping how South Africa is perceived, trusted, and partnered across the continent.

A Failure to Learn Is the Greatest Risk

Military failure, while costly, is not fatal to an institution. Failure to learn is.

One year after the Second Battle of Goma, there is little evidence that the SANDF has internalised the lessons of that campaign. There has been no public review with teeth, no visible shift in doctrine, no clear reform of deployment criteria, and no renewed emphasis on troop welfare commensurate with the risks asked of them.

That should worry South Africans far more than the defeat itself. If the same structural weaknesses remain, future deployments will carry the same risks, and the same outcomes.

Anniversaries should not exist merely to remember what happened. They should force institutions to confront what must change. On this first anniversary of the Second Battle of Goma, South Africa has an opportunity to choose learning over denial.

So far, it has not taken it.

Ricardo Teixeira is Associate Editor of the Daily Friend

https://defenceweb.co.za/sa-defence-sa-defence/goma-one-year-on-a-defeat-without-accountability/

This article was first published on the Daily Friend.