Cascading defections within the ranks of the FARDC
Meanwhile, several FARDC soldiers say they are weary of killing their fellow Congolese in the East in the interests of politicians in Kinshasa. They fight without water or food, unlike the white mercenaries, and this will push many of them all the more to lay down their arms or to join the FRN army.
Since the creation in Goma, on 12 October 2026, of the new political-military movement known as the Front for the Refoundation of the Nation (FRN), under the leadership of former Democratic Republic of Congo president Joseph Kabila Kabange, several defections of senior and junior officers have been reported within the ranks of the Kinshasa army (FARDC), who are joining FRN troops.
Following his latest address to the nation, delivered from Goma on 9 October 2026, several FARDC officers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they saw in Joseph Kabila Kabange the charisma and bearing of a true commander-in-chief of the army, in contrast to Félix Tshisekedi, whom they describe as a superficial windbag.
Among the wave of officers who have defected and joined the FRN, we can name:
- Brigadier General François Kamanzi, commander of operations of the 12th Military Region in Kongo-Central;
- Lieutenant Lula Arnold, an officer of the Republican Guard (GR);
- Colonel Umba Ndolo Ghislain, deputy commander for operations and intelligence of the 61st Brigade in Nyunzu;
- Major (Staff Officer) Twite Kumwimba Jean, of the Republican Guard, who is reported missing. A former deputy commander of the 152nd Commando Battalion, instructor and head of the tactical pool at Kibomango, he graduated from the 33rd intake of the Command and Staff College at the Higher Military Centre, the 4th intake of the Basic Staff Course in Kitona and the 5th intake of the Infantry School in Kitona.
“Other senior officers are also said to be involved, but their names have not yet been made public.”
It is also plain that a serious malaise and a wave of panic are spreading through the rank and file, as well as through the FARDC general staff, since the creation of the FRN, headed by former president Joseph Kabila. He is the very man who took part in the fall of Mobutu alongside his father 30 years ago, and who led the DRC and its army for 18 years. He knows this army better than anyone, as well as the realities and strategies of an armed revolutionary movement.
In the hours, days and weeks ahead, further defections are expected, given the low morale, panic and psychosis now gripping the FARDC. The successive defeats on the battlefield in South Kivu bear this out.
From the start of the conflict, Kinshasa chose to spend billions of dollars on recruiting white mercenaries, handsomely paid and well equipped, rather than on professionalising its army.
“Meanwhile, several FARDC soldiers say they are weary of killing their fellow Congolese in the East in the interests of politicians in Kinshasa. They fight without water or food, unlike the white mercenaries, and this will push many of them all the more to lay down their arms or to join the FRN army.”
The days ahead hold serious twists in store in this war in the East of the DRC, given the FRN's determination to liberate the city of Uvira and then advance towards Katanga, where thousands of civilians and soldiers await it with open arms, having been mistreated during the eight years of Félix Tshisekedi's rule at the head of the DRC.
“Aware of this, Félix Tshisekedi has massed several thousand white mercenaries in Katanga, since the fall of Katanga would deprive his government of the financial windfall from mining. Kinshasa would then struggle to fund the war, as well as the normal functioning of its institutions, and even to pay its civil servants.”
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