{More than 1 200 South African soldiers will spend Christmas on a peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo.}<\/p>\n
They are part of a SADC deployment in the volatile Eastern DRC, under the auspices of the UN Mission, MONUSCO.<\/p>\n
Peacekeeping has been a key feature of a post-94 democratic South Africa. Since 2001, SANDF members have been deployed to the DRC. This follows agreements between Pretoria and Kinshasa, and peacekeeping under UN auspices.<\/p>\n
Twelve years on, various regiments are still in the DRC and they include engineers, medics, pilots, military police and ground forces operating on the frontlines.<\/p>\n
Christmas will be a \u201cspecial day\u201d away from home for the soldiers. They have been hailed as agents of peace and have received a pat on the back from deputy defence minister, Thabang Makwetla.<\/p>\n
Most of the soldiers are expected to be home after April.<\/p>\n
Agencies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{More than 1 200 South African soldiers will spend Christmas on a peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo.} They are part of a SADC deployment in the volatile Eastern DRC, under the auspices of the UN Mission, MONUSCO. Peacekeeping has been a key feature of a post-94 democratic South Africa. Since 2001, SANDF […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000049731,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"byline":[334],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-11896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-igihe-reporter"],"bylines":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":{"id":2000049731,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11896.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11896.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11896.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11896.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11896.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11896.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000049731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11896"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=11896"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=11896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}