Mpizi is the city’s mayor, the third appointed by a militia called M23, or the March 23 Movement, that took control of a wide swath of the eastern DRC beginning in the summer of 2024. Since taking office, he has held community meetings every Thursday.
KIRUMBA, Democratic Republic of the Congo—In the courtyard of a small Catholic church in Kirumba, a city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC’s) North Kivu province, Innocent Munyandekwe Mpizi addressed the few hundred people who had gathered to hear him.
KIRUMBA, Democratic Republic of the Congo—In the courtyard of a small Catholic church in Kirumba, a city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC’s) North Kivu province, Innocent Munyandekwe Mpizi addressed the few hundred people who had gathered to hear him.
Mpizi is the city’s mayor, the third appointed by a militia called M23, or the March 23 Movement, that took control of a wide swath of the eastern DRC beginning in the summer of 2024. Since taking office, he has held community meetings every Thursday.
At one such meeting in mid-December 2025, armed militiamen stood near a Jeep. They held their weapons, ready to fire if anything suspicious happened while residents complained to Mpizi of a surge in banditry.
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