Burundi: Burundi faces new violence as peace process falters

SouthScan Vol.17 No.11 31 May 2002
http://southscan.gn.apc.org/

Burundi faces new violence as peace process falters
A potentially explosive situation is looming in Burundi, where around
700 South African peacekeepers are guarding Hutu politicians. SA
diplomatic efforts appears to have run onto the rocks, with Deputy
President Jacob Zuma being described as “biased” by a rebel leader
while inside the country social tensions are mounting. Analysts say there
is a possibility of direct intervention by Tanzanian and Ugandan troops,
but that the SA forces are prepared to get out of the way of any fighting.
At the moment there is a general
teachers’ strike all over the country,
and “spontaneous” demonstrations of
students on whom the police and the
military opened fire last week in
Bujumbura and in Gitega, injuring four.
Police sources suspect Tutsi hardliners
whose leader, Diomede Rutamucero
is in jail, of fomenting the trouble.
Meanwhile the defence minister has
banned the media from publishing in-terviews
with Hutu rebels.
Six-month renewal
Earlier this month South Africa an-nounced
that its 700-strong contingent
in Burundi will stay for a further six
months guarding returning Hutu rebel
leaders. The SA mission was sent in
late last year with the minimum of
public debate and as a minimal ‘body-guard’
force. But there is still no cease-fire
in place and SA soldiers have not
yet trained a Burundian force to pro-tect
the leaders.
SA’s decision to renew its military
commitment followed closely on the
heels of the rejection by a major
Burundian rebel group of SA media-tion
attempts in the hostilities, con-tinuing
since 1993, increasing once
again the risk of a breakdown in the
truce there.
At the same time a new report has
warned that powerful elements in
Burundi have no interest in ending the
war. Separately a former member of
the SA facilitation team said that the
number of Burundians who support
the Arusha peace accord between the
Tutsi-dominated government and
Hutu rebels, always very small, was
shrinking even further. Jan van Eck
said this not only applied to the gen-eral
population but to all key sectors
within Burundian society. While many
people were willing to give the Arusha
accord a chance, developments since
last November 1, when the transitional
government was inaugurated, had re-sulted
in many people reconsidering,
he noted.
“If this massive disillusioned con-stituency
were to be mobilised,” said
van Eck, “it could become a major threat
to the transitional government”.
The report from the prestigious In-ternational
Crisis Group notes that six
months after installation of a transi-tion
government in Burundi, war be-tween
the government forces and the
rebels has intensified, and implemen-tation
of the Arusha accords has not
begun. Negotiations brokered by South
Africa have failed to produce a single
concrete result and the leader of the
main rebel faction has rejected Vice
President Jacob Zuma’s facilitation and
has demanded that ceasefire talks be
moved to Tanzania.
While SA Defence Minister Mosiuoa
Lekota was declaring that the situation
was “increasingly normalising” the
most active wing of Burundian rebel
group the ‘Forces for the Defence of
Democracy’ (FDD) was rejecting
Zuma’s mediation, accusing him of
bias.
Zuma was “espousing the views of
the government” of President Pierre
Buyoya, said Pierre Nkurunziza, head
of this wing of the FDD. Nkurunziza
accused Zuma of badly organising the
negotiations by not dealing with the
“real belligerents” and of interfering
in the movement’s internal affairs. Last
month Nkurunziza accused Zuma of
“sabotaging peace negotiations.”
The group wants further talks to
take place outside South Africa, ide-ally
in Tanzania, which has long played
a mediating role. Nkurunziza indicated
that he might accept President Omar
Bongo of Gabon as a mediator.
In April, a rival, less militarily ac-tive
FDD wing led by Jean-Bosco
Ndayikengurukiye held negotiations
with the Buyoya-led transitional gov-ernment.
The ICG report says that the facilita-tion
headed by former SA president
Nelson Mandela and Zuma, and as-sisted
by President Bongo of Gabon
and President Benjamin Mkapa of Tan-zania,
is not solely to blame for lack of
progress.
Almost immediately after Buyoya
was confirmed as Burundi’s leader for
the first half of a three-year transition,
his army launched a major offensive to
attempt to crush the rebels and avoid
the reform of the security forces fore-seen
in the Arusha accords, the reports
says.
Other groups see the ceasefire talks
as an opportunity to reopen negotia-tions
on the distribution of key posts.
Rebels who were excluded from
Arusha and want the negotiations to
fail initiated new hostilities in Novem-ber
2001 to raise the stakes, it adds, and
says the immediate objective of the
facilitation team, Burundi’s donors, the
UN Secretary General and regional
leaders must be a truce. Equally im-portant,
the process of reform prom-ised
in the Arusha accord must begin.
Regional war?
The SA contingent has kept to its
very limited mandate - to protect the
individual returning politicians. Not
even their wives or children come into
that framework, because SA command-ers
have been keen to keep their profile
as “police” and as low as possible.
When the first contingent was ro-tated
a few months ago the newcomers
extended their remit to include guard-ing
the Hutu politicians on visits to the
rural areas. This involved SA troops
securing areas of countryside, but when
the dangers of being drawn into fight-ing
were realised the orders were coun-termanded.
Now they will only move
into areas outside the capital which are
declared safe by other agencies work-ing
there.
They have also been kept to a very
clear exit plan and away from ‘mission
creep’ - allowing local events to dictate
an extension of the original mandate.
Within these limits they have been “ex-cellent”
in a kind of military role not
before seen in Africa, says Van Eck,
who told MRB that suspicious
Burundians have now mellowed to-wards
them.
tyrants or rebels could be pursued by a
regional force, but that colonial borders
could be redrawn. The old OAU carefully
set out at its formation that it would not
challenge colonial borders, a policy which
some observers in retrospect say may
quashed. The AU should seek the
political and economic integration of
Africa, Mbeki said. A Pan African
parliament should be inaugurated later
this year.