Decisive intervention needed by SA to rescue Burundi

FOR the past three months, Burundi has been heading for an appalling smash, in agonising slow motion and in plain sight. Yet South Africa is holding back from intervention because of turf jealousies and sensitivities.

President Pierre Nkurunziza is evidently determined to go ahead and contest his third presidential election tomorrow, even though that would violate the two-term limit in both Burundi’s constitution and in the 2000 Arusha Agreement that ended the civil war.

His stubborness has already caused the deaths of about 100 Burundians in demonstrations against his decision; terrified about 150 000 others into fleeing to neighbouring countries, fearing a bloodbath; sparked a coup attempt on May 13; and recently ignited a rebellion on the northern border that has reportedly already caused about 30 more deaths. All this is likely to get worse after an election Nkurunziza cannot lose now, since all credible opponents are boycotting it.

The Arusha Agreement was very much South Africa’s baby. Then-president Nelson Mandela and later then-deputy president Jacob Zuma brokered the deal, helped by experts like Mandela’s former legal adviser, Nick Haysom (now UN under-secretary in charge of special envoys), who wrote into the accord the strong minority protections which, crucially, persuaded the minority Tutsis to give up power to the Hutu majority.

South Africa also contributed the troops which guaranteed the accord in its precarious infancy. This is why the leaders of the East African Community (EAC), who are taking the lead in trying to resolve the crisis, have invited Zuma to their summits where Burundi has been discussed. But the EAC’s intervention is proving to be ineffective.

The EAC leader who should have been trying to find a way out of the crisis is Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete. Tanzania has historically been the regional leader in Burundian mediations. It has a direct interest in the current crisis because most of the refugees who have fled Burundi since it began – nearly 77 000 – have come to Tanzania. And Kikwete personally has the credibility to do the job. He is standing down from office later this year after serving his constitutionally limited two terms in office.

But after first insisting that Nkurunziza should go, Kikwete has backed off. Devon Curtis, of Cambridge University, speaking at a Rift Valley Institute (RVI) event in Nairobi last week and quoted by Irin, suggested this was because Kikwete suspected that Rwanda, no great friend of Tanzania’s, had supported the coup attempt on May 13.

Instead of Kikwete, the EAC sent Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni to do the job. The irony, or perhaps absurdity, of a president who has clung to power for nearly 30 years, trying to resolve a crisis precipitated by another president trying to cling to power, is painfully obvious.

And so the Burundian opposition, not surprisingly, is highly sceptical of Museveni’s ability to be impartial.

Yet yesterday it was the Burundian government which suspended its participation in Museveni’s mediation, accusing the opposition of using the talks as a cover for plotting an armed rebellion.

The South African government seems to be aware the EAC mediation is failing. But it is too wary of treading on regional toes, to do or say anything about it. Like Kikwete, Zuma also initially took a strong stand, publicly stating that Nkurunziza should not stand for a third term. And, like Kikwete, he and his government have also since backed off.

South Africa should have intervened more decisively. Stepping on a few sensitive toes or indulging a rival are nothing compared to the local and regional havoc that an unravelling Burundi is likely to wreak.