Evidence wa ka Ngobeni and Gregory Mthembu-Salter
The South African government was under such pressure to respond to former president Nelson Mandela’s request to deploy a protection force to war-torn Burundi that it invoked an emergency provision in the Constitution to belatedly inform Parliament of the decision.
Last week opposition parties raised concerns about the government’s decision to deploy up to 1 431 peacekeeping troops to the tiny Central African country before soliciting Parliament’s approval.
The White Paper on defence and the Defence Review, the country’s supreme defence policy guidelines on South African participation in international peace missions, stipulate that the government has to follow a cautious process. Other countries touted to join South Africa in the force including Senegal, Ghana and Nigeria have to date held back on their deployment.
The policy documents require that approval be solicited from the South African Parliament, the United Nations Security Council and in some cases the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
However, Mandela, in an apparent move to maintain the momentum of Burundi’s power-sharing peace deal signed in August last year, persuaded President Thabo Mbeki and his government to swiftly deploy peacekeeping forces in Burundi. The UN Security Council approved South Africa’s peacekeeping efforts a few days after the deployment of troops.
Mandela was concerned that without a South African protection force, Hutu politicians belonging to parties that have signed the power-sharing agreement would not have been able to return to Burundi to take part in the transitional government which was inaugurated on Thursday November 1.
On October 15 at a Pretoria summit to discuss the Burundi peace process, Mandela insisted that the Burundi transitional government should go ahead as scheduled despite the absence of a ceasefire and Burundian political parties’ disagreement on the composition of the protection force.
Although the government has raised the prospect of South Africa sending troops to Burundi for a while, this has always been in the context of a ceasefire.
That condition was dropped after Mandela’s request. Mandela, who stepped down as South African president in June 1999, took over as head of the Burundi mediation effort after the death of former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere in October of that year.
Over the past two years, Mandela has called a dozen summits on Burundi. Apart from multiple visits to the capital Bujumbura, he also visited Kinshasa, Libreville, Paris and Arusha and held meetings with Burundian leaders in Pretoria. During this process Mandela has acquired a reputation for strong-arm tactics to push the reluctant parties towards peace.
Observers say this latest twist requesting troops less than two weeks before their deployment was needed is a classic example of Mandela’s style. On Thursday he went to Bujumbura to witness the birth of the three-year transitional government, under Burundian President Pierre Buyoya, a Tutsi.
Under the terms of the agreement Buyoya has to step down and make way for a Hutu president in 18 months. The peace agreement has not been signed by two Hutu rebel movements. Mandela reportedly said from Bujumbura that one of these rebel movements would soon join the transitional government.
He declined to provide details. Militia attacks within Burundi have significantly lessened this week, suggesting they may give the new government a chance.
Burundi’s new vice-president, Domitien Ndayizeye, a Hutu, says he is confident the transitional government can negotiate a ceasefire, but told the BBC on Wednesday that the government might fall if it could not negotiate one within three months.
The day before, a commander from one of the militia that did not sign the peace agreement told the BBC that the new government made no difference and that the fighting would continue. Ndayizeye dismissed this as “lies”.
The uncertainty surrounding the rebels’ intentions, and the impact this has on the transitional government’s chances of survival, underlines the precariousness of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) mission, which has also attracted criticism back in South Africa.
Democratic Alliance spokesperson Hendrik Schmidt says his party supports the mission, but is concerned by the uncertain legal basis of the SANDF mission, and the apparent lack of an exit strategy.
The DA also objects to the government’s lack of seriousness in consulting with Parliament about the mission. The government denied this. In a statement, the government said: “In terms of the Constitution, the president as commander in chief of the SANDF has seven days to inform Parliament of the deployment of troops”.
However, Schmidt insists Mbeki and Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota this week spoke for a collective total of only 10 minutes on the subject in Parliament. Schmidt says he learned nothing in these 10 minutes about the SANDF mission that he had not already read in the media and that this made “a mockery of the Defence Review”.
Ministry of Defence spokesman Sam Mkhwanazi rejected the allegation that the government had not fulfilled its Defence Review obligations to Parliament about the Burundi operation, saying Lekota’s discussion of the subject before the defence select committee on Wednesday meant “the matter was closed”.
Mkhwananzi added that Lekota has stated several times in recent months that South Africa was prepared to send troops to Burundi, and that Lekota has consulted with political party leaders on the matter, as well as meeting with religious leaders.