Burundian President Pierre Buyoya will not leave Bujumbura for the peace talks scheduled to start in Pretoria on Sunday until he knows that rebel leader Pierre Nkurunziza is on his way.
The ceasefire signed on December 2 has not eliminated the mistrust between these old rivals.
Nevertheless, the fact that Nkurunziza is prepared to engage in substantive negotiations in South Africa is a breakthrough in itself.
Previously the leader of the Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD) insisted that negotiations take place in Dar es Salaam.
Indeed, it is widely thought that the time-out he called last Saturday, after two days of talks with mediator Deputy President Jacob Zuma was in order to placate his Tanzanian backers who are uneasy about being left out of the loop.
Burundi could not afford the weeklong break in negotiations with fighting have flared up in nine of its 16 provinces.
“I’ve marked out the conflict areas on my map,” said Great Lakes expert Jan van Eck this week, “and it’s pretty red all over.
“Some of the battles have lasted for days and even for a week.”
Not only is the fighting widespread, but the FDD is also recruiting and training young men, which does not indicate a desire to lay down arms.
The major fighting is in the Kibara forest bordering Rwanda and around Ruyigi, where the FDD fighters are supposed to be confined in terms of the ceasefire.
Since there are no troops to monitor this — South Africa, Mozambique and Ethiopia are still talking about how many soldiers to send and exactly what they will be tasked with — the rebels are running free.
Some reports say they want to relaunch the war. More mundanely they are said to be roaming in search of cattle, chickens and other more appetising types of food than the rations provided to them with European Union money.
In any event, those who last month described the FDD’s ceasefire signature as the key to peace in Burundi are no longer as sanguine.
The ceasefire remains incomplete with the small but determined National Liberation Front (FNL) still mounting nightly attacks on the capital.
The FNL remains out of the process because it believes its demands have been ignored by both Buyoya’s transitional government and the mediators. Observers concur that weeks and months of negotiations lie ahead as participants attempt politically to underpin the military arrangement clinched last month.
Burundi in fact does not have weeks and months. In terms of the transitional programme Buyoya the Tutsi is due to hand over the presidency to Hutu Vice President Domition Ndayizeye.
Nkurunziza, who has yet to define his political role in the transitional scheme of things, could well have different ideas.
Exactly what he has in mind will become clear as he and Buyoya negotiate the return to constitutional legitimacy, the composition of the security forces and the leadership of the transitional government.
These are only three of 15 headline subjects they have to contend with.
The wishes of the breakaway FDD arm of Jean-Bosco Ndayikengurukiye, who joined the transitional process before Nkurunziza, has to be factored into all of this.
The military composition is guaranteed to be fireworks.
Currently Ndayizeye’s Frodebu party has packed the ranks with between 40 and 45 of Hutu troops.
In terms of the composition the army must be split 50/50 between Hutus and Tutsis.
Nkurunziza will not be happy supplying the last five to 10% from his 14 000 fighters. His opening gambit will doubtless be to demand that FDD forces completely replace the Frodebu soldiers.
One way of ending a war that has cost more than 300 000 lives since 1993 would be the South African solution to incorporate all the forces initially and then to thin them out on the basis of need and merit.