Things have taken an ugly turn in Burundi, with the two major rebel movements exchanging fire outside the capital, Bujumbura, this week.
The larger of the two, Pierre Nkurunziza’s Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD), has yet again reneged on the eight-month peace deal it struck with the transitional government.
All in all, the further delay in the regional summit on Burundi is probably a relief. Leaders of Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo were due to meet in Dar es Salaam at the weekend. Nkurunziza and South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma, the African Union facilitator, were scheduled to join them.
That meeting has been put off, at least until Monday, as Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame holds the limelight with his swearing in ceremony in Kigali.
Conflict analyst Jan van Eck, whose speciality is Burundi, told a seminar at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria this week that the country could not afford another fruitless summit.
The integrity of the transitional process that started with the Arusha Accord in August 2000 has been completely undermined by the continuation of fighting. Despite signing a peace accord last December and repeatedly recommitting itself to it, FDD elements have continued fighting.
The exchanges between the FDD and Agaton Rwasa’s National Liberation Front (FNL) were a further blow to the process, but not surprising given Burundi’s complex and bloody history.
”The FNL, which has shunned the Arusha process, is a traditional old Hutu liberation movement while the FDD is a breakaway from the Frodebu party of President Domitien Ndayizeye,” said Van Eck.
”Any cooperation between the FDD and the FNL has been short term and expedient.”
The FNL operates within sight of Bujumbura and might well be sending a message to the FDD that if it chooses to bed down with the transitional government it will pay a similar price. Nkurunziza doesn’t need cautionary advice from the opposing rebels. He is getting enough from within his ranks.
Some of them were involved in the FNL’s brazen attacks on the capital in July. They have also engaged in cattle rustling and an attack on a bus that killed eight people.
Nkurunziza has blamed this on ”renegades” within his movement.
But as it becomes increasingly unlikely that his demands for participation in the transitional government can be met, the level of dissidence within the FDD is bound to grow.
Nkurunziza wants a second vice-presidency for himself, and the presidency of the National Assembly for his top lieutenant. He has also demanded the position of chief of staff of the army and a massive injection of his own forces into those ranks.
Ndayizeye cannot even entertain the first of these demands because it flies in the face of the careful ethnic balance between Tutsi and Hutu contained in the Arusha Accord.
Ndayizeye, a Hutu, became president midway through the three-year transition period on the express understanding that the Tutsi minority would assume the vice-presidency.
The Tutsis are in no mood for any compromise. They are currently infuriated at the new law giving temporary immunity to political leaders who have come home from exile to participate in the transitional process.
They say this law protects Hutus suspected of being involved in the 1993 massacres of Tutsis and moderate Hutus following the assassination of president Melchior Ndadaye.
If Burundian faith in the transition process is to be restored, a summit meeting involving Ndayizeye will have to produce more than yet another recommitment to the process.
According to Van Eck, nothing short of a visible start to the process of restricting the rebel fighters to cantonment areas will suffice.
There lies the rub. Even if Nkurunziza can be persuaded to take the heat and drop his demands, there are not enough resources to complete the cantonment process.