Deputy President Jacob Zuma prides himself on keeping the negotiating screws tightened.
Drawing a lesson from South Africa’s past, he believed that high pressure tactics were what scored him the most notable successes in facilitating the near-peace in Burundi.
Nobody quits the negotiating table until there is an agreement and nobody leaves the room without signing. All deadlines are effectively written in blood.
This week in Bujumbura, there appeared to be a softening at the edges of Zuma’s diamond-hard approach.
He was distinctly reticent with reporters in Bujumbura when he arrived to check on progress for elections scheduled for that country in November.
”I’m not the right person to answer ‘yes or no’ on the question of holding elections on time,” said Zuma. ”All we know is that there is an agreement that has a particular timeframe which determines how many things will happen.
”I don’t have the last word in this matter; the last word comes from the Burundian people, stakeholders and, of course, the region.”
The election date was set by the 2001 Abuja agreement that set in motion a three-year, transitional power-sharing government.
South Africa has regarded the deadlines in that process as non-negotiable. This entailed installing Hutu President Domitien Ndayizeye a year ago, even though resistance from rebel groups had prevented Tutsi President Pierre Buyoya from doing his half of the job.
Earlier this month Ndayizeye admitted that with one rebel group — Agaton Rwasa’s National Liberation Forces (FNL) — still holding out, a November election appears out of the question.
In the past Zuma has relished holding rebel feet to the fire. Threats of international condemnation were rife against the larger Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD), led by Pierre Nkurunziza, which eventually came aboard the transitional government in January.
The disarmament, demobilisation, rehabilitation and resettlement of Nkurunziza’s fighters are proving a bit more than the transitional government can handle.
However, it is Rwasa’s intransigence that is really jamming up the works.
The United Nations Security Council meeting in New York this week failed to pick up the peacekeeping ball in Burundi.
Zuma had been confident that after favourable reports by observers and a call from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan the 15-nation powerhouse would vote to assume this responsibility from the African Union.
It would have entailed a simple swap of the AU flashes worn by the 2 600 members in the African Mission in Burundi (AMIB) with UN blue berets.
Most importantly, it would have meant the UN picking up the tab.
The United States and the European Union are sponsoring the Ethiopian and Mozambican elements of the AMIB. But the 1 600 South Africans are expected to cost their government R480-million in the year ahead.
Clearly, the UN will stay out of Burundi until the criteria for sending in peacekeepers are met. This will entail getting the FNL at least to sign a ceasefire, if not actually to join the transitional government.
Zuma appears to accept that public tough talk and threats will not sway Rwasa. He has been reduced to relying on the leverage Ndayizeye can employ — and hopefuly some muscle from Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni who heads the regional peace initiative on Burundi.