Burundi’s political leadership heads for Pretoria this week to consult with facilitator Deputy President Jacob Zuma over a constitutional logjam that has the major rebel group boycotting the interim government.
The rift has got loud and nasty. Rebel leader-turned-politician Pierre Nkurunziza has accused interim President Domitien Ndayizeye of being “the biggest threat to peace in Burundi”.
The major problem, according to South African officials, is an impasse over the appointment of a new interior minister.
According to the power-sharing arrangement, this position goes to a member of the former rebel movement Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD).
Its leader, Nkurunziza, has nominated Joseph Ntakarutimana for the job. Ndayizeye is insisting that Nkurunziza follow the practice of submitting three names and allowing the president to select one.
Nkurunziza refuses to do this.
The fact that Ntakarutimana is a Tutsi further complicates matters.
Nkurunziza insists the FDD has transformed beyond being a Hutu liberation movement.
Tutsi groups are wary of the move, saying the FDD is doing this simply to lay claim to some of the representation guaranteed to the minority ethnic group in terms of the power-sharing agreement.
A senior advisor to Zuma says the problem is not expected to threaten the electoral process now unfolding in Burundi. In terms of this process, the country will see a democratically elected president inaugurated at the end of August.
The impasse is delaying talks between the government and the last rebel group still fighting — the National Liberation Forces, led by Agathon Rwasa.
The rebel leader has been in Dar es Salaam for more than two weeks now waiting to begin negotiations for a ceasefire.
There are signs of impatience in his camp. His chief foreign affairs advisor, Pasteur Habimana, told the Mail & Guardian this week that there is no good reason for the delay.
“We are here to talk to the government. The government is more than Ndayizeye and Nkurunziza. We have no interest at all in their business in South Africa.”
A Burundi court sentenced four former high-ranking security and prison officials to death after they and nine others were convicted of the 2001 killing of a World Health Organisation official, Kassi Manlan — a slaying the defence claimed the former president ordered.
The other nine were sentenced to terms ranging from two years to life.
Former Bujumbura police chief Emile Manisha was among those sentenced to death.
Manlan, of Côte d’Ivoire, represented the United Nations health agency in Burundi for just three months before he was found dead on the shore of Lake Tanganyika. Witnesses said he had a head wound.
During the trial, defence lawyer Bernard Maingain alleged that former president Pierre Buyoya and his wife ordered Manlan’s killing and linked it to the embezzlement of an unspecified sum of money meant for malaria prevention and treatment in Burundi.