Things have gone distinctly pear-shaped in South Africa’s two most prized mediation subjects — the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Burundi.
Governments put in place in both these countries as a result of South African-brokered peace processes last week saw a repeat of bodies in the streets and floods of refugees, reminiscent of their days of civil war.
In the DRC’s volatile eastern province of North Kivu, government forces have twice used helicopter gunships to drive off rebels from Sake — gateway to the regional capital of Goma.
Rebel leader Laurent Nkunda is calling for a resumption of peace talks after losing at least 60 men. He says Joseph Kabila is siding with Rwandan Hutus who have been hiding out in the DRC since being involved in that country’s 1994 genocide involving Tutsis and Hutu moderates.
Kabila is under regional pressure to crack down on Nkunda, who cooperated with him in allowing a peaceful election process in the DRC last year. The rebel general has recently welcomed back into his ranks many of his soldiers who had been integrated into the new Congolese forces.
The setback in Burundi is potentially more profound. Fighting this week between factions of the last rebel movement still active left 25 soldiers and one civilian dead on the streets of the capital, Bujumbura.
The leader of the National Liberation Forces (FNL), Agathon Rwasa, has now totally rejected the mediation of South Africa’s Safety and Security Minister, Charles Nqakula.
”This is not anything directed against the South African mediation. But we have totally lost faith in the methodology of Nqakula and his team,” FNL spokesperson Pasteur Habimana told the Mail & Guardian by telephone from Dar es Salaam. ”For months he has delayed the integration process. He promised our fighters protection and food after we signed the truce with the government a year ago and we have received neither.
”We came to Butere district in Bujumbura to restore the order within the FNL and show the international community and Burundians that Agathon Rwasa has the FNL combatants behind him. Nqakula has turned a blind eye to the Burundi government’s support of the faction fighting us in Bujumbura this week. The government has been supplying weapons and food to these men, some of whom are not members of the FNL.”
Burundi’s Defence Minister, Germain Niyoyankana, accepts that his government did not act quickly enough when the FNL dissidents split claiming they had not received any benefit from the truce signed by Rwasa and charging the FNL leader with delaying the ceasefire process. ”We recognise that we did not take it seriously,” he told reporters after the fighting broke out.
Niyoyankana says the army will protect the dissidents until they can be moved out of Bujumbura to await implementation of the ceasefire. This could be a delicate and protracted business. Conflict analyst Jan van Eck, who has specialised in the Burundi machinations, told the M&G: ”If the FNL refuses to talk to the mediation, the whole peace process faces total deadlock and could actually be falling apart.”
The FNL has repeatedly accused the government of President Pierre Nkurunziza of acting in bad faith by delaying the process of bringing them into Burundi’s government, administration and military.
In July, FNL leaders waiting in Bujumbura to negotiate this process slipped away from their South African protectors and went back into the bush.
Regional leaders are planning another summit to discuss this Burundi imbroglio and get Nkurunziza across a table with Rwasa, but no date has been set.