Burundi parties reach agreement

By M.S. Prabhakara

CAPE TOWN, JULY 28. Mr. Nelson Mandela, who is undergoing treatment for prostate cancer involving a daily session of radiotherapy, did not take part in the Burundi peace talks, currently going on in Pretoria.

The Burundi peace process, of which Mr. Mandela is both the facilitator and mediator, resumed in Pretoria on Thursday with Mr. Jacob Zuma, Deputy President, standing in for Mr. Mandela. According to Mr. Mandela's spokesperson, Ms. Zelda la Grange, Mr. Mandela was too exhausted after receiving the radiotherapy treatment.

Mr. Mandela also did not take part in a function at the Gold Reef City complex in Johannesburg where he was to receive an award from King Goodwill Zwelithini on Wednesday. He is not expected to have any public engagements during the daily radiotherapy treatment, scheduled to go on for about seven weeks.

The announcement about Mr. Mandela's prostate cancer was made on Tuesday, after Mr. Mandela's return from Arusha late on the night of July 23, where he was in attendance at yet another regional summit on the prolonged peace process.

The summit formally adopted the agreement facilitated by Mr. Mandela during earlier meetings in Pretoria and at the OAU summit in Lusaka. This agreement provides for a transitional government involving all the 19 parties involved in the peace process that is, the present Government of Burundi, the present National Assembly and the 17 political parties comprising the so- called G-10 family (10 pro-Tutsi parties) and the G-7 family (seven pro- Hutu parties).

Interestingly, this accord was clinched even as there was an attempted coup, blamed by the Government on sections of the disaffected Tutsi dominated armed forces, unhappy over the prospect of sharing power during the transitional arrangement.

The interim leadership of this transitional government would be headed for the first half of its envisaged three-year term by the present President of Burundi, Mr. Pierre Buyoya (a Tutsi leader), with Mr. Domitien Ndayizeye, the Secretary-General of the Front for Democracy in Burundi (Frodebu), the main Hutu party, serving as his Vice-President.

The specific details of the arrangement for the second half of the term of this transitional government has not been, naturally, spelled out except that the President would be from a Hutu party and the Vice-President drawn from a Tutsi party.

However, as has been the case consistently at every announcement of a breakthrough in the Burundi peace process, the two main rebel groups, the Council for National Defence and Democracy (CNDD), which broke away from Frodebu, and its armed front, Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD), are still keeping themselves away from such arrangements, insisting that any agreement on a future government has to be preceded by a ceasefire. According to a spokesperson for the CNDD-FDD, the latest outcome in Arusha had changed nothing.

The problem in Burundi is that any political arrangement that does not reflect the demographic reality, which is that the overwhelming majority of the people consider themselves Hutus, cannot even begin to work, howsoever much it is admired and commended by the international community.

This has been the situation ever since the assassination of the country's first democratically elected President, Melchoir Ndadaye, of Frodebu, on October 21, 1993, along with six other Frodebu leaders, in an attempted coup by the Tutsi dominated armed forces.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : International
Previous : They are not shell-shocked, the bands are still
           playing