Mfumukeko and EAC Summit have failed the test of impartiality on Burundi crisis

Early this month, the Secretary General of the East African Community, EAC, Burundi national Libérat Mfumukeko, was reported to have dismissed the report of Jamal Benomar, the UN Secretary General, to the UN Security Council on the situation in Burundi.

His statement effectively draws the EAC into Burundi’s quarrels with the UN.

Its raucous and nasty militia, the politically myopic Imbonerakure (those that see far) has grown even nastier, buoyed by official support and the climate of impunity fostered by CNDD-FDD. Described by IRIN as ‘armed, murderous, militarized, partisan, powerful, unaccountable and uneducated’ the militia has been holding highly charged protests in which it threatens mass rapes and invites youths to impregnate women in order to swell its ranks.
The UN’s central finding is that little is happening to normalise the situation on the ground; the government claims that all is well notwithstanding. There are two intra-Burundian dialogues underway: an internal dialogue led by National Commission for the Inter-Burundian Dialogue (CNDI) and an external dialogue under the EAC with President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda as mediator and former president Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania as facilitator.
As the report notes, the government-led intra-Burundian dialogue is neither seen as a real dialogue nor as inclusive enough by some groups; some of its recommendations inflame rather than douse passions. Last year, it called for abolition of presidential term-limits altogether and proposed a raft of additional amendments that would undo many of the commitments in the 2000 Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement.
The assessment is that this internal dialogue is narrow and pro-establishment. Mr Nkuruzinza refuses to engage the leaders of “Stop the third term” movement, many now in exile. The EAC has, to its credit – in an otherwise discreditable policy- rejected President Nkurunziza’s proposal to “return the EAC dialogue” to Burundi and merge it with the CNDI process, recognising, perhaps, that such a move would hand Mr Nkurunziza all the cards.
The external dialogue has fared no better, sputtering along in fits and starts and bedeviled by East Africa’s self-serving Summit politics. Last year, the EAC Summit promised to engage all parties to the conflict in a “serious” and “inclusive” way and “without preconditions”. But the tone of the Community’s talk with Nkurunziza remains indulgent and timorous.

Mfumukeko and EAC Summit have failed the test of impartiality on Burundi crisis

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