Notes following Briefing by Ambassador Kingsley Mamabolo on the Burundi Peace Process, Union Buildings, Pretoria, 6 March 2008

Thanks ladies and gentlemen, members of the Press. I am here on behalf of Minister Nqakula and really the purpose and the objective of this briefing is to be able to put you in the picture as to how far we have gone with the Burundi Peace Process.

You would all agree that it has been a process that was up and down – at one stage we appeared to be winning only to tell you the following day that it was falling apart.

The serious fall out of this process is when indeed the Paliphehutu-FNL pulled out of the process and we have since then been trying to get them back into that process, which had meant a number of visits to see their leaders – the good thing is that at all times we were in touch with their leaders.

They had pulled out because of a number of reasons that they put before us.
Amongst those was the concern of the security situation. They felt that the security we were providing was no longer adequate to cover their fears and concerns. But they also felt that we were not dealing enough with the political issues which they felt needed to be dealt with, that the process had become much more technical in dealing with the DDR processes and the reintegration process. And so we obviously needed to address those concerns as we went along.

We have come up with a Programme of Action, a Programme of Action which really maps the way forward, developed by the facilitation team but which we needed a number of people to buy into.

You would have heard about the meeting we held in Cape Town just recently, around the 21st, 22nd of last month where we got all members of the international community to discuss this programme – the UN, the EU, special envoys of different countries – everybody indeed who had something to do with Burundi and the facilitation of that programme.

Briefly let me summarise the Programme of Action for you. We have broken our approach into two. Firstly let me start by saying we have now a renewed mandate, if you have been following the Burundi process you would know that our mandate ended on the 31st of December last year and from then on we did not have a mandate.

That was renewed by the leaders of the regional initiative – President Museveni, President Kikwete and the others, who have given the facilitation team one year to be able to conclude this process. That process as I said is now divided and it is reflected on our Programme of Action.

The Programme of Action – in six months we are hoping to complete the DDR and the reintegration process. The remaining six months we are hoping to oversee the implementation of the ceasefire. You would recall that in the ceasefire agreement we are guarantors on behalf of the regional initiative, we are guarantors of the process and so in stead of pulling out, we have come to a conclusion that we no longer just say everything is ok after we signed the ceasefire and DDR process is completed. You begin to see and oversee the process and actually say “I will indeed implement the ceasefire that we have signed”. But also during the second half to use the space that we have as the facilitation to look at what we can do in terms of the developmental aspect, what do you do about the combatants who are not absorbed by the process – that you are sending to the army and so on, some are going to be involved in the political institutions? But still you would have combatants, both of the Paliphehutu-FNL and the government who are not absorbed by this process – what do you do about them?

You begin to think of projects that could help post-conflict reconstruction and development, geared towards the combatants but also that could help the economy of the country in general.

In our Programme of Action, which we have now discussed on the 29th of last month with both the FNL and government we have agreed on the following: 

In the beginning of April we go back to the joint verification mechanism and the JVMM process begin. In the mean time now we have a team in Dar es Salaam having met with Chairman Rwasa and his team. This team is remaining there for the purposes of dealing with all the concerns I have raised earlier in my briefing – the security concerns and so on.

Beginning of May the leadership of the FNL goes back and that includes Chairman Rwasa and the rest of the leadership that is in Dar es Salaam at the moment; and by the end of June, hopefully, completion of the DDR processes and the beginning of the developmental aspect of the part of the programme that I mentioned earlier on.

That is our programme of action. As I say we have everybody behind this programme. No longer will you have a situation where the facilitator is blamed and the international community is standing on the other side. This time we have the international community agreeing with us on the way forward. We were able to tackle all these aspects, to tackle also many other issues of concern that we think the FNL might raise and come with a common position as members of the international community.

So you have now an ideal situation in my opinion where you have regional initiation, the facilitation and members of the international community agreed to a common programme on the way forward.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Question: I just wanted to ask you how likely is it that the FNL will stick to this programme – we have seen in recent weeks clashes outside Bujumbura – serious clashes where people were killed and so on; and that was after the 29th, I don’t have the exact date but I think it was after the 29th that the agreement has been reached. So what are the chances of them sticking to this and not again coming up with some excuses?  And secondly, we already have, I think the count is about 3 000 to 5 500 in our camp and about 1 500 in the government-ran camp former combatants of the FNL, how many are left? Have they given you an indication as to how many people still have to go through the DDR process?

Answer: Well you know we believe that they are serious this time. The one thing that is an indication, of course we can only also determine by what we see, the one thing that seems to be a very serious implication is that for the first time they came out in our meeting as not just the political leaders but we have leaders of the…very senior commanders who have been in the bush. So many of those people that we had not seen before are actually in Dar es Salaam and meeting us – many people we have heard names [of].  They appear to be serious because another thing is, you see we are heading for the 2010 elections in that country and we believe that at one stage they want to be participating in this – you don’t come in last minute if you are preparing for elections, all of us would attest to that. We have a feeling that now they are saying “this may be the time for us to go back, as long as all these concerns of ours are taken care of”. Of course you can’t be 100 percent sure that they will – there might be something that arises or maybe we don’t satisfy some of their concerns, but the truth of the matter is we believe that they are also concerned with trying to find a solution to Burundi and that gives us hope. And all these signs, as I say, are an indication hopefully that this time maybe we may get it right – all of us – the FNL, the facilitation and the government because sometimes the fault may not necessarily be with the FNL but it may be the other party that is not playing ball or maybe some mistake that is committed by those who are helping the process. And so hopefully this time we have.  You have talked about this, if I understand you, the dissidents, the “alleged dissidents” – the terminology used by UN is that they are “alleged dissidents”. Now let me explain who these people are – these are the people who came out when we had concluded this agreement and the FNL pulled out and said “We are not happy, we are pulling out”. Some of their members, presumably, said “No, we are not going back to war, we are tired, we have been in the bush” – literally in the bush you know, because they are in the forest there where the only comfort, there is no comfort at all I mean bitten by mosquitoes and all that, and really wanted to be part of the process. They said “We are coming out”, and broke away from the leadership.  A serious problem because you had about 3 000, as you said – people who came out and said “We are not going back”, people who were armed. We had, as you recall, serious fallout with the international community who said we must not do anything about these people – but w how can you not do anything about people who are armed, who are roaming the country here? The next thing they will be hungry and they will be looking for food and grabbing it by force – there is no government that is going to stand buy with people doing that, government will have to retaliate and intervene, in which case you would have a serious circle of violence.  And so we tried to get the government to put these people in one place and protect them. It was very clear that there was very little capacity to do so because there were attacks and attacks on these people. The first attack resulted in 20 people being killed immediately; second attack nine people were killed – brutally so, their heads cut off and their attackers literally took their heads for trophy. The third attack you had three people dying.  We as the facilitation then felt that no you cant allow this to go on and requested direction from the leadership of the region and we were asked to provide protection because indeed this was now beginning to destabilise the very thing that we had come for there. The result was that we were condemned here and there by the international community which said we should not have got involved, this had nothing to do with us.  There was also an argument that these people, of course the FNL were pushing this argument but believed by many, but believed by many that they are not genuine FNL cadres, that these were from the government and so on. But we were not much more concerned about that, what we were able to determine is that you had combatants, whether they came from government or not, and you had a humanitarian situation that was emerging, people needed food and so on, and this stability which was necessary to create.  And so we called on the international community to intervene. I’m happy to say even now, with this meeting in Cape Town we seem to have reached an agreement as to how we deal with these people, because whether they are FNL or not there will be a verification process that ensures that as they move towards the DDR process they are screened properly and they are demobilised accordingly. But they are still there, they are in the camps and it is an issue that we are discussing also with the FNL, the FNL that we are dealing with because we have signed an agreement with these people who are in Dar es Salaam and we have made it very clear in all our interviews and everything that we are not replacing those who signed the agreement with these ones who are claiming. We can only deal with those people who are there legally, who have signed the agreement legally. So we didn’t replace them and kept the space open in the JVMM and so on. It is a good thing that they have agreed.  So in terms of the agreement, the very people we have singed the agreement with are going back to the JVMM. We will then have to worry about what we do with this group of people, the “alleged dissidents” who are out there, obviously opposed to the leadership that is coming.

Question: Thank you Ambassador, just one more, the DDR process is quiet an intensive process and I think we got about 800 – 1 000 South African troops under the AU mandate there at the moment. Will these coming few months that you outlined see more South African troops being needed to finalise that process? Do you foresee that we gonna need a few hundred or a few thousand troops?

Answer: You know the agreement when we first started was that we needed about a battalion and of course because for about more than a year you did not have then doing anything – FNL had pulled out – that number reduced slightly and so you have those figures that you are having now. But given the reduction is not big numbers that pulled out, a few people just pulled out, so the bulk of those troops are still there and ready to do this and they are doing this on behalf of the AU. We did not have to bring in new troops, these were the troops who were there anyway under the UN, all that we had to do was to re-hat and make them AU troops. They are now AU force and are operating under the AU. We don’t think the DDR should take long, we have put aside about six months because, as I say, if these 3 000 that are there are indeed FNL, verification proves that they are FNL, you already have the bulk or the big numbers of the FNL outside in some point. And so if it is true they are, the numbers that would be coming would not be that much – we don’t know how big the FNL forces are, they still have to tell us. We are just making our own estimation, there could be a bigger number than that and then maybe we have a lot of work in our hands. In that case we might take a little longer. But what we needed to do if the JVMM works and operates very well, is that you have joint liaison teams, one of which that determines the assembly points and release of political prisoners – these are sub-committees that serve the JVMM and we are going to initiate those quickly and once they start working and they draw up the parameters it shouldn’t be that difficult to move with speed with the DDR process.

Issued by Department of Foreign Affairs
Private Bag X152
Pretoria
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6 March 2008