New sense of purpose sweeps Africa

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): "There is an almost frantic amassing of weapons of all kinds by each group. We must not let a replay of the 1994 Rwanda tragedy take place," said Tanzanian President Ben Mkapa last month, opening a regional conference on how to prevent a similar genocide in Burundi.

And for once, it did not just end in empty words: Africa is finally starting to take responsibility for its own disasters.

For a generation, Africa's governments have excused or ignored almost any atrocity committed in a country ruled by Africans. It was partly the need to keep up a common front against the remaining imperialists, partly an acute nervousness about their own fragile sovereignty. But it did mean swallowing many disgusting things.

Equatorial Guinea's Francisco Macias Nguema, the Central African Republic's Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa, Uganda's Idi Amin Dada -- monsters of cruelty and depravity would seize power in some African country, torture and massacre people in industrial quantities, even eat human flesh, and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) would resolutely look the other way. At last, however, the tide is starting to turn.

Late last month, in the Tanzanian town of Arusha, East African leaders summoned Burundi's president and prime minister and extracted their consent to what was euphemistically described as 'security assistance'. Burundi is teetering on the brink of a genocide as bad as the one that killed up to a million people in neighboring Rwanda in 1994 -- 150,000 people have already been murdered in Burundi in the past three years -- and the African leaders demanded that their troops be 'invited' in to stop it.

Burundi's Prime Minister Antoine Nduwayo repudiated the accord as soon as he got home, insisting that only President Syvestre Ntibantunganya had assented. (Nduwayo represents Burundi's ruling minority tribe, the Tutsis; the relatively powerless Ntibantunganya comes from the oppressed Hutu majority). It was a familiar pattern -- but then Nduwayo got a rude shock.

Former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere, chief mediator between Burundi's Tutsi-dominated government and the rebel Hutu militias, said bluntly in Dar-es-Salaam on 9 July that Nduwayo had agreed to the intervention too. He would not now be allowed to withdraw his consent. If necessary, East African troops would invade Burundi to halt the spreading ethnic massacres.

The OAU summit meeting in Cameroon on 10 July was just as tough, strongly backing Nyerere's initiative. For good measure, it also threatened Liberia's warlords with a United Nations war crimes tribunal if they do not submerge their differences and reach a lasting solution to the six-year civil war this month.

So the questions naturally arise: have Africa's leaders finally discovered both their consciences and their spines? And if so, why now?

One reason for the new sense of purpose is self-preservation. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda sent almost two million people spilling across the borders into neighboring Tanzania and Zaire, where most of them languish to this day. A full-fledged civil war in Burundi could set as many more people in motion -- and this time, the regional consequences could be even worse.

"If there is no intervention by the international community, very tough and very rapid intervention, the conflict is going to get worse, and it will not only affect Burundi," warns Jean-Marie Ngendahayo, a former Burundi foreign minister who has fled to South Africa. "It will have a direct impact on Rwanda, Zaire, Uganda, and even Tanzania. The whole Great Lakes subregion will burn."

In other words, there is a great deal of self-interest in the plan for intervention in Burundi. Nothing to be ashamed of in that: the main reason that countries anywhere contribute to international peace-keeping is to keep violence and lawlessness from spreading and threatening their own security.

But there is something else at work here, too. African governments are starting to realize that they simply cannot let the continent go on bleeding to death, and that they have both the power and the responsibility to stop it.

Some major prospective contributors to a Burundi peacekeeping force, like Tanzania, have a direct interest in preventing further refugees from crossing the borders into their own territory. But you can hardly accuse more distant countries like Ethiopia and Uganda of self-serving cynicism. Nor has the United States, which has promised financial aid and logistical support to the intervention force, any particular axe to grind in East Africa.

So assuming that the intervention force actually comes to pass, and takes charge of protecting people from ethnic violence in Burundi (first fighting its way in, if necessary), will it succeed?

It would have to be big (at least 20,000 troops) and heavily armed to deal with dissident units in the Tutsi-run army, and also with the three Hutu militias that control most of the rural areas of northern Burundi after dark. It would have to stay a long time, and effectively put the Burundi government under tutelage until new elections could be held. But it can be done, if the will is there.

The will does now seem to be there. The transition to a non- racial democratic government in South Africa has removed other African countries' last excuse for soft-pedaling violence and injustice elsewhere in Africa, and the relentless, continent-wide slide into chaos has finally stirred alarm in some key capitals.

Rwandan President Casimir Bizimumgu put it best. Speaking at the recent OAU summit in Cameroon, he was arguing against OAU endorsement of a second term for UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali (who, as an Egyptian, is technically African).

Bizimumgu argued that Boutros-Ghali had betrayed Africa by failing to organize swift UN intervention in Rwanda in 1994. "Some people have said we should support his candidacy because of African solidarity," said Bizimumgu. "But African solidarity also means accountability." And slowly, hesitantly, his colleagues are starting to accept that logic.