Zuma briefs Burundi stakeholders
Thabo Mokgola
19 January 2005
Deputy President Jacob Zuma returned from Entebbe, Uganda on Tuesday, where he held talks with key stakeholders in the Burundi peace process.
Zuma's spokesperson, Zanele Mngadi, said the Deputy President briefed Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa on the latest efforts to bring about peace in the troubled country.
Museveni is the chairperson and Mkapa the deputy chairperson of the Great Lakes Initiative on Burundi.
Zuma has played an important role as facilitator of the Burundian peace process since 2000, after taking over a mission headed initially by the late Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere and later by former South African president Nelson Mandela.
Burundi is currently being administered under the terms of the Arusha Agreement, reached in 2000, allowing for a 36-month transitional government headed by Tutsi President Pierre Buyoya, followed by a transitional government headed by
Hutu Domitien Ndayizeye.
Despite the ceasefire, there has been sporadic fighting.
Ever since its independence, Burundi has been riddled with deadly political power struggles.
In 1962, Burundi became a kingdom under Mwami Mwambutsa IV, a Tutsi. A Hutu rebellion took place in 1965, leading to brutal Tutsi retaliations. Mwambutsa was deposed by his son, Ntar V, the following year.
A series of coups followed, but the most notable occurred when Burundi Democracy Front candidate Melchior Ndadaye won the country's first democratic presidential elections on 2 June 1993.
Ndadaye, the first Hutu to assume power in Burundi, was killed within months during a coup.
The second Hutu president, Cyprien Ntaryamira, was also killed on 6 April 1994 when a plane carrying him and Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down.
The assassination sparked a full-scale civil war that claimed more than 300 000 lives.
Source: BuaNews
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