Tanzania should request for the strengthening of sanctions against Burundi, according to SADC diplomatsTanzania should request for the strengthening of sanctions against Burundi, according to SADC diplomats
Paul-Henri Dandurand and Sylvio D'Almeida
Great Lakes Press
Nairobi
01.13.99
Whereas Western lobbies are hounding to plead in favour of the lifting of the embargo that strikes Burundi since the coup d'etat of major Pierre Buyoya (Tutsi) on July 25,1996, many African diplomats, as for them, estimate that lifting the embargo would be a fatal error because of the implication of Burundi in the war of Congo aside of the invading forces.
Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi form a Hima-Tutsi coalition which invaded the Democratic Republic of Congo under cover of a prefabricated Congolese rebellion to overthrow the government of the DR-Congo president Laurent Kabila, their former allie.
"A lifting even partial of those sanctions would make the search of peace in DR-Congo more hypothetical because Burundi is the main entrance of troops and weaponry which the Hima-Tutsi coalition is using against the Congolese people" , said, indignant, an SADC diplomat who preferred to keep anonymity.
The invasion of Congo by Burundi is particular by the fact that the government of Bujumbura results from a military coup d'etat. By its presence in Congo with the aim to topple a government and a legitimate president, Burundi is exporting his putschist tradition out of its borders.
"It's enough to drive you mad!" , shouted a Zimbabwean diplomat. "Where does Burundi, a poor country under embargo, find the means to engage in war at home and abroad?", he added, obviously worried and frustrated.
The SADC countries, especially Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia, by the fact that they are engaged in war to stop this expansionist Hima-Tutsi coalition, are the first to financially suffer from consequences and drawbacks of this war.
Many African diplomats based in Nairobi estimate that the SADC countries should encourage the Tanzanian president William Benjamin Mkapa to do not give away to the pressure and to the blackmail of those Western lobbies. The later are arming and financing all the ethnic minorities which are spreading death and destruction in Africa.
Indeed, the last word on the maintenance or the lifting of the embargo should belong rightly to Tanzania which already lodges the peace process negotiations on Burundi. To raise the embargo at the present stage would only reinforce the military capacity of the Tutsi led government of Bujumbura, which already practises the policy of the nazi like concentration camps against the Hutu (a Bantu tribe) population.
In the case of the war that the Democratic Republic of Congo and its SADC allies are carrying out against the Hima-Tutsi coalition, Tanzania is already accomplice by its displayed neutrality. It is already known that arms intended to the forces of destabilization (like RCD in Congo and UNITA in Angola via Museveni of Uganda) are transiting to the port of Dar Es Salaam. In addition, GLP obtained testimonys worthy of faith according to which regular troops from the Tanzanian army are fighting aside of the Hima-Tutsi coalition.
According to a source close to the Tanzanian government who preferred to keep anonymity, these troops would be in DR-Congo under the own initiative of some high rank officers close to the former president Julius Nyerere. According to the same source, the government of Mkapa seems to be well-informed about the matter, but does prefer to close the eyes in order to do not thwart the man that all Tanzanians call "Baba wa Taifa" (the Father of the Nation).
A thorough survey carried out by GLP to try to understand the motivations behind the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere behaviour led to revelations that are as overwhelming as worrying.
The sympathy of Nyerere towards Hima-Tutsi would not go back to yesterday, because he is said to be himself from a Tanzanian tribe belonging to the Hima-Tutsi ethnic group. In the case of Burundi, he was always the spiritual adviser of all the Tutsi governments, from the monarchy to the republic. In the Sixties, Nyerere has financed the Tutsi political parties like the UPRONA party led by Louis Rwagasore, a Tutsi prince, by providing two land-rover and a quantity of fuel to facilitate its election campaign. In memory and to perpetuate the name of his late protected, Nyerere gave the name of Rwagasore to one of his grandsons born in the last spring in 1998.
More dramatic, GLP discovered that in 1972 president Julius Nyerere sent sixteen tons of weapons and ammunition to help the Hima-Tutsi government of Micombero in order to subdue a hearth of a Hutu revolt in the south of the country. More than 300,000 Hutu have perished during these massacres which were wide in all the country. Massacres that some qualified as acts of genocide, and now identified and highlighted as one of the main origins of the Burundi conflict.
The nature and the origins of the Burundi conflict is one of the points on the agenda and constitutes the first of the five commissions established within the framework of the peace talks negotiations process on Burundi which began on June 15, 1998 in Arusha, in the North of Tanzania. Whereas the 1972 drama does fit in one of the origins of the Burundi conflict, none of the concerned delegations present in Arusha condescended to underline the responsibility of Nyerere in the crisis which tears Burundi.
Irony of the fate, it is the same Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere who is the mediator in these peace talks negotiations on Burundi.