Mediation efforts in Africa's Great Lakes Region

Full text

Mediation efforts in Africa’s Great
Lakes Region
Gilbert M. Khadiagala1
Introduction
Since the mid-1980s, African mediators have been involved in efforts to resolve
civil conflicts in the Great Lakes region: Burundi, the Democratic Republic of
the Congo (DRC), Rwanda, and Uganda. Resource scarcities, ethnic tensions,
elite mobilization of grievances, and weak postcolonial political structures have
been the primary drivers of these conflicts.To meet the regional dimensions of
the conflicts, diverse African mediators such as presidents,foreign ministers,elder
statesmen, and special envoys have intervened to help combatants rebuild the
institutions of political order, social cohesion, and economic stability. Local
African actors are not alone in mediation roles. These conflicts have also
attracted many external mediators wearing various institutional hats. The
relations between African and external actors is one interesting element in
understanding the mediation of conflicts in the Great Lakes region.
This paper reviews the mediation experiences by presenting a chronology that
starts from Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi’s intervention in Uganda’s civil war
in 1985 and ends with Botswana’s former President Ketumile Masire’s mediation
of the conflict in the DRC in 2002. This chronology of experiences depicts
African actors gradually learning how to manage mediation roles,witnessed in the
practice of presidents ceding mediation functions to elder statesmen and special
envoys. The important lesson here is the growing search for mediators with the
professional expertise, credibility, probity, and perseverance to sustain what are
often grueling mediation exercises. Equally significant, the mediation initiatives in
the Great Lakes region reveal that successful efforts depend largely on how local
actors coordinate their roles with those of international actors. The latter have
carved a critical niche in African mediation as providers of financial resources and
political pressures to help produce effective negotiated outcomes.Yet these cases
also show that as many mediators have crowded around peacemaking enterprises
in the region, there have been tensions between local and international actors over
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1 Gilbert M. Khadiagala,is an independent consultant based in Arlington,Virginia, US. He recent-
ly completed a nine-year stint as Associate Professor of Comparative Politics and African Studies
at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), The Johns Hopkins
University in Washington, D.C. Dr Khadiagala obtained a B.A (Hons.) in Political Science from
the University of Nairobi,an M.A.in Political Science at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada,
and a Ph.D. in International Studies at SAIS.His research focuses on African politics, governance,
and security. He is the author of Allies in Adversity: The Frontline States in Southern Africa
Security (1994); co-editor with Terrence Lyons of African Foreign Policies: Power and Process
(2001); co-author with William Zartman and others, Getting In: Mediator’s Entry into the
Settlement of African Conflicts (2006); editor of Security Dynamics in Africa’s Great Lakes
Region (2006); and co-author with Ruth Iyob of Sudan:The Elusive Quest for Peace (2006).
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the organization and ownership of negotiations. The conclusion contends that
these mediation experiences have been instructive in generating useful lessons
about how African actors can improve their intervention roles and how they can
better engage external mediators.
I Uganda
I.1 Mediating Uganda’s civil conflict: Daniel Arap Moi, 1985
Uganda’s civil war arose from the contested elections in 1980 that returned
President Milton Obote to power. Obote’s first government was overthrown by
the dictatorship of Idi Amin in 1971,but Ugandan exiles and Tanzanian military
brought back weak civilian governments. During Obote’s second tenure,
guerrilla movements challenged the government, notably Yoweri Museveni’s the
National Resistance Movement (NRM). Due to this pressure, the commander
of the armed forces, Major General Tito Okello overthrew Obote in July 1985.
The military government attempted to restore order, but had little legitimacy.As
commander of Obote forces, Okello had been implicated in military campaigns
in which an estimated 300,000 people died. The Okello regime was also
associated with the northern ethnic domination of Uganda. After overthrowing
the Obote government, Okello’s priority was to negotiate with the smaller
guerrilla groups that he could control rather than with Museveni who he
regarded as a major threat. In August 1985, Okello reached agreements that
incorporated these small groups into the government.As the dominant military
force the NRM, however, rejected government overtures and demanded the
resignation of the government. As a result, a stalemate ensued that was broken
by the mediation of Kenya’s President Daniel Arap Moi. Both sides in the
conflict initially looked to Tanzania’s President Julius Nyerere as a potential
mediator because of his previous role in Uganda’s reconstruction, but Nyerere
had announced his retirement from office and his successor was not interested
in further entanglement in Uganda.
Moi’s mediation changed the rules of non-intervention that had guided the
approach of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in domestic conflicts of
states. It marked one of the first instances of mediation by a neighbor in a civil
conflict, popularizing the practice of African solutions to African problems. In
reconciling Okello and Museveni, Moi invoked Uganda’s importance to the
stability of East Africa and Kenya’s strategic interests in a peaceful solution. More
importantly, he mobilized the stature of his office to provide leadership to the
fractious and contentious Nairobi negotiations that began in September and
ended in December 1985. Although Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs
organized some of the sessions, the Nairobi talks largely bore Moi’s presidential
imprint. The Kenyan media portrayed Moi’s mediation in Uganda as an
opportunity to demonstrate statesmanship and pan-Africanist ideals.
During the negotiations, the Okello government’s political fortunes declined
markedly because of its ties to groups linked to Idi Amin. On the other hand,
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Museveni’s forces made major military gains because of better organization and
popular support. Consequently, Moi was caught between a weak government,
whose power was on the wane, and a rebel movement energized by military
victories. Moi nonetheless persisted, investing considerable time and resources in
a peaceful solution.
In the first phase of the negotiations, Moi tried to get the principal parties to the
same round table. However, this strategy did not work because neither Okello
nor Museveni wanted to sit together; instead they dispatched low-level
delegations without the mandate to reach decisions. Round table negotiations
are useful where the parties have some respect for each other, and where there
is a desire to make peace, not procrastinate. Moi abandoned this strategy when
the talks deadlocked in October and November 1985. Instead, he resorted to
bilateral talks with Museveni and Okello to forge consensus on substantive
issues. Bilateral talks were essentially separate negotiating sessions that Moi held
with Okello and Museveni. This strategy forced the principal parties to go to
Nairobi, affording Moi a better way to communicate with them and deploy the
tools of threats and promises. The bilateral talks were supplemented by the
establishment of two joint negotiating committees on disarmament and political
issues that expedited the negotiations by translating the political compromises
between the principal actors into an agreement.
Moi’s mediation culminated in the Nairobi Peace Agreement signed on December
17, 1985, comprising power sharing and cease-fire provisions. The agreement
enjoined Museveni and Okello to form a transitional government that would write
a new constitution. It also envisaged the demobilization of armed factions and
formation of a new army supervised by a monitoring force from Commonwealth
countries. After the signing of the agreement, the parties failed to honor the
ceasefire, leading to collapse of authority in Kampala where motley militias fought
for supremacy. Capitalizing on widespread lawlessness and insecurity, Museveni’s
forces captured Kampala in January 1986, disowned the Nairobi agreement, and
established a new government.
Assessing Moi’s mediation
Moi sought to preempt Uganda’s spiral into further instability, but the military
balance and the lack of will by key actors for peace doomed the agreement.Moi
furnished the prestige and power of his office to an urgent task.Yet, mediation
by presidents in civil wars presents its own problems: competing state burdens
often constrain their ability to marshal the attention required for effective
mediation exercises. Mediation of these conflicts requires patience, persistence,
and perseverance, qualities that presidents with other demands may not be able
to command. Even the bilateral talks Moi held with the parties were sporadic
rather than sustained, contributing to the perception of a disorganized process.
Moreover, the high-level status of presidents prevents them from forging closer
ties with parties, ties that may be important in facilitating agreements. In
addition, without mediation that is anchored in broad national institutions, there
is always the danger of over-exposing presidents to the uncertain outcomes of
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mediation. Moi’s mediation heightened his personal stakes in a successful
agreement in Uganda, but when the agreement collapsed, it was difficult to
separate personal from national loss.This is why in the aftermath of the Nairobi
negotiations, bilateral relations between Kenya and Uganda worsened because
Moi felt slighted by Museveni’s abrogation of the agreement.
Moi gradually learnt to defer mediation roles to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
and special envoys as demonstrated by Kenya’s mediation of the conflicts in
Sudan and Somalia under the auspices of the Inter-governmental Authority on
Development (IGAD). After he left office in 2003, he created the Moi Africa
Institute whose objective is to help resolve conflicts in the region. Some of the
special envoys in the IGAD processes,General Lazaro Sumbeiywo and Benjamin
Kiplagat, are affiliated with the institute, demonstrating the institutional
convergence of the experiences of special envoys and an elder statesman.
II Rwanda
II.1 Mediating Rwanda’s civil war:Tanzania, 1992-1993
Post-colonial Rwanda evidenced a decisive shift in power from the minority
Tutsi to the majority Hutu as a result of the 1959 revolution.The revolution led
to massive movement of Tutsi refugees to the region, communal violence, and
political fragility of Rwandan governments. In October 1990, Uganda-based
Tutsi exiles organized as the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) invaded the Hutu
government of Juvenal Habyarimana. The RPF took advantage of
Habyarimana’s economic and political problems to demand citizenship rights
and an end to the dictatorship.
Habyarimana initially refused to negotiate with the RPF and called for military
support from Belgium, France, and Zaire to meet the threat. Gradually, however,
as the conflict escalated, the government invited Zaire’s leader, Mobutu Sese
Seko, to mediate a ceasefire with the RPF. In two mediation sessions in October
1990 and March 1991, Mobutu proposed a cease-fire agreement to be
supervised by an OAU Neutral Military Observer’s Group (NMOG). Mobutu
launched the negotiations, but his relationship to Habyarimana undercut his
ability to be an acceptable interlocutor to both parties. This was why Tanzania
emerged as the actor with broad appeal to them.
Tanzania mediated the Arusha peace talks from June 1992 to August 1993.The
government assigned mediation responsibilities to the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs. Ambassador Ami Mpungwe, an official in the Ministry, led the
mediation team. Tanzanian President Ali Hassan Mwinyi participated in the
talks only when they faced severe deadlocks. Unlike Moi in Uganda, President
Mwinyi intervened at critical moments when his authority made a vital
difference. As a result, Mpungwe’s team controlled the flow of information
between the delegations, chaired important negotiation committees, and
coordinated with the government and multilateral observers. This was
important in providing overall leadership of a mediation exercise that involved
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many parties with differing interests. In this respect, the team played a dual
mediation role: mediating among the Rwanda belligerents, and among the
observers at the table.The Arusha negotiations benefited from the presence of
international observers from Burundi, France, Germany, the OAU, the United
Nations, the United States, Uganda, and Zaire. Despite French partisanship
toward the Habyarimana government, most of the multilateral actors in Arusha
furnished the talks with a wider context of power and leverage. At decisive
moments in the negotiations when the parties could not reach compromise,
for instance on the formation of a national army, the multilateral partners
through their experts, provided critical technical advice. Pressure from
international actors also helped to unlock the deadlock following the military
skirmishes in February 2003.
From the outset, the Tanzanian mediators faced an RPF delegation that was
unified in its positions. The government delegation, however, mirrored deep
tensions that existed in Kigali between moderates and radicals, conflicts that, on
occasion, paralyzed the negotiations and later contributed to weakening the final
agreement. The mediators focused first on reaching agreement on a durable
cease-fire, building on the previous Mobutu-led negotiations. After reaching
agreement on a ceasefire, the mediators concentrated on power-sharing talks
organized around protocols that addressed specific facets of the conflict. This
approach broke the conflict into manageable proportions and enabled the
establishment of negotiating teams to iron out differences. By the end of 1992,
the parties had signed a number of major protocols.
Despite serious military skirmishes in February 1993 that threatened the
negotiations, international pressures forced the parties back to the table. Between
March and August 1993, the Tanzanian mediators led the parties to conclude
negotiations on all the protocols which became the foundations of the Arusha
Peace Agreement of August 1993. The agreement stipulated the formation of
multiparty transitional government and transitional national assembly that were
to be established thirty-seven days after the signing of the agreement. The
implementation of the agreement hinged primarily on the speedy deployment
of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR). Delays in
UNAMIR’s deployment compounded by the ethnic polarization in the post-
Arusha period contributed to the collapse of agreement and the onset of
genocide in Rwanda starting in April 1994.
Assessing Tanzania’s mediation
Some accounts of the Arusha negotiations have blamed the mediators for the
collapse of the agreement2, but there is widespread consensus that the failure
stemmed from international inaction at the implementation stage. Critics
contend that the Tanzanian mediators should have anticipated the spoiler role of
Hutu extremist parties, some of them represented in the negotiations.Although
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2 See, for instance, Alan Kuperman,“The Other Lesson of Rwanda: Mediators Sometimes Do
More Harm Than Good,” SAIS Review, vol. 16, no. 1, 1996; and Christopher Clapham,
“Rwanda:The Perils of Peacemaking,” Journal of Peace Research, vol. 35, no. 2, 1998.
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questions of inclusiveness and exclusiveness dodge African mediators, more
often, these mediators have no leverage over who comes to the table.Through
very difficult circumstances,Tanzanian mediators managed a process that sought
to include all Rwandan parties in deliberations about the conflict. The
agreement represented a detailed ceasefire and constitutional blueprint for
helping the parties to work through their problems.
Unlike Zaire, the previous mediator,Tanzania enjoyed good relations with both
parties who saw the mediators as credible. This credibility grew out of the
perception of Tanzania’s success of nation building.The institutional base of the
primary mediators, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, provided enough room for
them to manage mediation tasks without the distractions from other functions.
Unlike presidents who are over-burdened, these officials did devote sufficient
attention to the tasks at hand. More important, the devolution of mediation
responsibilities to the team enabled the building of valuable experience in
negotiations and conflict resolution for future mediation engagements.
The multilateralism witnessed in the Arusha negotiations is a model of
coordination of local and international actors in mediation. While it is not
possible to reconcile conflicting interests of many international actors,
particularly if, as was the case with the French, they have stakes in the conflict,
successful coordination emerged in Arusha from a broad consensus among the
observers about the importance of a regional solution to the conflict.There was
also a perception among international actors that credible local mediators
needed more of a supportive, helping hand than interventionist, hand-holding.
That is why the participation of international actors gave the negotiations a
bigger stamp of legitimacy without crowding-out the local mediators. During
the negotiations for some of the protocols, international observers provided
technical advice to the mediators and parties.
III Burundi
III.1 Mediating Burundi’s civil conflict: Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah,
1994–1995
Like Rwanda, the civil war in Burundi originated from the political and
economic inequalities between the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority. In the
independence period, the Tutsi minority continued to dominate all facets of
power, fueling resentment from the Hutu. In the early 1990s, President Pierre
Buyoya and the ruling party, Union for National Progress Party (UPRONA),
launched constitutional reforms that led to multi-party elections in June 1993.
The presidential election was won by Melchior Ndadaye and his Hutu-
dominated party, the Front for Democracy in Burundi (FRODEBU), won the
parliamentary elections. When he assumed power, Ndadaye tried to reform the
military and economy to correct imbalances, but the military led a coup in
October 1993 that resulted in his assassination. This assassination plunged the
country into a brutal wave of communal violence, in which up to 50,000 people
were killed and 150,000 people displaced.
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Ndadaye’s death galvanized international efforts for intervention, but Burundi’s
military opposed these moves. Hutu civilian parties, however, wanted foreign
intervention to restore their power. In November 1993, after intense diplomacy
at the United Nations and OAU, the Burundian military agreed to the
deployment of a token OAU force to monitor the situation. As part of this
initiative, the United Nations Security Council approved a small mediation team
led by former Mauritanian Foreign Minister Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah as the
Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG).
Ould-Abdallah’s mediation had four goals: to restore the democratic institutions
overthrown by the abortive coup; to facilitate dialogue between the parties; to
establish a commission of inquiry into the events of October and the ensuing
massacres; and to work in close collaboration with the OAU. Toward this end,
Ould-Abdallah worked closely with the OAU representative in Bujumbura,
Papa Louis Fall, in sharing information and holding meetings with Burundian
parties. Ould-Abdallah got the parties to sign an agreement in January 1994 that
selected a Hutu President Cyprien Ntaryamira, heading a multiparty cabinet
government in which the Tutsi gained 40 per cent of the seats.
As the SRSG, Ould-Abdallah’s mediation involved a series of personalized
interventions with many Burundian parties to forge a quick compromise that
was necessary to stop the deterioration in the political situation. These
interventions differ from the typical mediation cases where the mediator sits
down with clearly defined parties to deliberate over contentious issues. The
urgency of such interventions may force parties to make quick concessions, but
such concessions may not necessarily be sustainable because they are crafted in
haste. Fundamentally, Ould-Abdallah was successful as a crisis manager putting
out fires, rather than a mediator helping the parties think through the nature of
the constitutional compromises.
The January 1994 agreement revealed the dangers of such hastily-produced
compromises. Violent clashes between Hutu and Tutsi in Bujumbura did not
dissipate; in fact, the agreement radicalized Hutus. Things got worse when
President Ntaryamira died in a plane carrying Rwanda’s President Juvenal
Habyarimana from Arusha to Kigali in April 1994. As international attention
shifted from Burundi to the genocide in Rwanda, Ould-Abdallah maintained his
mediation by speaking with major leaders in Burundi to contain the situation.
Following the National Assembly’s choice of FRODEBU’s Sylvester
Ntibantunganya as the interim president in May 1994, Ould-Abdallah began
new power sharing negotiations that led to the signing of the Convention of
Government in August 1994. Replacing the previous constitution, the
Convention of Government gave 55 percent of cabinet positions to Hutus and
45 percent to Tutsis. Although the Convention of Government sought to find
constitutional mechanisms that would reduce the internecine violence between
Hutu and Tutsi communities, most Hutus perceived it as an erosion of their
democratic gains.The Convention of Government contributed to the growth of
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Hutu militancy coalescing under the National Council for the Defense of
Democracy (CNDD). Ould-Abdallah resigned as the SRSG in September 1995,
a month after the UN Secretary-General appointed Jesus Maria of Cape Verde
as his SRSG for the Great Lakes region.
Assessing Ould-Abdallah’s mediation
Ould-Abdallah mediated two fragile agreements that while restoring some
stability to Burundi, tilted power to the minority Tutsi. But he was operating in
an environment where civil war was imminent and where the armed parties
resisted external entreaties. Although he has been criticized for being more
sympathetic to the interests of the Tutsi elite, Ould-Abdallah’s major
contribution was to maintain an essential international presence when Burundi
needed it most.3The mediation efforts were weak, hastily arrived at, but they
helped build the momentum for engagements by subsequent mediators. In a
retrospective appraisal of his mission, Ould-Abdallah attributes his resignation to
Boutros-Ghali’s appointment of another envoy for the Great Lakes region:“For
my part, I feared that the appointment of yet another mediator would weaken
the coherence of the ongoing preventive effort and present Burundi’s extremists
with another opportunity to divide the international community. During the
Secretary-General’s visit to Bujumbura on July 16 and 17 . . . I told him of the
serious risks of confusion inherent in the presence within the same region of
many representatives of similar mandates.”4
Criticisms of Ould-Abdallah’s approach revolve essentially around the fact that
he may have overreached his mandate. This raises the more fundamental issue
about the ambiguous nature of the institution of the SRSG.The open-ended
nature of SRSGs’ mandates gives them sufficient room to engage key actors in
crisis management, but these are hardly mediation roles. SRSG’s are, perhaps,
useful in supplementary roles where there are other actors engaged in the
mediation, as was the case with the DRC (see below).This is more so, since, as
the case with Ould-Abdallah shows, their tenures are precariously depended on
the whims of the UN Secretary General.
III.2. Mediating Burundi’s civil conflict: Mwalimu Julius Nyerere,
1996–1999
The escalating insurgency generated pressures for new attempts at conflict
resolution. Although some members of the beleaguered government called for
external military intervention, a sub-regional initiative that began in September
1995 under the auspices of the Carter Center proposed renewed diplomacy.
Among the participants in the Carter initiatives were former Malian president,
Ahmoud Toure, South African Archbishop, Desmond Tutu, and the former
3 For some of these criticisms see Glennys Evans, Responding to Crises in the African Great
Lakes. London: International Institute for Strategic Studies,Adelphi Paper No. 311, 1997) ; and
Rene Lemarchand,“Burundi at a Crossroads,” in Gilbert M. Khadiagala, ed., Security in Africa’s
Great Lakes Region. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006, p. 52.
4 Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, Burundi on the Brink, 1993-1995 (Washington D.C.: US Institute
of Peace, Perspectives Series, 2000), p. 90.
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President of Tanzania, Nyerere.At a summit in Tunis,Tunisia, in March 1996, the
regional leaders designated Nyerere as the mediator in Burundi, mandated with
helping the parties to start a debate on power sharing.
Nyerere’s mediation began the practice of elder statesmen as mediators in
conflicts in the Great Lakes region. His mediation drew partly from the legacy
of having contributed to Tanzania’s national unity and the moral uprightness of
his leadership. Nyerere’s mediation also derived legitimacy from the
international community. Equally vital, Nyerere mobilized regional actors that
were grouped in the Regional Summits on Burundi. During the negotiations,
Nyerere had to coordinate his mediation with Western special envoys to the
region.
Preliminary talks organized by Nyerere in Mwanza, Tanzania, in March and
April 1996 did not yield much. Bridging the gap between the principal parties
in the Convention of Government, FRODEBU and UPRONA, proved the
main obstacle to the mediation. Furthermore,Tutsi parties resisted Nyerere’s bid
to reach out to Hutu armed rebels. When the stalemate ensued, Nyerere
supported regional actors who threatened military intervention.Buyoya and the
military invoked this threat to overthrow the civilian government in July 1996.
Buyoya’s coup, in turn, forced the region to impose economic sanctions against
Burundi. Sanctions worsened relations between Nyerere and Burundian
authorities, and, in almost two years, there were no negotiations. During the
stalemate in the talks, other actors such as the Sant’Egidio Community in Rome
attempted to mediate between the Burundian parties, but without any success.
But as Buyoya gained more confidence domestically, and as international
pressure increased on regional actors to lift sanctions, the opportunity opened
for the resumption of the talks in June 1998.
An innovative addition to Nyerere’s mediation at the resumption of the talks was
the appointment of eminent international personalities to chair negotiating
committees dealing with specific aspects of the conflict. The committees and
their chairs were: the nature of the conflict, chaired by Armando Guebuza, from
Mozambique; democracy and good governance, chaired by Nicholas Haysom,
from South Africa; peace and security, chaired by Father Mateo Zuppi from
Italy; economic development, and Georg Lennkh, from Austria. Given that 19
parties were present in Arusha, the formation of the committees eased the
negotiation by breaking the issues along manageable lines. The committee
negotiating framework, which was first seen in Moi’s mediation in Uganda,
seemed to find its better institutional expression in the Arusha talks. As a
supplement to the amorphous character of plenary sessions, committees reflect
the proliferation of parties and issues in negotiations of civil conflicts. It is
difficult to reach agreements through “summits” of many parties, hence the
significance of smaller committees as vehicles of concession-making. Experts are
also more effective in lending their knowledge and experiences in committees
rather than lecturing to larger conclaves. The disadvantages are that many
committees may slow the pace of negotiations, creating paralysis.
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The appointment of eminent personalities gave the mediation a multilateral
character and neutralized critics who complained of Tanzanian dominance. But
these personalities also generated resentment from members of the Nyerere
mediation team who felt that their competence and skills were being
questioned. International expertise is critical in African mediation when it helps
the mediators to do their job better, rather than, as the case with the Nyerere
mediation, NGOs such as the International Crisis Group and International Alert
openly advocating for “empowering” the mediation as a way to supplant and
subvert local mediators. By the time Nyerere died in October 1999, the
multilateral mediation framework had set Burundi’s reconciliation on an
irreversible course.At the time, most of the committees had presented drafts of
agreements on issues including democracy, the future electoral systems, and a
national truth and reconciliation commission.
Assessing Nyerere’s mediation
Nyerere’s mediation occurred amidst deep animosity between regional states
and the Buyoya government, tensions exacerbated by economic sanctions.
Nyerere’s stature as an elder statesman worked to partly insulate him from these
problems, but he increasingly became identified with the partisan attitude of
Tanzania and the region. In addition, Nyerere was sullied by what some critics
perceived as his singular determination to exclude some Hutu factions from the
negotiating table. Yet Nyerere’s diplomatic persistence against these obstacles
garnered him respect even among Burundian foes. In the end, most Burundian
parties embraced him as an authoritative statesman operating in a multilateral
framework to help them resolve their differences.
There were also mutual suspicions between the Nyerere team and Western
envoys, in particular, Howard Wolpe from the United States and Aldo Ajello from
the European Union.These envoys supplemented regional efforts, but on some
occasions, the Nyerere team accused them of undue interference in the
mediation. These conflicts became apparent when the envoys pushed hard for
lifting economic sanctions without guarantees that Buyoya would return to the
negotiations. Other differences between the Nyerere team and envoys over the
organization and coordination of the mediation were gradually resolved with the
appointment of eminent personalities to head committees. But the engagement
of international experts could have been explained better by all the actors to
reduce lingering doubts about why their presence was required. Creating
effective coordination between local and international mediators in the context
of resource imbalances is difficult, but the Nyerere mediation brought some of
these tensions into the open, allowing fruitful discussions about how to evolve
more sound coordination strategies.
III.3. Mediating Burundi’s civil conflict: Nelson Mandela, 1999–2001
Regional actors chose Mandela to replace Nyerere to maintain a credible mediator
with strong ties to the international community and the region. At the critical
moment of the conclusion of the talks, it was important to find an individual with
broad international links to refocus attention on Burundi. It was also vital for
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Mandela’s mediation to derive support from regional actors because the Buyoya
government had vigorously advocated for South African mediation to circumvent
regional actors, particularly Tanzania. As a compromise, Mandela inherited
Nyerere’s mediation infrastructure in Arusha, including the mediation team.
Mandela invoked the triple themes of inclusiveness, trust, and forgiveness to put
his own imprint on the negotiations. Where the Nyerere team had excluded
some key rebel factions, Mandela signaled determination to bring them to the
table. With characteristic authority and candor he bluntly berated Burundian
parties for failing their people by lacking the urgency to end the war. In
addition, Mandela used his diplomatic skills and prestige to mobilize
international pressures to impart credibility to his efforts. At the resumption of
the negotiations in February 2000, Mandela invited U.S. President Bill Clinton
to make a televised address to the delegates. He also lobbied the UN Security
Council to pay more attention to Burundi’s peace.
Drawing on moral authority, personal stature, and unrivalled international
prestige, Mandela took effective leadership of the negotiations. By the summer
of 2000, most of the committees had completed their deliberations. At the end
of these negotiations, Mandela submitted a draft agreement that synthesized the
work of the committees.With the draft agreement on the table,he invited world
leaders, including Bill Clinton, to attend the ceremony, even though some of the
parties still had not accepted key provisions in the agreement. In the end,
Mandela’s astute deadline and the presence of foreign leaders forced a
compromise that led 14 of the 19 parties to sign the Arusha Accord for Peace
and Reconciliation on August 28, 2000.
Although reached without a ceasefire, the Arusha Accord was a partial agreement
designed to lock the sides into a framework from which real peace could evolve
gradually.The Accord’s three-year transitional institutions of ethnic power sharing
were instrumental in rebuilding confidence, but also induced the rebel hold-outs
to join the peace bandwagon. After the signing of the agreement, Mandela
continued to use the combination of moral pressure, regional, and international
influence to negotiate the establishment of transitional institutions and the search
for a ceasefire. Mandela also played a central role in nudging South Africa to send
a military force to protect the returning Hutu leadership, an intervention that
paved the way for the establishment of the African Union Mission in Burundi
(AMIB) and the United Nations Operations in Burundi (ONUB).
Assessing Mandela’s mediation
Mandela injected new momentum in a process that was starting to suffer from
fatigue. In a mediation style that blended censure and praise, toughness and
flexibility, Mandela shamed and cajoled the negotiators into making difficult
concessions. As a South African, he was geographically distant, but not too far
removed from the conflict. He could serve as a lightening rod for both parties:
Tutsi parties accusing him of translating the South African apartheid legacy into
the Burundian conflict; Hutu parties, for being “partial” to minorities. These
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dual, but contradictory perceptions enabled Mandela to stand above the fray, to
speak to both parties with authority. His reengagement of the international
community was critical in mending some of the political fences that had frayed
during Nyerere’s battle with Western envoys.
Although Mandela exerted more control over the parties than Nyerere, it is
more accurate to see the two mediation exercises as part of an evolving
continuum that built on each other strengths. Mandela inherited a process that
had achieved a lot in identifying core problems and solutions to them. He
managed to prod the parties to hasten the efforts to achieve the objectives. Elder
statesmen of Mandela’s stature are important in African conflict resolution, but
they are rare and far between.Too much emphasis on the personal characteristics
of Mandela may also distract from the urgent search for mediators whose
competence and efficacy derives from the protracted process of learning and
training about mediation.As we celebrate the achievements of Mandela, we also
have to be cognizant of the fact that it is much easier to train mediators than
find those with messianic qualities.
III.4. Mediating Burundi’s civil conflict: Jacob Zuma, 2001–2005
Former South African Deputy President Zuma took the mediation mantle from
Mandela in January 2001 to negotiate a ceasefire between the government and
rebel movements.With Mandela preoccupied with negotiations for transitional
institutions, Zuma’s mediation brought vigor, energy, and urgency to the
ceasefire negotiations. From the beginning, Zuma faced a competitor in Gabon’s
President, Omar Bongo, who was promoted by one wing of the rebel
movement, the CNDD-FDD, to playing off French-speaking against English-
speaking mediators.With the potential of Bongo’s meddling becoming a source
of tension between South Africa and Gabon, Mandela counseled against the
alienation of Bongo.This strategy harmonized the interests of the mediators and
removed the source of tensions that some of the rebels hoped to exploit. Despite
hosting some sessions of the ceasefire talks, Bongo slowly lost interest in the
Burundi peace enterprise.
When the first phase of the transition began on November 1, 2001, there
were expectations that Hutu rebels would find the government more
legitimate and hence engage seriously in ceasefire talks. But, splits in rebel
movements compounded the task of negotiations. Zuma’s basic strategy was
to coordinate his activities with regional leaders, because they remained
critical in putting pressure on the parties. At the same time, he decided to
engage the fragmented rebel factions in separate negotiations. Part of these
negotiations revisited some of the power-sharing provisions of the Arusha
Accord.This strategy bore fruit, starting in August 2002 when the transitional
government reached an agreement with the CNDD-FDD faction of Bosco
Ndayikengurukiye and a faction of the FNL led by Alain Mugabarabona.
Subsequently, Zuma’s mediation yielded a landmark agreement in October
2002 between the transitional government and the largest CNDD-FDD led
by Pierre Nkurunziza. In October 2003, Nkurunziza signed the Pretoria
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Protocol on Political, Defense, and Security Power Sharing in Burundi to join
the transition government.
The Pretoria Protocol and the deployment of ONUB in early 2004 enabled
Zuma and regional leaders to concentrate on mediating talks for a new
constitution, culminating in a constitutional compromise in Pretoria in August
2004.This constitution was approved by referendum in February 2005 and formed
the basis for local, communal and parliamentary elections in June and July 2005.
With a 58 per cent majority in parliament, Nkurunziza was elected president in
August 2005, marking the successful conclusion of the transitional period.
Assessing Zuma’s mediation
Zuma traversed the mediation road paved by Nyerere and Mandela.On the basis
of the successes of previous initiatives, Zuma was able to help expand and fortify
the Arusha Accord. These efforts also succeeded because of South Africa’s
determination to underwrite a successful outcome in Burundi. Furthermore,
Zuma was conscious of the importance of coordinating his diplomatic efforts
with regional states that had over the years invested considerable resources in the
process. By boosting the regional diplomatic framework around Burundi, Zuma,
like Mandela before him, contributed to building bridges between the Great
Lakes region and Southern Africa.
Within the institutional hierarchy of South Africa, Zuma’s mediation raises
questions about the choice of mediators. As deputy president, Zuma’s mediation
overshadowed that of the Foreign Minister, who would have been expected to
play this role. His appointment stemmed from the close links he had developed
with President Thabo Mbeki, links that accorded Zuma more resources and
stature to be an effective mediator in Burundi.Yet, over time,Zuma’s role seemed
to have evolved as he gained expertise about the conflict, issues, and parties.
Before he was forced to resign from his position, Zuma had acquired the unique
position of being a specialist on the Great Lakes region by virtue of engagement
in the Burundi process. The element of growing on the job in defiance of
traditional institutional roles is an interesting dimension in the evolution of
African special envoys such as Kenya’s General Sumbeiywo in the IGAD case.
IV The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)
IV.1 Mediating the DRC’s civil conflict: Ketumile Masire, 1998–2002
Civil war engulfed the DRC following the demise of the authoritarian rule of
Mobutu in 1997. Mobutu’s successor,Laurent Kabila came to power through the
military support from neighbors – Angola, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.
Kabila, however, was unable to stabilize internal rule and, soon,he faced internal
opposition. Furthermore, he alienated his principal allies – Rwanda and Uganda
– by failing to rein in militias that threatened their security. When Rwanda and
Uganda tried to overthrow Kabila in August 1998, he invited SADC states –
Namibia,Angola, and Zimbabwe to repulse the move, setting off a train of events
that regionalized the civil war.
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Initial mediation to reverse the condition involved SADC countries, with
South Africa and Zambia leading the initiative to pull the regional armies from
the DRC.These efforts received the support of Western powers and the United
Nations that saw the dangers of destabilization in an already-turbulent region.
Despite many hurdles, the SADC initiative produced the Lusaka Agreement of
July 1999 between the Congolese protagonists and their regional allies. In
addition to a ceasefire, the Lusaka Agreement contained provisions that linked
domestic and regional components of the crisis.The first component reiterated
Congo’s territorial integrity, a goal that would be achieved through the
withdrawal of foreign armies. Secondly, to ensure the security of Congo’s
neighbors, the Lusaka Agreement provided for an international force that
would disarm the rebel groups operating in the DRC.Thirdly, internal parties
were urged to begin national reconciliation talks, the Inter-Congolese
Dialogue (ICD).
For almost four years, mediation efforts to implement Lusaka’s regional
components occurred in various countries and institutions. Most of these
complemented the ICD. Progress on ICD, however, proceeded in fits and starts.
Although the Lusaka process had designated former Botswana’s President,
Ketumile Masire, as the mediator for the ICD, Kabila declined to negotiate with
the rebels. After Kabila was assassinated in January 2001, his successor, Joseph
Kabila, conceded to the ICD and Masire’s mediation.
Masire’s mediation deepened the diplomatic practice of using elder statesmen.
Like Nyerere and Mandela, Masire nonetheless operated in circumstances where
other actors became equally salient in shaping the process and outcomes. Over
the course of the negotiations, Masire’s tasks entailed coordinating with key
actors, notably regional states, the United Nations, and Western envoys. As the
host of the negotiations in Sun city, South Africa gained significant leverage on
the actors and process. Along the lines of the Burundi negotiations, there was a
team of international experts appointed to head five committees to negotiate
different components of the conflict.
The first meeting of the ICD was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in October
2001 and prepared the way for the Sun City talks from February 2002. The
gathering brought together many representatives from the government, the
political opposition, armed opposition groups, and civil society. Given the
multiplicity of parties, one of the challenges Masire’s team confronted was the
coordination of such a broad array of actors, particularly with a small secretariat.
This is where South African resources became critical in supervising the
mediation. The first phase of the talks ended in April 2002 with the Kinshasa
government signing a power sharing agreement with one of the Ugandan-
backed rebel movement, leaving out the Rwanda-supported rebels.This partial
agreement plunged the talks into a stalemate.
During the impasse, there were a series of parallel talks, most of them led by
South Africa, to resolve the regional dimensions of the Congolese puzzle.These
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talks yielded non-aggression pacts and troop disengagement agreements among
the regional actors, increasing the pressure on internal actors to reach a
comprehensive power sharing agreement.At the ICD level, there was a bid from
Western envoys to boost the professional capacity of Masire’s mediation. Faced
with these pressures, the UN and international donors met with Masire in New
York at the end of May 2002 to assess the future of the talks. Although there
were some demands to replace the Masire mediation team with international
mediators, the United Nations compromised by appointing two envoys to
complement Masire – Moustapha Niasse, a former Senegalese Prime Minister,
and Haile Menkerios, a former Eritrean ambassador affiliated to the United
Nations Secretariat.5In addition, like the Burundi talks, South Africa assumed
a more visible role in the negotiations.
When the talks resumed in October 2002, the mediators led marathon talks that
culminated in the signing of an All-inclusive Agreement on the Transition in the
DRC in Pretoria in December 2002, providing for a transitional government
and elections in 30 months. The Pretoria Accord prepared the way for final
negotiations on the installation of a transitional government and finalization of
a new constitution. Between January and April 2003, the mediators formed two
technical committees on the constitution and security that concluded
negotiations on a transitional constitution and resolved issues of creating a
national army.With the installation of a transitional government in March 2003,
Masire’s mandate in the ICD ended.
Assessing Masire’s mediation
Masire’s low-key and quiet diplomatic approach to mediation contrasted sharply
with Mandela’s highly-publicized and, oftentimes, confrontational style. In the
circumstances of a multiparty and complex conflict such as the DRC, Masire’s
deliberate and contemplative style seemed to fuel perceptions of indecisiveness.
Part of the campaign by some Western envoys to get rid of Masire perhaps
stemmed from his manner of managing the mediation. At the conclusion of
negotiations for the transitional institutions, Masire had been reduced to a mere
figurehead in the negotiations, overshadowed by UN envoys and South African
government mediators.
It would have been difficult to dissolve the Masire mediation team since he had
acquired the initial invitational legitimacy from prior diplomatic processes.
African states are reluctant to undercut the efforts of their mediators, particularly
elder statesmen, leaving them to plod on, even in inconclusive processes. This
tendency fuels some of the conflicts with external actors, particularly where
most of the mediation initiatives are funded by donors who question their
contribution to conflict resolution. In the DRC, some of these concerns were
allayed when Masire’s mediation was placed within the ambit of South African
power and international legitimacy.
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5 DRC:Two Aides Proposed to Help Masire with Shuttle Diplomacy,’”UN Integrated Regional
Information Network (IRIN), 5 June 2002.
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V Conclusions: Lessons learnt and recommendations for
future engagements
African mediators constitute an essential part of the post-cold war pattern of local
actors seeking solutions to local problems.They are driven by the need to reduce
the ravages of civil conflicts, refugee flows, and cross-border transmission of dis-
eases. For the most part, African mediators lack many tangible resources for medi-
ation, other than the power of being invited by parties who are in need of help.
How the mediators use and embrace this power is central to judging the effective-
ness of their mediation efforts. The power of being invited cannot be underesti-
mated because,as these cases demonstrate,it provides opportunities for local medi-
ators to learn the skills of mediation by involvement in these exercises.From Moi’s
intervention in Uganda to the mediation of conflicts in Burundi and the DRC,
there has been movement to create more solid institutions for mediation and to
deploy actors who can make a difference in ending these conflicts.
The other factor that has contributed to institutional change relates to questions
of who actually mediates these conflicts. Although Moi’s mediation in Uganda
occurred in the era of single-party regimes in Africa, one of the problems that
stymied his efficacy was the lack of moral standing to prescribe power-sharing
and reconciliation formulas in Uganda when his regime was increasingly
authoritarian at home. In civil wars, the mediators need the credibility to pre-
scribe solutions consistent with their domestic values otherwise they merely
squander the opportunity of invitation.This partly explains why the parties to
Rwanda’s conflict welcomed Tanzania’s mediation because of its record of stur-
dy nation-building and good leadership.
More importantly, questions of the credibility and legitimacy of African media-
tors are at the heart of the search for elder statesmen to mediate in civil conflicts.
The ability of elder statesmen to lend their moral authority in mediation has
more credence than their alleged cultural tools.The cadre of elder statesmen has
also proliferated because of the upsurge of political pluralism in Africa, allowing
some of the serving presidents and heads of state to retire or loose elections, and
matriculate into elder statesmanship. Former Mozambican President, Joaquim
Chissano, is the latest elder statesman, invited to help mediate the conflict in
Northern Uganda in January 2007. There is no certainty, however, whether the
institution of elder statesmanship may encourage other long-serving leaders such
as Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and Gabon’s Omar Bongo to contemplate retire-
ment. Moreover, the political baggage accumulated over the years may impede
their ability to serve meaningful mediation roles beyond the presidency.
The more discreet learning process has been the practice, since Tanzania’s
mediation in Rwanda, to devolve mediation responsibilities to government
institutions that need to develop the personnel that can manage mediation on
routine basis.Thus, the transition from Ambassador’s Mpungwe’s mediation team
on Rwanda to Nyerere’s mediation on Burundi reflects the growth of a pattern
of experiences that has solidified Tanzania’s corps of mediators in the Great
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Lakes region. Similarly, South Africa’s mediation in Burundi and the DRC has
derived from strengthening the professional arms of government that will sustain
future engagements. Finally, there has been considerable learning of best
practices as African mediators have interacted with international experts on
mediation committees from Burundi, the DRC, and Rwanda.These committee
engagements speak to a broad question of forging creative links between African
and international actors in mediation.
Over the years, the mediation of conflicts in the Great Lakes region has entailed
the mobilization and coordination of international pressures, resources, and
attention. Although there has been significant movement in reducing the
competition between African and international actors over the management,
organization, and ownership of mediation, a lot more needs to be done to
establish functional and fruitful collaborative governance in mediation. Resource
imbalances between African and international mediators are not going to go
away very soon, but the problem of coordination can be managed by better
explanations for what the distinctive parties bring to mediation exercises.When
some international actors deride the capacity of African mediators, hostilities
between local and international mediators deepen. In the same vein, some
African actors have the tendency to diminish the significance of international
contributions particularly in cases of successful mediation outcomes.
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