BURUNDI: The country yesterday achieved a peaceful transfer of power. Declan Walsh was there
It was a great day for Burundi, said Nelson Mandela, Africa's old man of peace, as he flew into the war-pocked capital of a half-forgotten conflict to bless a historic handshake.
President Pierre Buyoya, a minority Tutsi who came to power in a coup d'état seven years ago, embraced his former rival, Domitien Nzayizeye, an ethnic Hutu, as he handed over the symbols of power.
The ceremony marked the first peaceful transition of power since war in the tiny central African nation broke out 10 years ago. Since then at least 300,000 people, most of them civilians, have died.
Speaking before a packed, hot auditorium, Mr Nzayizeye swore to "fight against genocide", a reference to the periodic convulsions of ethnic violence of the past 30 years. Two portraits on the wall were reminders of that bloody past: one of Prince Louis Rwagasore, the Tutsi monarch murdered on the eve of independence; the other of Melchior Ndadaye, the democratically elected Hutu assassinated by Tutsi soldiers in 1993.
Mr Mandela looked frail as he shuffled across the stage with an assistant on one side, a cane on the other. For years he has patiently sponsored negotiations he described as "long and often painful".
But if the great peacemaker looked frail, so, too, did the chances for a lasting solution in Burundi.
War rages on. Only 10 days ago Hutu rebels, who have refused to enter the peace process, launched a three-day shelling blitz on the capital, Bujumbura. Up to 20 civilians were killed and a hole punched in the minister of defence's house.
Speaking by phone from Libreville, the capital of Gabon, the FDD leader, Peter Nkurunziza,wrote off the power handover as a "cosmetic" exercise.
He said he would suspend attacks only if the Tutsi-led army respected a ceasefire agreement they signed together last December but which now lies in tatters. Otherwise, he warned, the result would be "catastrophic".
Analysts believe Mr Nkurunziza is touring west Africa to raise funds for fresh fighting. Army officers' fears are growing of a large-scale showdown.
"The country is burning. It has never been this bad," said a South African analyst, Jan van Eck. "In the next few months you will probably see a major escalation by the army against the FDD in the hope they will voluntarily decide that negotiations are the only option."
The humanitarian consequences of the violent surge are already being painfully felt. After a decade of grinding conflict, Burundi is already one of the world's most miserable, half-forgotten corners. Now Western aid agencies have dramatically scaled back their operations.
Most international staff have retreated to Bujumbura or gone on leave; the British agency Tearfund and two others have withdrawn entirely.
"Last year we had 89 missions cancelled. In the past four months we've had 106. The areas of the heaviest fighting are also where people most need food aid. But we often can't get there," said Aya Schneerson of the World Food Programme.
The new President, Mr Nzayizeye, prides himself as a common man who enjoys Saturday football and once traded everything from peanuts to moonshine. He was jailed twice, once under Mr Buyoya, an experience he describes as "a nightmare".
Mr Nzayizeye is due to steer a transitional government to democratic elections 18 months from now. But for many Hutus he is merely a figurehead for continued Tutsi supremacy.
Although they number just 15 per cent of the population, Tutsis have held a steel grip on power for most of the past 30 years. And crucially, they still retain a stranglehold on the army.
"We took up arms to fight the system of terror, the system of lies, and that system is still there," said Pasteur Habimana, a spokesman for the National Liberation Front, the second, smaller, Hutu rebellion based in the hills surrounding Bujumbura.
The omens for Mr Nzayizeye's survival are not good. Burundi's first Hutu president was assassinated by Tutsi paratroopers in 1993. Six months later the second died alongside the president of Rwanda in a a plane crash that sparked the 1994 genocide.
The army ousted the third, Sylvestre Ntibantunganye, in a 1996 coup. Now a senator, he keeps presidential portraits of the two dead presidents and himself hanging on his living room wall. "We are the three Hutu Musketeers," he remarked wryly.
But since then much has changed, he added. "Many Tutsis realise this country is ungovernable without Hutu participation. The army no longer thinks it is invincible." Over 100 South African soliders have been deployed to Bujumbura as the advance guard of a 3,000-strong African Union peacekeeping mission.
Ethiopians and Mozambicans are due to arrive soon. It is an ambitious first mission for the AU.
But for now, there is little peace to keep. It is clear President Nzayizeye must renew the ceasefire, and quickly. Otherwise yesterday's fine words and carefully choreographed ceremonies could well come to nothing.