P squared

It's been a rather interesting few months in our East African politic.

Our friends in Burundi made some bold attempts to urge their leaders on and this for now seems to have failed. In the meantime right next door in the historically volatile Rwanda, another president seemed to have received the go ahead to keep his spot in the centre. 

I could not help but think about a tweet I noticed on the Internet in which a reference was made to stealing from 'Paul to pay Peter'. And so my thoughts run wild with ideas about Paul Kagame on one hand and Pierre (Peter) Nkurunziza on the other. 

Both military men. Both leading fragile democracies and both being urged to make room for others.

Saint Paul is still a formidable foe and by all accounts quite a military strategist, from what our sources tell us, he does not take to kindly to opposition movements and has managed to stretch the arm of his government all the way to South Africa and France.

Internally and regionally he has found it rather difficult keeping the calm with various groups attempting to wage war against his government from bases in the large Congo. The existence of minerals in the region has done little to help the situation- this as well as posturing from friends and foes alike in the area where the ethnicity card card has been played to the full. 

The South Africans have done their best to flex their muscle in the region and have often stepped in at crucial moments to help steer the movements of their northern neighbors. 

France on the other hand has had to deal with decades of guilt and off course the residue from its colonial years. In attempts to free itself from the disasters in the early nineties, the French have taken on the role of arbiter in the internal conflicts of the country but with limited success. 

The military move in Burundi (by the coup plotters) effectively robbed the rapidly evolving movement of its momentum thereby preventing civil society from claiming its largely peaceful drive towards the protection of the sacred constitution (and the contents of the Tanzanian peace accord and Agreement).

By seeming to attach themselves to the peaceful activity in the streets, the military and it's top men gave the absent president much more power to claim the existence of bad elements in the army and therefore to garner much more support in the center.