Violence grips Bujumbura

As the death of dozens of people in Burundi on Friday last week underlined the growing turmoil in the country, a regional Catholic church leader said the international silence on the violence there was “frightening”. In the capital, Bujumbura, the sound of gunfire ?is ?ever more frequent, according to witnesses, and dead bodies in the streets are becoming more commonplace, as government forces battle the opposition.

The crisis flared in April this year, after President Pierre Nkurunziza, an evangelical Christian, defied calls, including those from Catholic bishops, not to run for a third term as president?.? He was elected in a controversial poll in July and sworn in in August, plunging the country into civil conflict.

“Everyone is silent, even the international community. We are not hearing from the Catholic bishops in Burundi, even as the ­situation deteriorates,” Fr Chrisantus Ndaga, Tanzanian director of social communications for the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in East and Central Africa?, told The Tablet. “This is a country near Rwanda where a genocide occurred in 1994. Is the world waiting for another genocide before it acts?” queried Fr Ndaga.

The priest feared the violence was taking an increasingly ethnic dimension with the Hutu tribe engaging in targeted killing of the Tutsis to protect President Nkurunziza.

SOUTH AFRICA: The Jesuit Institute South Africa said it hopes “sanity” will prevail after the country saw three finance ministers in four days, writes Munyaradzi Makoni. President Jacob Zuma fired Nhlanhla Nene on 9 December, replacing him with David van Rooyen. The rand tumbled and a scramble for damage control saw van Rooyen dropped for former finance minister Pravin Gordhan.