ABSTRACT
This chapter reconstructs how the Regional Initiative, its representatives and associated forces such as the mediation team - subsequently led by Julius Nyerere, Nelson Mandela, Jacob Zuma, and later Charles Nqakula - enacted and performed a regional intervention despite diverse antagonisms and despite knowing little about undertaking an intervention. It shows how the Regional Initiative frequently made use of hegemonic signifiers generally structuring international interventions such as 'democracy' and 'power-sharing'. By being responsible for the mediation as well as by imposing sanctions, the regional elite's agency in shaping politics became visible. The chapter also reconstructs how this new interpretative authority fostered new exclusions, delimitations, and depreciations. It illustrates how the regional interpretative authority emerged only by antagonising both Burundian politics as well as Western approaches to peacemaking. The construction of antagonisms towards other forces in the intervention scene enabled the regional forces to claim authority over others.
