Prince Louis Rwagasore

Crown Prince Louis Rwagasore (10 January 1932 – 13 October 1961) is Burundi's national and independence hero. He was a Burundi nationalist and prime minister.

Biography

Prince Louis was the son of Mwami (King) Mwambutsa IV and his first wife, Thérèse Kayonga.^[1] He attended Groupe Scolaire d'Astrida (now Groupe Scolaire Officiel de Butare) in Rwanda.^[2] He briefly attended university in Belgium, but left to spearhead his country's anti-colonial movement. He founded a series of African cooperatives to encourage economic independence, but these were quickly banned by Belgium in 1958.

That same year, the prince established a nationalist political movement, Union for National Progress (UPRONA). Believing that the role of the royal family should transcend partisan politics, his father promoted him to Chief of Butanyerera, but Rwagasore turned down the appointment so that he could devote himself fully to the nationalist cause. Rwagasore, a Ganwa,^[3] married a woman who most people thought was a Hutu. It is believed that Rwagasore did so in a bid to play down the ethnic divisions between ethnic groups, especially between Tutsi and Hutu, which he believed the Belgian colonial rule had pitched against one another following the divide et impera (divide and conquer) practice. At the first UPRONA Congress in March 1960, Rwagasore demanded complete independence for Burundi and called on the local population to boycott Belgian stores and refuse to pay taxes. Because of his calls for civil disobedience, he was placed under house arrest.

Despite the setbacks, Rwagasore and UPRONA won a clear victory in elections for the colony's Legislative Assembly on 8 September 1961, winning 80 percent of the vote. The next day, he was declared Prime Minister, with a mandate to prepare the country for independence.^[4]

Assassination in 1961

Prince Rwagasore's Tomb

Just two weeks later, on 13 October 1961, Rwagasore was assassinated while taking his dinner at the Hotel club du lac Tanganyika in Bujumbura. The assassin, a Greek national named Jean (Ioannis) Kageorgis, was accompanied by three Burundians, all members of the pro-Belgian Christian Democratic Party (PDC). Within three days, all four suspects were arrested and they quickly implicated two high-ranking members of the PDC (Jean-Baptiste Ntidendereza and Joseph Biroli), with one initially admitting his guilt but later retracting this.^[5]

Historians have suggested that the Belgian colonial authorities may have played a significant role in the assassination although no official inquiry has ever been carried out by the Belgian government (as was done by Belgian authorities in 2002 over the alleged involvement of Belgium in the death of Patrice Lumumba). As early as the 1970s, René Lemarchand, an expert on Burundian history, claimed that the PDC's European secretary, Ms. Belva was allegedly told by the Belgian Regent Roberto Régnier that "Rwagasore must be killed".^[6] In addition, several days before his assassination, Prince Rwagasore filled a complaint against seven Belgian officials including the Belgian Governor-General, Jean-Paul Harroy and Régnier.^[7] Prior to his execution for murdering Prince Rwagasore, Jean Kageorgis explicitly accused Harroy and Régnier of responsibility in the murder stating, “Ce crime fut perpétré par la tutelle, M. Harroy et M. Regnier.”^[8]

In 2011 the Belgian journalist, Guy Poppe, published "De moord op Rwagasore, de Burundese Lumumba" (The death of Rwagasore, the Burundian Lumumba) and claimed that irregularities in the investigation of the prince's murder included, among other details, a lack of questioning of witnesses including Harroy, Régnier, Kageorgis' Belgian fiancee, and Ms. Belva. Poppe also noted the disappearance of files from the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs's archives, including a transcript from an interview that was conducted with Régnier following his return to Belgium from Burundi.^[9] Poppe also claimed that the Belgian Foreign Ministry threatened to fire three former colonial officers if they traveled to Burundi in order to testify during the murder trial.^[10] Poppe noted the investigation's failure to follow up links between the Burundian PDC party and the Belgian Christian Social Party, whose party leader, August de Schryver, had been Minister of the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi until 1960.^[11]

Following the assassination inter-ethnic rivalries between the Hutu and Tutsi within UPRONA flared.

Prince Louis Rwagasore Stadium was named in his honour and the football club Prince Louis FC. His tomb was constructed on the hills overlooking Bujumbura and consists of a memorial with three arches. The original inscription above the arches read "Dieu, Roi, Patrie" (God, King, Country). Oct 13 is a public holiday in Burundi, in his memory.

Ancestry

References