Belgian officials assassinated Prince Rwagasore in Burundi, new book reveals

The Belgian state bears “overwhelming responsibility” for the assassination of Prince Louis Rwagasore in Burundi, reveals Ludo De Witte, a Belgian sociologist who has spent five years investigating the killing of Prince Rwagasore. His investigative findings are compiled in a new book called Murder in Burundi.

De Witte argues that the role of the Belgian state in the assassination of Prince Rwagasore was never properly examined in previous inquiries made by the Belgian colonial court, the newly independent government of Burundi, and the United Nations.

In 1952, the 20-year-old Prince, after attending universities in Antwerp and Louvain, in Belgium, returned to Burundi and led an anti-colonial movement.

In 1956, Rwagasore urged Belgian Vice-Governor General Jean Paul Harroy, to install a “Murundi” constitution in preparation for eventual Burundi independence. One year later, he founded a series of cooperatives to encourage economic independence.

Belgian authorities, however, recognized these cooperatives as a threat to their colonial power and banned them in 1958. In response, Rwagasore founded the Union for National Progress (UPRONA) as Burundi’s first indigenous political party and became its leader. At the UPRONA Party Congress in March 1960, Rwagasore demanded total independence for Burundi and called on the local population to boycott Belgian stores and refuse to pay taxes. He called for civil disobedience which led to him being placed under house arrest.

On September 18, 1961, parliamentary elections were held and Rwagasore’s party won with a landslide victory, taking 58 of the 64 seats. His victory was a surprise for the Belgian administration that was supporting the opposition. On September 28, Rwagasore was installed by Parliament as the prime minister. His administration only lasted 16 days. Rwagasore’s nation-building efforts which promoted nationalism and decolonization challenged the Belgian divide and rule colonial policy. He directly challenged Belgian colonial authority.

On October 13, 1961, as Prince Rwagasore was having dinner at Hotel Tanganyika in Bujumbura, he was assassinated by a Greek mercenary. Rwagasore was then only 29 years old. Most historians believe that his death was the result of a conspiracy between the Belgians and the pro-Belgian Christian Democratic Party (CDC) which played opposition to  Rwagasore’s UPRONA party. At the time of his assassination, Rwagasore was positioned to become the first political leader of independent Burundi.

De Witte’s  evidence of the Belgian official’s involvement in the assassination was obtained from volumes of declassified documents from archives in Brussels and London. In his research, De Witte found that Roberto Régnier, the Belgian resident (governor), convened a crisis meeting of senior Belgian officials and CDC allies, where he revealed the plot.  “Rwagasore must be killed”, the Belgian governor told his guests.  

De Witte also reveals that the first clue of the existence of reports on the assassination of Rwagasore was found in a dispatch from Britain’s then ambassador to Burundi, James Murray. In 1962, Murray sent a report to his country indicating that some senior Belgians had a “pathological hatred” of Rwagasore, who they believed would harm Belgian-Burundi relations. He recalled Régnier’s “words which go very far in the direction of incitement to murder.”

Neighbouring Rwanda’s King Mutara III Rudahigwa also died under unclear   circumstances in Bujumbura, Burundi, on July 25, 1959.

The prime suspects are the same colonial Belgian officials who ordered the assassination of Prince Rwagasore. King Rudahigwa, like prince Rwagasore, agitated for Rwanda’s independence and championed the unity of the Rwandan people, who had been assigned “ethnicities” by the Belgians to entrench their divide and rule policy.