Prime
Did Habyarimana have roots in Kabale?
Former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana.
The claim that former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana was a Mukiga from Kigezi remains an unresolved account. It is claimed that his father was a Mukiga from Kigezi. It is also said that Habyarimana’s father, Jean Baptiste Ntibazirikana, went to Rwanda as a porter around 1903.
Ntibazirikana went with a caravan of White Fathers (Catholic priests) from Uganda who crossed into the Belgian territory of Rwanda-Urundi as it was called then before it became Rwanda.
The Catholic priests were from Uganda en route to Kabgayi Catholic mission near Kigali in Rwanda – where the first Catholic missionaries had established a base in 1878.
Around 1903 when the Catholic priests reached Kabale on their way to Rwanda, Ntibazirikana as a young man joined the porters to Kabgayi. Ntibazirikana settled in Gisenyi and married Suzanne Nyirazuba, a Rwandan woman and Habyarimana was born in March 1937.
Habyarimana’s cousin speaks out
Recently, Sunday Monitor met Habyarimana’s cousin John Bakaruhire popularly known as Kamashara, at his home in Kirigime Division, Kabale Municipality.
But the 75-year-old immediately warned this reporter not to bring him trouble after the topic was introduced. However, Kamashara offered to answer only one question. He also refused to be recorded or photographed.
“Those who claimed that Habyarimana was a Mukiga from here [Kabale], don’t know the truth. Habyarimana was a Mukiga from Gisenyi in Rwanda. Ruhengeri, Gisenyi, Byumba and Kibuye in Rwanda are inhabited by Bakiga of Rwanda,” he said.
“In fact, the Banyarwanda used to call them ‘Nabakiga bumuRwanda’ (they are Rwandan Bakiga).”
Kamashara emphasised that Habyarimana was not a Mukiga from Kabale, but nevertheless admitted he was a Mukiga of Rwanda.
“Even his father Ntibazirikana had never stepped a foot in Uganda. Never! That I can tell anybody because I saw him. I used to ride a bicycle in his compound. When I was young, I would ride a bicycle to Rwanda [Gisenyi] to visit them, they were my uncles. My mother Jovenine Kamashara was a sister to Habyarimana’s father,” Kamashara told Sunday Monitor, adding that his mother was a step-sister to Habyarimana’s father.
Kamashara’s press interview in 1994
In April 1994, a week after Habyarimana and others had been assassinated in a plane crash in Kigali on their way from Tanzania, the defunct Weekly Topic of April 13, 1994, had an exclusive interview with Kamashara.
Kamashara told the paper that even President Museveni was aware that he, Kamashara, was Habyarimana’s relative. He lamented that the local authorities in Kabale had frustrated their attempt to reach President Museveni for assistance. The paper quoted Kamashara as having said: “They wanted Habyarimana buried at his relative’s place in Kabale.”
When Sunday Monitor asked Kamashara about the family’s wish to have Habyarimana buried in their land in Kabale, he denied.
“Habyarimana was a Rwandan. How could he be buried here?”
Habyarimana, the Burundian president and others died on April 6, 1994, in a plane crash as he returned from Arusha peace talks in Tanzania aimed at ending the war in Rwanda. His death sparked the 1994 genocide that left between 800,000 and one million Tutsi and moderate Hutu dead in 100 days of bloodbath.
