Background
Grégoire Kayibanda was born in Tare, Rwanda. He came from the south of the country and was an ethnic Hutu.
Grégoire Kayibanda was born in Tare, Rwanda. He came from the south of the country and was an ethnic Hutu.
Educated at Kabgayi Mission, the headquarters of the Roman Catholic archdiocese, and from 1943 at the Grand Seminary of Nyakibanda.
He became a teacher in Kigali in 1949 at the Leon Classe Institute and an inspector of schools in 1953. He continued as a government information officer until 1955 and then editor of “L’Ami” and “Kinyamateka”, two local newspapers. He founded the Rwanda Co-operative Movement in 1952 and his first purely political party in 1957 with the Muhutu Social Movement which campaigned for Hutu rights against the Tutsi government. He worked among the farmers throughout the country to create a “Muhutu cell on every hill”.
The Catholic Archbishop of Kabyagi, Monsignor Perraudin, was impressed by his zeal for social reform and encouraged him to form the Popular Catholic Action youth movement and had him invited to Rome and Belgium. In 1958 he was sent to do a course in Journalism at Brussels and became an attache at the missionary Press centre.
He returned to Rwanda in 1959 to find the Hutu rapidly organising themselves into a mass movement and demanding political changes. The Tutsi chiefs were alarmed, dismissed many of their Hutu sub-chiefs and stoked the fires of Hutu rebellion.
On July 25, 1959, the Tutsi King Mutara III died of suspected poisoning. This was the signal for Tutsi extremists to seize power and attempt to put down the Hutu leaders. Kayibanda, who was building his party into a national movement, named Parmehutu on October 9, 1959, had to be given Belgium protection to safeguard his life.
The -Belgians, barely in control of the country, organised local elections in June 1960 and Parmehutu and its allies won a majority of seats. In October, Kayibanda was made head of the provisional government. King Kigeri V went into exile during the 1959 struggles between the Tutsi and the Hutu and on January 29, 1961, a meeting .of 3,000 leaders was called to declare Rwanda a republic and elect Kayibanda Prime Minister.
In September he organised a referendum which overwhelmingly confirmed the republic, abolished the monarchy and made him an Executive President on October 26, 1961. He then led his country to independence on July 1, 1962.
Unlike neighbouring Burundi, Rwanda had achieved its social revolution with the majority of Hutu in control before independence, but Kayibanda, whose aim was to consolidate peace and build national unity, was unable to prevent an attempt by Tutsi refugees to invade and depose him in December 1963. The invaders were beaten back a few miles from the capital and another wave of vengeance against the Tutsi living in Rwanda was unleashed.
In October 1965 he was re-elected to the Presidency with an increased majority, confirmed yet again in October 1969. Both times his Parmehutu party won every seat in the National Assembly.
His main problem in foreign affairs was with neighbouring Burundi, which harboured tens of thousands of Tutsi refugees. Relations were much improved when Burundi became a republic in November 1966.
A meeting between himself. President Mobutu of Zaire and President Micombero of Burundi was arranged in March 1967, which agreed that refugees on both sides should lay down their weapons. This eased tension until the massacres of the Hutu in Burundi in May 1972, when he appealed to President Micombero for restraint. “The Rwandese Revolution in 1959 did not go to the extent of killing schoolchildren, no matter what tribe they may have been” he said.
He maintained good relations with neighbouring Uganda under President Obote, but when Idi Amin came to power he was accused of allowing his territory to be used for the infiltration of pro-Obote guerrillas. Amin closed the frontier in July 1971 for a month and allowed the exiled King Kigeri V to tour Uganda, but by December 1972 Amin had reversed his policy and was warning the ex-King not to plan subversive activities against Rwanda, “neighbourly brotherly state”.
Before the military coup which ousted him he was the undisputed leader first of the Hutu, then gradually of the Rwanda nation. A self effacing modest man, he lived simply and ruled with impartiality, moderation and regard for the democratic institutions which he had established. He spent as much time as possible in his small home town of Gitarama. But though moderate and tolerant he was not politically creative m face of the overwhelming economic problems in the tiny, overcrowded country. The situation deteriorated in February 1973 when 300 people died in clashes between students of the Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority. Major General Habyalimana intervened on behalf of the army in July and placed Kayibanda under house arrest.