Ndayahoze, Martin

The only Hutu officer (Second Lieutenant) to be appointed to a governmental position under Micombero. Until his assassination on April 30, 1972, he served as Minister of Information from July 1966 to December 1969, and Minister of Economy until March 1971. In early September 1969, at a time when he combined the functions of Minister of Information and General Secretary of the ruling party, Union pour le Progrès National (Uprona), he was contacted by a group of Hutu conspirators who trusted him enough to let him on their plan to engineer a coup for the night of September 16-17, whereupon he immediately reported the plot to Micombero. Some 70 persons were arrested, of whom 25 were sentenced to death. Unusually outspoken, he never missed an opportunity to call attention to the dangers of spiraling ethnic rivalries; retrospectively, his reports to the presidency, written in 1971 and 1972, read like remarkably prescient analyses of the harbingers of genocide.

For further reference:

Chrétien, Jean-Pierre & Dupaquier, Jean-Francois, 2007. Burundi 1972 : Au bord des genocides, Karthala.

Lemarchand, René, 1970, Rwanda and Burundi, London: Pall Mall Press.

Lemarchand, René, 1994, Burundi: Ethnic Conflict and Genocide, Cambridge: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Cambridge University Press.

Nsanze, Augustin, 2007, Le Burundi Contemporain: L’Etat-nation en question (1956-2002), Paris: L’Harmattan.