Louis Rwagasore
| Prince Louis Rwagasore | |
|---|---|
| Crown Prince Louis Rwagasore | |
| Born |
10 January 1932 Ibwami, Gitega |
| Died | 13 October 1961 (aged 29) Bujumbura, Ruanda-Urundi |
| Burial | Gitega |
| Spouse | Marie-Rose Ntamikevyo |
| Issue | Princess Marie-Thérèse Rwagasore Princess Pia Rwagasore |
| House | Ntwero |
| Father | Mwambutsa IV |
| Mother | Thérèse Kayonga |
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.
Prince Louis was the son of Mwami (King) Mwambutsa IV and his first wife, Thérèse Kayonga. He attended Groupe Scolaire d'Astrida (now Groupe Scolaire Officiel de Butare) in Rwanda. 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, 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.
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.
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