Can the “least bad” man do some good?

May 20: Burundi Presidential Election
Evariste Ndayishimiye (CNDD-FDD): 68.7%
Agathon Rwasa (CNL): 24.18%
Gaston Sindimwo (UPRONA): 16.3%
Domitien Ndayizeye (Kira Burundi Coalition): 0.54%
Léonce Ngendakumana (Front for Democracy in Burundi): .47%
Dieudonné Nahimana (Independent): .41%
Francis Rohero (Independent): .19%

On May 20, more than four million Burundians went to the polls and elected Evariste Ndayishimiye, a long-time insider of the current ruling party, the Conseil National Pour la Défense de la Démocratie - Forces pour la Défense de la Démocratie (CNDD-FDD) to be their first new president in 15 years. And then, on June 8, the country’s political landscape changed once more when Pierre Nkurunziza, the outgoing president, leader of Burundi for the past 15 years, and head of the CNDD-FDD died, reportedly from a heart attack. He was 55.

It is hard to overstate the shadow Nkurunziza cast over Burundian politics during his lifetime. Under his direction, the CNDD-FDD went from one Hutu militia among many during the Burundian Civil War to having a stranglehold on political power. He began his first term as President of Burundi in 2005 and was due to step down this August. Even though he was not on the ballot, Nkurunziza was expected to continue wielding considerable influence in national and party politics. His death leaves a vacuum, and it remains to be seen if President-elect Ndayishimiye will fill it. 

The result of the election was never in doubt. The CNDD-FDD has stacked the national electoral commission with faithful party operatives and directs a powerful youth militia, the Imbonerakure (“those who see far” in Kirundi), that often kills with impunity, especially in the run up to campaign seasons. It used these institutions to control the process and terrorize political opponents in the run-up to the election.

Both Ndayishimiye and his main opponent, Agathon Rwasa of the Congrès National pour la Liberté (CNL), were leaders of Hutu militias during the Burundian Civil War. The former stood by while atrocities were performed, while the latter led a Hutu militia that is associated with several massacres, including one on a passenger bus. Both were also primary signatories to one of the last ceasefires that brought an end to the civil war.

The Burundian Civil War was a 12-year period of intensified conflict between Hutus and Tutsis. It began in 1993 when a small group of Tutsi extremist military officers attempted a coup against Melchior Ndadaye, the first democratically elected President of Burundi (and the first Hutu to be president). Originally, “Tutsi” and “Hutu” were flexible economic titles. However, first the German and then the Belgian colonizers of Burundi (and Rwanda) created a rigid, racial caste system, using the Tutsis as a local elite to rule through. The Tutsi officers assassinated Ndadaye but their coup failed, triggering a wave of revenge killings against Tutsis that plunged Burundi into chaos. At least 300,000 people died. 

The war ended in 2005, when Nkurunziza was sworn in. The high hopes for Nkurunziza as a reformer and uniter of the country, however, were dashed several years later in 2010, when his reelection campaign featured intimidation and low-level terror operations using the newly-founded Imbonerakure.

This Imbonerakure is an outgrowth of the CNDD-FDD’s history as a Hutu militia. After the CNDD-FDD-affiliated forces gave up armed resistance and the CNDD-FDD took over power, the Hutu youth that grew up as guerrilla fighters in the Burundian bush were suddenly out of a job. They had no education and no prospects outside of their connections to the CNDD-FDD. Ostensibly the youth recruitment arm of the CNDD-FDD, the Imbonerakure has been, from its inception, an organization of street fighters bent on intimidating the CNDD-FDD’s political rivals and enriching itself and the party. 

Never is this more clear than in election season: In the months leading up to May’s presidential election, the Imbonerakure ramped up attacks against their political opponents. The human rights organization Ligue Iteka issued a report saying it recorded 67 killings and 204 arbitrary arrests between January and March of this year. Many of the murders came to light when bodies were found in the wooded areas or in rivers. No one has any hope that these abuses will be addressed. Some of the perpetrators of the brutal crackdown that preceded and followed the last presidential election in 2015, when Nkurunziza ran for an unconstitutional third term, are not only free, they have been promoted to prominent government positions.

On May 26, the national electoral commission released provisional results showing that Ndayishimiye had won roughly 69% of the vote. Many were relieved to have gotten through the election without any major unrest or violence, especially after the widespread human rights violations that followed the previous presidential election in 2015. Rwasa, who lost two previous presidential bids against Nkurunziza, came in a distant second, winning 24% of votes cast. 

Rwasa’s party, the CNL, immediately alleged that the results “were prefabricated and stemming from a massive fraud” and lodged a complaint with the Burundian Constitutional Court. Despite the evidence of widespread irregularities during the election, such as recording more votes cast than registered voters at some polling stations, the court affirmed the results on June 4 and named Ndayishimiye the winner. The lower chamber in Burundi’s parliament, the National Assembly, was also included on the May ballot and the CNDD-FDD won there, as well: The party will control 86 seats, while the CNL will hold 32 seats. The remaining two were taken by a third party, UPRONA. 

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I lived in Bujumbura, the largest city in Burundi, as an expatriate for more than a year and a half, and left just as the presidential campaign was beginning. Since leaving, I have been in regular contact with friends that are still in the country and continue to follow the local news. Discussions with my Burundian friends about local politics were always preceded by a scan of the surroundings to see if anyone could be listening and always ended abruptly. This political tension is layered on top of unspoken social conflict between the two major ethnic groups.

Rumor is a powerful force in Burundian politics, especially around elections. When, in the months leading up to the election, suddenly everyone was staring at their phones at a restaurant, it meant that a new rumor was sweeping the city. Photos of mutilated corpses found just outside of villages or hanging from trees, documents of the grisly work of the Imbonerakure, began showing up more frequently on Burundian Twitter.  

I wrote this piece anonymously because I plan on returning to the country one day, and writing anything critical could jeopardize my visa. Since taking power in 2005, the CNDD-FDD has systematically dismantled Burundi’s once-heralded independent media, expelling the BBC and Voice of America and attacking and jailing local journalists. Jean Bigirimana, a journalist for Iwacu (“At home” in Kirundi), one of the last remaining independent local news sites, has been missing since 2016. 

General Evariste Ndayishimiye, the newly-elected president, has served as the CNDD-FDD secretary-general since 2016. He joined the CNDD-FDD when it was still a Hutu militia in 1995 after he survived an attack on Hutu students at the University of Bujumbura. Ndayishimiye went from studying law to leading squadrons of guerrilla fighters through the dense forests and hills in central Burundi. He swiftly moved up the ranks of the CNDD-FDD and was the lead negotiator for the CNDD-FDD with the Burundian government. 

Ndayishimiye has been present at many of the CNDD-FDD’s major peace negotiations, starting with the first round of negotiations for the Arusha Accords in 2000, the peace agreement that provided the framework for ending the Burundian Civil War. And he was the lead signatory for the CNDD-FDD for its 2006 ceasefire with the militia that Agathon Rwasa led, the Parti pour la libération du peuple Hutu-Forces nationales de libération (PALIPEHUTU-FNL).

According to a report by the Burundi Human Rights Initiative, an independent human rights group, Ndayishimiye is “the least bad” member of the party. He is one of the few CNDD-FDD officials who cannot be directly linked to violence or corruption. However, it is also said that he is a follower. “He follows his boss, whoever it happens to be.” 

Some Burundians hope that Ndayishimiye could be a force for reform, based on his performance as the CNDD-FDD’s lead peace negotiator. But he has done little to curb the violence of the CNDD-FDD and the Imbonerakure.

No international election observers were allowed to enter the country to monitor the vote. The government also directed the telecom network operators to block all social media sites on election day, to make it more difficult to report on the election process. The last time this was done was in 2015, during the unrest after Nkurunziza announced he would run for a third term. 

The only independent organization that monitored the election is the Catholic Church, which wields considerable influence in the country. They have attempted to stand up for human rights against the violence of the CNDD-FDD, which has occasionally led government officials to call for them to be defrocked. The church deployed more than  2,700 observers to monitor the polls, and a statement issued by the country’s bishops asserted that they witnessed irregularities, including voter intimidation and fabricated results. 

Following his August inauguration, Ndayishimiye will begin his first seven-year term in a divided, impoverished, isolated country.

He will have to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic that the current administration has all but ignored. The government kicked out four World Health Organization scientists, including the country representative, on May 14, for “unacceptable interference in its management of the coronavirus.” Meanwhile, both the Burundian Minister of Health and the late President Nkurunziza’s wife have been medically evacuated out of the country for what is rumored to be Covid-19 treatment. 

There are two more rounds of elections coming up, with Senate elections in July and local elections in August. The CNDD-FDD has a vested interest in making sure these elections happen so that they can secure as much power as possible. 

After years of repression, intimidation and outright violence, there are very few Burundians who are willing to speak out against the late Nkurunziza, Ndayishimiye, and the CNDD-FDD. Everyone I spoke to for this article — Burundians and expats alike — insisted on anonymity out of fear of reprisal. While there was a notable absence of conflict on election day, that can hardly be equated to peace.