Gérard Mfuranzima

I did a degree in history. I defended my thesis on September 30th, 1985 and on October 1st, I started working at the national radio station. To get in, there was a competition. The test was writing. It was done by hand, because there were no computers at the time! You had to write your text neatly so that it was legible, and then read it out loud into a microphone to see if you had a good radio voice. And on that day, the examiners decided that I had a good radio voice. I came second in the competition. The winner was the current president of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Pierre Claver Ndayicariye. He was assigned to the French section and I went to the Kirundi section.

I must say that I fell into journalism through injustice. In 1985, when I finished university, President Bagaza's regime* was beginning to tighten its grip. Finding employment in certain fields was not easy. We, graduating from university with a degree in history, were normally prepared to become secondary school history teachers; when we were final-year undergraduates, we had even done teaching placements in secondary schools. I taught history between March and May 1985 at the Athénée de Bujumbura, to students of the tenth year and of the second and third year in modern literature. So, naturally, I had to be a history teacher. I submitted my application like everyone else, but I was not lucky enough to be recruited. I remember even asking for a meeting with the chief of staff of the Minister of Education at the time. I said to him, “How is it that you are recruiting other people, even people who have not yet submitted their dissertations, when I have submitted mine and finished everything?”. He replied dismissively, “Oh no, for you there will be classes that we are building right now, close to the border with Tanzania. In two or three years, we will call you and give you work”. I was shocked!

The “you” he was talking about were the Bahutu [= Hutus]. They were against the Bahutu. At one point, there was even a system of discrimination, which was discovered even at the level of Parliament, whereby people were distinguished by the letters U and I, for example in competitions for jobs. U stood for Hutu, I for Tutsi. And everything was done to ensure that the Us, the Hutus, did not get jobs. That is how I too was ostracised.* But I said to myself, “I still have a head to think with, arms and a heart to work for this country. I'm going to try my luck elsewhere”. That's how I went to try my luck in radio. 

Fortunately, when I entered journalism, I wasn't a complete novice. In my second year of my bachelor's degree, we had classes on communication, mass media, radio, television, public opinion and opinion polls. A second advantage for me was that I had participated in a writing competition in 1983, which I won. It was a competition launched by the Ministry of the Interior and open to university students. I even remember the exact title: “Are you for or against maintaining the right of veto in the United Nations Security Council?”. I am a former seminarian; I studied at the Burasira Middle Seminary.* At the seminary, we were really taught how to write in French! Apparently, I wrote an excellent diatribe against the veto option, which even the Minister of Interior liked. I even received a prize, a whole bunch of books. I was very happy. So I was really comfortable when it came to writing. The seminary had trained us very seriously. It was at the seminary that I discovered the Washington Post and Jeune Afrique, with all their analyses and commentaries on world news. So when I went to the radio station, I was really comfortable.

On August 31st, 1988, I had my first international experience as a journalist for national radio. In northern Burundi, the unfortunate events of Ntega-Marangara* had just taken place. They had broken out on August 15th, with people killing each other. Twenty-seven Bahutu intellectuals had written an open letter that had been distributed to all the chancelleries in Bujumbura saying, “Beware, political manipulation is taking place in Burundi, Bahutu people are at risk of being massacred as happened in 1972”. Buyoya** was very, very angry. On August 31st, a day I will never forget, I had just seen my fiancée; I came home and found a Nagra tape recorder with tapes on the table. My cook explained: “Here is a message for you from the director of the radio station: tomorrow, at 6 a.m., you must take off for Gbadolite”. Gbadolite was the home of Mobutu, the president of Zaire at the time.*** I was tired, and I asked myself, “Why me?”. Anyway, the next day at 6 a.m., I got myself to the radio station, and we took the flight at 8 a.m. 

In Gbadolite, it was the first time I saw President Mobutu face to face, less than three metres away – you know the distance between journalists and presidents when they approach them to record them. President Mobutu, with his booming voice, saw Buyoya arrive: “Ah! Buyoya! What's going on with you?”. Mobutu had a really deep voice! After Buyoya, President Habyarimana of Rwanda arrived too. This was because Buyoya had accused Rwanda of sending people to cause trouble in northern Burundi. So Mobutu had organised a meeting to discuss the problem. And at the end of the meeting, Mobutu came out, with his hat and cane, and said: “Ah, you journalists, we're going to tell you what we've just decided”. And to my great disappointment, it was the Zairean Minister of Foreign Affairs who read a communiqué, a text that was practically empty. It said that “at the invitation of President Mobutu Sese Seko, the President of Burundi and the President of Rwanda met to discuss issues concerning the region and Burundi in particular”; that the meeting had been friendly, that the presidents thanked President Mobutu for the meeting, and that was all. But how was it that three presidents could lock themselves away for almost five hours and come out with a statement that was practically empty? I recorded the press release, but they forbade us from conducting interviews. “It's over, the Foreign Minister has spoken”; we didn't interview Mobutu, we didn't interview Buyoya, we didn't interview Habyarimana. They gave us dinner, then we went home. We arrived in Bujumbura at almost 7 p.m.; some colleagues came to pick us up at the airport so that I could quickly get to the radio station to announce the news of this meeting on the 8 p.m. French-language news programme. The presenter was a journalist called Laurent Ndayuhurume. He asked me live on air: “So Gérard, what news do you have for us from the big meeting in Gbadolite?”. I said, “Well, I have a tape”, and we played the tape of the Zairean Foreign Minister speaking. The presenter listened, then asked me, surprised: “Gérard, do you think three presidents can meet, lock themselves away for more than five hours and come out with only that?”. I was live on air! I replied, “Laurent, honestly, I saw the presidents when they came out. This is a serious moment. I'm sure there are important decisions that they haven't told us about but that will be announced soon.”

Indeed, less than two weeks later, Buyoya took some extraordinary decisions. The first decision was to appoint, for the first time since 1965, a government of national unity comprising 50% Bahutu and 50% Batutsi. This was something we were not used to seeing: since Micombero came to power in 1966, the Bahutu had been excluded from the government, with only four out of 22 or 24 members. Never more than four. What's more, in this government of national unity, the prime minister was a Muhutu, Adrien Sibomana, something we hadn't seen since 1965, when Burundi's last Hutu prime minister, Pierre Ngendandumwe, was killed. All this was unexpected! It had almost the effect of a bombshell in Bujumbura. Some people were happy, others were bitter and wondered: “What is he doing... ? Buyoya is selling the country to the Hutus!”. A few days later, we also learned that Buyoya had formed what he called a National Commission to study the issue of national unity, which was also gender-balanced: 50% Bahutu and 50% Batutsi. I say this in all honesty: you may like Buyoya or you may not, but Buyoya was the man who opened up Burundi...

And after my first trip abroad as a journalist, I earned the title of “senior reporter” in Burundi. In June 1990, I was part of the reporting team at the La Baule summit, which had been convened by President Mitterrand. I remember that on that day, Mitterrand really shocked the African presidents. He said: “From now on, France will support countries that agree to open up to pluralist democracy”. However, most African countries were single-party states. There was panic! In Burundi, many were unhappy, as they felt that the experience of pluralism in Burundi had been a bad one.* Mitterrand therefore had people who challenged him in Burundi. Even Buyoya had encountered strong opposition within certain political circles after appointing the government of national unity. Not only was he accused of giving the country to the Bahutu, but there were even doubts about whether he was Tutsi.

Between July and September 1990, I did an internship at RFI [=Radio France Internationale], sent by RTNB, to strengthen my skills. Mainly because I hadn't gone to journalism school, and the mass media and public opinion courses I had taken at university weren't enough. In 1987, I did a short training course in Kigali through the Friedrich Naumann Foundation to learn about radio production, but it only lasted three weeks. At RFI, on the other hand, I was immersed in the world of professional journalism. I remember the people who supervised us: our editor-in-chief, Christian Billmann, who was close to the Socialist Party and set the editorial line; the head of the Africa section, Jean-Karim Fall; Assane Diop... We were a really good team. 

When I returned to Burundi, I discovered that Pope John Paul II had just left my country! He had come to Burundi in September 1990. We passed each other without meeting, because the day I landed in Bujumbura was the day he landed in Kigali, coming from Bujumbura. As it happened, the head of Radio Vatican's “Français-Afrique” programme,* my friend Joseph Ballong-Wen-Mewuda, had stayed in Burundi to send the latest news reports. When I arrived at the radio station, they told him, “There's a former seminarian here who understands the Vatican and the Catholic religion. He'll help you”. I helped him, we got along well, and finally he said, “Gérard, I'm hiring you. Starting today, you'll be our correspondent in Bujumbura”. And so I became a correspondent for Vatican Radio. But after my internship, RFI also said to me, “You have to send us news”. So I became a correspondent for both Vatican Radio and Radio France Internationale in Burundi. At the same time, I was also working as a journalist for RTNB! I loved it all. We were a group of dynamic, enthusiastic young journalists, and we really loved our job. 

But I really learned radio journalism in Germany, in Berlin, in 1992. I attended the International Institute for Journalism in Friedrichshagen, in former East Berlin.* At this institute, I studied with people from several countries: Pakistan, India, Sierra Leone, Ghana, South Africa, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania... The training was in English, and I was the only French-speaking national. Before leaving for Germany, I had done three months of intensive English training, but I still had a strong French accent. My colleagues used to tease me about it: “Gérard, you speak French-style English!”. What I remember most about my training in Germany is the rigour. The Germans are real champions in that respect. Because German journalism is all about facts. You have to be unbeatable: you have to check the facts from at least three sources. And then you have to be concise. The information has to be conveyed quickly. For them, it's “one minute, one fact”. So in one minute, you have to say everything, and say what's essential. I really liked this way of doing journalism. 

Another way of doing journalism was at Vatican Radio, where I went for another immersion internship after Germany, from September 1992 to the end of March 1993. Vatican Radio is the Pope's radio station. Through this radio station, the Pope must enlighten the global Catholic community. We journalists had to communicate the Pope's words and catechesis; we also had to report on the life of the Church around the world; and, of course, we had to pay attention to political and social news. There were almost 40 sections and all the nationalities of the world: Russians, Ethiopians, Latin American sections, Africans, Germans, Indians, Chinese... I liked that too.

When I returned to Burundi on 7 April 1993, it was almost the start of the election campaign for the June 1993 elections. I had left Burundi as editorial secretary; when I returned, RTNB asked me to resume my position and share with my colleagues the knowledge I had newly acquired abroad. After FRODEBU won the pluralist elections,* I received a phone call: “President Melchior Ndadaye needs you”. I was surprised: “Me? Who told him I was here?”. I went to his house. Later, I realised that it was my future Minister of Communication, Jean-Marie Ngendahayo, who had recommended that he hire me as director of the radio station. Ndadaye explained that he needed a young executive to properly reorganise the radio station, which had been operating for almost 30 years under a single-party system, with a single orientation. The country was about to open up to a multi-party system and all voices needed to be heard on the radio, without ostracism. I said, “But I'm only 31 years old. There are guys here who have more experience”. He said, “No, no. It's you. I want you to be the director of the radio station”. So I replied, “This is an honour. I accept”. And I was appointed director of the radio station on 22 July 1993. I will never forget that. I was among the first appointments, because Ndadaye had been sworn in on 10 July. Ah...! I said, “OK, the president trusts me”. So I tried to reorganise the radio station, I introduced reforms, in particular I set up the monitoring service so that we would know what was happening in all the provinces, visiting the provincial correspondents. Before, the monitoring service did not exist. 

On October 20th, I was the director on duty. At the national radio station, we had established what we called the “duty roster” at the management committee level: in the evening, a member of the management committee would organise transport for the teams to get home after work. At the time, the radio and television stations closed at 11 p.m. We had to organise the teams of journalists and technicians who were returning to the south of the capital [= Bujumbura], those who were returning to the centre, and those who were returning to the north. And I remember that on that day, as can be verified in the broadcast logs, after getting the teams home, I noted in the log that there was nothing to report, nothing had happened and everything was really fine. Hey! I got home around 20 or 10 minutes to midnight; I was really tired, it had been an exhausting day. And around 2 or 2:20 in the morning, I heard the phone ringing. I said to my wife, “Don't disturb me, let me sleep”. She said, “They're insisting, you have to answer”. I went to answer. And on the other end of the line was my minister, Jean-Marie Ngendahayo. He said, “Gérard, are you asleep?”. I said, “Minister, I was on duty. I just had a cold meal and was asleep”. He said, “Gérard, go outside, listen to what's happening outside, then come back and tell me what you heard”. I went outside. And for the first time, I heard bombings that I had never heard before in my life. It sounded like the sky was cracking. Boom, boom! I got back on the phone. I said to the minister, “Minister, I heard it”. “What did you understand?”. “Perhaps the rumours of an imminent coup are coming true”. “Yes. That's right. They already took your radio station. They are bombing the palace where President Ndadaye lives”. He told me, “Get out now, because they're rounding up the people who were appointed by Ndadaye. Myself, I've already left”. 

So I fled. I took refuge in a neighbourhood where I assumed people did not know me. A week later, when I heard that the coup plotters had decided to return power to FRODEBU, I decided to return. For eight days, I had no idea what was happening on the radio. When I returned, I found a team in tatters, distraught. The coup plotters had destroyed everything. They had destroyed the tapes on which they had recorded the coup declaration and other statements made immediately afterwards. They had taken down the portrait of President Ndadaye. The workers were no longer coming to clean the toilets. It smelled bad everywhere. The director general, Joseph Ntamahungiro, had taken refuge in Kigali, so I was the acting director general of RTNB. It was my worst management experience. I was miserable. Managing a radio and television station during a coup d'état is something I wouldn't wish on anyone, not even my enemies. You have to call the journalists back to work, tell them that activities must resume, but you have journalists who are in danger, journalists who are afraid, journalists who don't know where to go home. In the neighbourhoods, there were inter-ethnic problems, people were being killed in the streets just like that. At one point, I had to find them hotel rooms to sleep in close to the radio and television stations after they closed down. I know we put journalists up at the Source du Nil Hotel* for a week. There were even television journalists who were afraid to go to nearby hotels; they preferred to spend the night at the radio and television station, watching films or sleeping on the sofa or on the carpet. I was mis-er-a-ble!

But the positive note in this disastrous management, and I mean disastrous, is that I found men of heart, men of great value who accompanied me and said to me: “Since there is a disaster in Burundi, we must not remain in a state of torpor. Let's work to bring calm to the country through radio”. First, I went to see Dr. François-Xavier Buyoya, who was president of the Burundi Red Cross. He said to me, “Gérard, are you the director of the radio station?”. “Yes, I am”. “The country stinks! There are dead bodies everywhere. Give us the opportunity to speak on the radio to tell our rescue workers to collect the bodies that are on the hills and everywhere else, to bury them. If we leave them to rot for a whole month without burial and they are devoured by scavengers, tomorrow there will be a plague”. I thought this was an excellent message. So I gave the Red Cross the opportunity to broadcast its message. Secondly, as the radio station had been completely ransacked and people had fled – some to the mountains, others to what are known as internal refugee camps, and others to the marshes – songs were needed to comfort them. I went to a studio called Trans World Radio, which was a Protestant Christian production station. They gave me some music tapes, including a song that has become practically a classic in Burundi, which sang “Shalom, Shalom...”. Imagine my surprise when the founder of Maison Shalom, Maggie Barankitse, told me that she had named Maison Shalom after hearing this song on national radio! I was very happy to hear this. 

The assassination of Ndadaye marked the beginning of a period of unspeakable violence in Burundi, which continued for years. In March 1995, I was with President Sylvestre Ntibantunganya in Denmark for the World Summit for Social Development. While we were in Copenhagen, we learned that Ernest Kabushemeye, the Minister of Energy and Mines, had just been assassinated in Bujumbura. He was a close personal friend of President Ntibantunganya's – and mine too. He had even let me stay at his house at one point when there was trouble at my home. I saw the news report, but President Ntibantunganya was in the main hall with the other presidents. How could I go to him and tell him that a member of his government had just been killed? The president had to be among the first to know what was happening. I said to his chief of protocol, “You have to let me go and tell the President that things are going badly in Bujumbura”. The chief of protocol refused: “The presidents are in a summit meeting, you have to wait until they finish the session”. I insisted: “I have to go in!”. We argued, but I could see he wasn't going to let me through. But since the television journalists were going to be filming the heads of state, and I had my badge, I arranged to go in with the cameramen, as if I were part of their team. I rushed in. The chief of protocol didn't have the courage to stop me. And I went up to the president. I said to him, “Your Excellency, your minister Ernest Kabushemeye has just been killed”. He replied, “Ah...! Gérard, are you sure?”. I said to him, “You can see the news report that's being broadcast”. I didn't know if we were going to go back, or what was going to happen! He said to me, “Go out, call Bujumbura, find me all the relevant information on this. I'm going to hold a press conference because I know that when the journalists leave here, as they already have the information, they will certainly ask me about it. I need to have all the facts I need to answer”. So I went out, called Bujumbura, collected the news reports, put together a file and gave it to him. He was unhappy. The journalists were asking him questions: “How is Bujumbura? What is happening? What were the circumstances in which your minister was killed?”. And he replied: “I am here, learning the news just like you. Here is what I have for the moment...”, and he read out exactly what I had written for him. 

I have the feeling that we journalists, when there are problems in our countries, are the first to be unhappy. Because we learn about them before others. And we have to communicate them to others. And sometimes we communicate with our feelings. When that happens, people know it. I learned that especially on national radio. When you go on air and broadcast the news, the listener can pick up on your state of mind. They can sense that you're stressed, nervous, tired, happy, all of that. It's difficult to maintain a truly neutral tone. We're all human, after all. And that day… I truly felt sorry for the president. I saw him unhappy, in front of the journalists, explaining the death of a minister, even though he wasn't there—he was over 8,000 kilometers away; he was using my dispatches, what I had been able to pass on to him, to answer questions…

At that time in Burundi, we also had what are called hate media. Newspapers that wrote openly and called for inter-ethnic lynching. Some even drew up lists of people to be killed. I remember a newspaper called Le Carrefour des idées [= The Crossroads of Ideas] that would make a list and, in the next issue, mark the names of those who had been killed with a cross. At one point, I was number 113 on the list of people appointed by Ndadaye in that newspaper. Because of that, I left the country. That was in 1995. As a former employee of Vatican Radio, I had connections at the nunciature, and it was the apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Rino Pasigatto, who told me: “Gérard, you have to leave. Things are really very bad here in Bujumbura, and I wouldn't want to hear that your corpse is lying somewhere”. I went to explain this to the German ambassador, with whom I had become friendly through the activities of the Burundian-German community* and as a former student of the International Institute of Journalism in Berlin. The German ambassador told me, “You’ll pass through our country”. They paid for my plane ticket to Hamburg for a press trip; from Hamburg, I travelled through Berlin, the cities of Rhineland-Palatinate, Cologne, Düsseldorf… They had planned two or three weeks of rest for me before my trip to Rome. I arrived at Berlin-Tegel Airport, and from there, I flew to Rome. In Rome, Vatican Radio took me back as a journalist. I returned to the “French-Africa” newsroom, which had known me since 1990 and which was headed by my friend Joseph Ballong-Wen-Mewuda, who had recruited me as a correspondent at the time.

In 1997, my contract with Vatican Radio ended. They were downsizing, and since I had joined in 1995 after others, I wasn't retained. So, I went to Belgium. I had friends there, including my former director general of the radio and television station, Joseph Ntamahungiro, who had let me take over his interim position in 1993. He was an editor at a Christian organization called the Christian Concertation for Central Africa (CCAC). He said to me, “Gérard, come help me, I need an assistant”. And that's how I ended up spending almost eight months with him. The concertation dealt with news coming from Burundi, Rwanda, and the Congo; we compiled reports and published them. That's where I really gained experience in print journalism, which helped me later on.

In September 1998, a few months after the start of the Arusha negotiations,* I returned to Burundi. I had agreed with my wife that as soon as political negotiations began between the government and the opposition, I would end my exile. And barely back in Burundi, a news agency called Syfia International recruited me as their correspondent in Bujumbura. Similarly, the Bulletin of African Information, a Catholic-affiliated media outlet based in Brussels, also asked me to be their correspondent. So, I began working as a freelance journalist for these two agencies, alongside my job at the national radio station, which I had rejoined.

I did that until 2002-2003. In 2002, I was contacted: “The new Minister of Communication—it was Albert Mbonerane—wants you to be a member of the National Communication Council (CNC)”. So, I joined the CNC. In 2003, I was also called back to manage the radio station; I therefore had to do the work of both CNC member and radio director simultaneously. It was possible to hold both positions, but it was a lot of work, in addition to my work for Syfia. So, I relinquished the Bulletin of African Information. I remained radio director until 2006. After that, I held positions more explicitly involved in social and political issues. In 2006, I became a member of the CTDC, the Technical Commission on Civilian Disarmament and the Fight against the Proliferation of Small Arms and Light Weapons. I was responsible for drafting the communication strategy on this matter. I was a member of this commission until 2010, when I was also Chief of Staff to the Minister of Information and Communication and Relations with Parliament. In October 2010, I became the representative of AWEPA, the Association of European Parliamentarians with Africa, which closed its offices in Burundi in December 2015. Meanwhile, on October 19th, 2011, I had requested early retirement from RTNB, and in January 2012, I officially ended my career as a journalist. Later, from March 2016 to May 2017, I headed the Security Governance Management Unit at GIZ International. And on July 1, 2017, I joined the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as Chief of Staff to the Commission's Chairperson, who at the time was Bishop Jean-Louis Nahimana. At the end of the first term of the TRC, in 2018, the current president, Pierre Claver Ndayicariye, asked me to stay on as head of communication and information.