Melchior Ndadaye

Who is Melchior Ndadaye?

Melchior Ndadaye (28 March 1953 - 21 October 1993) was a Burundian banker and politician who became the country's first democratically elected president and its first Hutu head of state. Educated at the Gitega Normal School until unrest disrupted his studies in 1972, he later lived in exile in Rwanda, where he helped found a movement of progressive Burundian students, before returning to political organizing in Burundi. In 1986 he was among the founding members of the Front for Democracy in Burundi, known as FRODEBU, which he led into the country's first multiparty presidential election. On 1 June 1993 Ndadaye won that historic vote with nearly sixty-five percent of the vote, defeating incumbent Pierre Buyoya, and he was sworn in as president on 10 July 1993. In office he pursued reforms intended to ease decades of ethnic tension, including changes to the composition and command structure of the Tutsi-dominated military and police, moves that alarmed segments of the army and political elite whose economic interests were tied to the previous order. On 21 October 1993, only about three months into his term, mutinying soldiers seized him along with other senior officials and executed them during an attempted coup. His assassination triggered a wave of ethnic violence that escalated into Burundi's decade-long civil war, in which more than one hundred thousand people are estimated to have died.

Sources: Melchior Ndadaye, Wikipedia · EBSCO Research Starters, 'Burundian President Is Assassinated' · Human Rights Watch, World Report 1995 - Africa: Burundi