The failed genocide ideology of Grégoire Kayibanda in Rwanda is being tested in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo). The current leadership of DR Congo is simply replicating what failed in Rwanda 31 years ago.
ALSO READ: Outcry as DR Congo army spokesman spreads anti-Tutsi tropes
In 1957, Grégoire Kayibanda launched the Bahutu Manifesto, a document that laid the groundwork for anti-Tutsi racial hatred. The Manifesto categorized Rwandans along racial lines, casting the Hutu as the owners of Rwanda and the Tutsi as foreign invaders.
Kayibanda designed an anti-Tutsi campaign based on three main slogans. First, the "end of the Tutsi race," considered as a threat. Second, the "two nations" metaphor, and third, the "true owners" rhetoric.
In a public radio address on March 29, 1964, following a Tutsi rebel attack, Kayibanda warned that continued opposition would lead to the "total and precipitated end of the Tutsi race.”
Kayibanda later used a paraphrased quote originally by British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli about England&039;s rich and poor, applying it to Hutu and Tutsi to claim they were "two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy."
Finally, he promoted the narrative that the Hutu were the "true owners" of the country and that the Tutsi were invaders who had dominated and scorned the Hutu, thus justifying the Hutu so-called revolution.
Kayibanda studied journalism in Europe in the mid-1950s. It was there that he learned about Nazi ideology. Back in Rwanda, he launched the PARMEHUTU party in 1957 with similar Nazi ideology, an ideology that was brought down when the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) introduced a new unifying ideal of Ndi Umunyarwanda – i am Rwandan.
On July 27, 2025, I heard Kayibanda live on Radio-Télévision Nationale Congolaise (RTNC). The spokesman of the Congolese army (FARDC) publicly warned Congolese people not to marry Tutsi. "You must be very careful when you marry a Tutsi woman... she may engage in treachery by bringing her cousin into the house to have children with him instead of her husband... and she will convince you that the Tutsi race is superior... Ubwenge... They are capable of anything...," said Gen Sylvain Ekenge. For me, it was like hearing someone repeat the "Ten Commandments of the Hutu," written by Kayibanda and Joseph Habyarimana Gitera, the first post-colonial extremist Hutu political leaders of Rwanda.
Ekenge&039;s address is a continuation of propaganda taught by the Minister of Communication of DR Congo, Patrick Muyaya, who gave his propaganda a name: "poison Rwandais" (Rwandan poison). Muyaya will talk of "Rwandan poison," Ekenge and Justin Bitakwira will use the term "ubwenge," others like Jean-Claude Mubenga and Kalonji Kabamba will use terms like "Congolais telema" and "defendons la patrie," but all aim at telling the Congolese people that they are the "true owners" of DR Congo and that the others are strangers. And all of them know that before 1800, the DR Congo we are talking about today did not exist.
One of the strong supporters of this Parmehutu ideology, Jean-Claude Mubenga, a Congolese citizen who lives in the U.S., was received by President Tshisekedi on December 22, 2025. By hosting Mubenga, Tshisekedi endorsed his views and what he has been publicly telling people: that the entire Congolese Tutsi and Banyamulenge community are "cockroaches," "viruses," and "infiltrators", views that are his own. We all remember when he said "Tokosilisa bango moko moko" (We will kill them all, one by one), referring to Tutsi army officers.
How has this Kayibanda genocide ideology infiltrated the entire high-ranking officials of the DR Congo government? The answer is one: FDLR.
Since the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi was stopped by the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) in July 1994, the perpetrators of the genocide fled with their genocidal ideology and continued to spread it in DR Congo.
The leadership in Kinshasa prioritizes the extermination of the Tutsi. Will they succeed where Hitler, Kayibanda, and Habyarimana failed? Ndi Umukongomani – I am Congolese – is the only remedy for the Congolese crisis.
Ndi Umukongomani is better than Tshisekedi’s "Tokosilisa bango moko moko."