On November 14, 2025, I read a story in The New Times titled "Juvénal Habyarimana’s family: The symbol of moral decay”. The article revealed that Agathe Kanziga, the widow of former President Juvénal Habyarimana, and her children abandoned the president’s body in the mortuary at Kanombe Military Hospital, boarded a French military aircraft, and fled to Paris. They left behind a man who was owed, at the very least, a final prayer.

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That, however, is a minor detail compared to what follows.

Kanziga was born on November 1, 1942, in Giciye, in the former Gisenyi Prefecture, present-day Rubavu District, Western Province. She is the daughter of Gervais Magera and Joséphine Nyiranshakiye. Official records state that Magera was a descendant of Nyamakwa, the Kinglet (Umuhinza) of Bushiru, making Magera a Mushiru royal descendant, and by extension, his daughter Kanziga as well.

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According to Stephen Childress in his dissertation From Revolution to Ruin, Habyarimana’s paternal lineage placed him within the clan of Abungura, descended from the last king of Bushiru, as was his future wife. On his mother’s side, the line traces to Nyamakwa of the Abagesera clan. This was the official narrative establishing a family connection (that never was) between Magera and Suzanne Nyirazuba, the mother of Habyarimana, making Habyarimana and Kanziga cousins.

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The unofficial account, received from credible sources who requested anonymity, tells a different story entirely.

According to those sources, Magera was born in Mirenge, in the former Kibungo Province. He was a prosperous businessman identified by the colonial administration as Tutsi. In 1899, the German administration divided Rwanda into chiefdoms and sub-chiefdoms. Among the structures created was the Chiefdom of Bushiru, with 10 sub-chiefdoms. Magera arrived there as an advisor and secretary to Kamangu, the sub-chief of Birembo. He brought his first wife with him and, once settled in Bushiru, married his second wife, Joséphine Nyiranshakiye, also identified as Tutsi by those same sources.

By the April 1960 decree of the Bureau de l’Information de la Résidence du Ruanda, the sub-chief of Birembo was no longer Kamangu but Ndeze, indicating that Kamangu’s tenure had ended and Magera had returned to private commerce. By the 1960s, Magera was a clothing merchant and one of the few Rwandans who owned a car.

When political parties emerged in the late 1950s, his choice of affiliation was telling: he joined the Union Nationale Rwandaise (UNAR), a conservative, pro-monarchy party whose support base was overwhelmingly Tutsi. He did not join PARMEHUTU, the extremist party built on Hutu identity and anti-Tutsi politics, which would have been the natural home for any man who genuinely descended from a Hutu kinglet.

Léon Delmas interviewed Kamangu and recorded his full genealogy back to Kazigaba, the forefather of the Abazigaba. The fact that a sub-chief could recite his lineage in full, while the supposed descendant of a kinglet could not trace his own, is significant. No one has ever been able to name Magera’s father, and his lineage to Nyamakwa remains untraceable. Kanziga, by the same logic, cannot name her own grandfather.

The explanation is straightforward. When Habyarimana married Kanziga, the country was deep into the process of Hutuisation. Habyarimana had no strong base in Bushiru (originating from Rukiga, currently in Uganda) and needed one. Nyamakwa provided that anchor. Magera, whose origin was in Kibungo and whose Tutsi identity was on record, was refashioned as a Mushiru and recast as a descendant of Nyamakwa. Kanziga’s own lineage was rewritten for political convenience.

That is why Magera joined UNAR and not PARMEHUTU.

That is why his paternal lineage remains untraceable. That is why Kanziga cannot name her own grandfather, because her family connection to Nyamakwa was constructed, not inherited.

Kanziga abandoned her husband’s body in a military mortuary. She abandoned her father’s true identity for political convenience. She abandoned the country whose fate rested in her family’s hands.

Each betrayal follows logically from the one before it.

The author is a media specialist, historian, and playwright.