Rwanda's former Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu died on Saturday, December 2, in Brussels, Belgium, where he lived in self-imposed exile. He was 78. Twagiramungu was the country's first post-Genocide prime minister, a position he held from 1994-1995 before he resigned and joined opposition politics. There had not been any official communication from his family or political allies but his death has widely been reported both in the mainstream and social media. He moved to Belgium before returning to Rwanda to contest in the country's first democratic elections in 2003 in which he scrapped just over 3.6 per cent of the votes cast, losing to President Paul Kagame who garnered over 95 per cent. Twagiramungu, the son-in-law of former president Gregoire Kayibanda, shot to prominence in politics in 1991, at a time the MRND government of Juvenal Habyarimana was under pressure from the then RPF rebel movement, which would ultimately capture power in July 1994. He emerged as the head of the Republican Democratic Movement (MDR), an offspring of what used to be MDR-Parmehutu extremist party, but was largely seen as a moderate figure, which saw his name put forward for the position of prime minister under the Arusha peace accords between the Habyarimana government and RPF. The deal would collapse in April 1994 when radical elements in the Habyarimana regime masterminded a fatal attack on his plane, killing him and everyone else on-board, before unleashing the Genocide against the Tutsi, which claimed the lives of over a million people. Twagiramungu was a target during the ensuing slaughter as he was viewed as a moderate Hutu figure who opposed the genocidal killings (against the Tutsi) and the RPF forces helped evacuate him. He lost close family members in the killings. In July 1994, after the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF- Inkotanyi) stopped the Genocide, Twagiramungu was installed as prime minister in the Government of National Unity, signalling the RPF's commitment to share power with other political players. However, he would resign in August 1995, fleeing into exile where he made a U-turn, suddenly promoting ethnic politics and extremist ideologies. In the years that followed, Twagiramungu became a virulent critic of the RPF-led government, and eventually helped establish the MRCD Ubumwe coalition that created the infamous FLN terrorist group responsible for fatal attacks on villages in southwestern Rwanda in which civilians were murdered in cold blood. In a 2019 video, Twagiramungu called on Rwandans to join the MRCD Ubumwe-FLN group, which also had Paul Rusesabagina and Callixte 'Sankara' Nsabimana among it's top leaders. Both Rusesabagina and Sankara were later arrested and put on trial in Kigali over the terrorist attacks. The two, along with their accomplices, were later granted presidential pardon.
