On May 8, 2026, the Congolese Hutu community held its first-ever national Hutu Day. The event took place at Tata Raphaël Stadium in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo).

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None of the more than 250 ethnic groups in DR Congo has its own national day—not even the Indigenous Pygmy peoples, who are recognized during the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, observed annually on August 9.

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"It is a great honour for us to celebrate our national day for the first time,” said Professor Raphaël Nyabirungu, the President of the Hutu community in DR Congo, at the gathering. Nyabirungu credited President Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi for granting the permission that made the event possible.

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This raises a direct question: what drives Tshisekedi’s decision to validate a Congolese Hutu national day, while both Hutu and Tutsi populations in North Kivu have been denied Congolese citizenship since the 1960s?

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Before the colonial era, both communities held undisputed citizenship in North Kivu, where together they made up roughly 80% of the population. That changed during the Kanyarwanda War of the mid-1960s, which targeted Kinyarwanda-speaking people in North Kivu—both Hutu and Tutsi alike. Politicians mobilized the Hunde, Nande, and Nyanga communities to view Kinyarwanda speakers as outsiders with no legitimate place in the country.

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However, Aloys Tegera Buseyi, the author of Les Banyarwanda du Nord-Kivu, wrote that the fundamental cause of the Kanyarwanda War was politicians from so-called indigenous communities who sought to disrupt security and marginalize Kinyarwanda speakers, out of fear of being outvoted in elections due to their large numbers.

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Key figures behind the Kanyarwanda War included Denis Paluku, the first governor of the newly created North Kivu province in 1962; Bénézeth Moley, a Hunde leader and vice-president of the provincial government; and Sylvestre Kahindo, a Nande leader and minister of public health.

Together, they persuaded the country’s then president Mobutu Sese Seko’s regime to actively disenfranchise the Banyarwanda, both Hutu and Tutsi. Although Mobutu granted them citizenship in 1972, it was revoked in 1981.

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Given that both communities endured the same systemic marginalization throughout the twentieth century, how does Tshisekedi reconcile honouring the Hutu community with a national day while simultaneously endorsing a nationwide campaign for the elimination of Congolese Tutsi?

The answer lies in the message itself. Tshisekedi’s actions clearly signal, to both the Congolese people and the international community, that the Tutsi are the enemy—by extension, the AFC/M23 rebellion and Rwanda, both of which his administration frames as Tutsi-aligned. The AFC/M23 rebellion is fighting to uproot tribalism, nepotism, corruption, and the genocide ideology spread by FDLR, among other vices, widespread in DR Congo.

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Tshisekedi’s strategy is to consolidate a coalition of state and non-state actors behind a renewed campaign against the Tutsi. That coalition includes the Burundian authorities and the Kinshasa-backed genocidal FDLR militia, both custodians of former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana’s genocidal ideology. Let’s not forget the fact that FDLR was formed by the leftovers of the génocidaires who slaughtered more than one million Tutsi people in Rwanda in 1994.

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These moves form a pattern, not a coincidence: his tolerance of FDLR, his ties to Jean‑Luc Habyarimana, Habyarimana’s son, his coordination with Gitega, and his recognition of the Hutu as the only legitimate Congolese Rwandophones.

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Each action feeds the same strategic logic: consolidate power, defeat the AFC/M23, and ultimately target Kigali—a long-held ambition of his administration and its allies.

As the Kinyarwanda proverb reminds us, ibuye ryagaragaye ntiriba rikishe isuka—no stone that is seen can break the hoe.

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