Sylvestre Ntibantunganya

Sylvestre Ntibantunganya (born 8 May 1956) is a Burundian politician.

Sylvestre Ntibantunganya was born on 8 May 1956 in the Commune of Gishubi, Gitega Province.

He is an ethnic Hutu.

As a child he intended on becoming a priest, and thus after finishing primary school he attended Mugera seminary.

He left after his first semester and then attended university.

A Hutu, Ntibantunganya became involved in poltics in the 1970s, eventually joining the Marxism-influenced Burundi Workers' Party (UBU) before leaving it to cofound the Front for Democracy in Burundi (FRODEBU) in 1986.

In the 1970s Ntibantunganya was a member of the Movement of Progressive Barundi Students (Mouvement des Etudiants Progressistes Barundi).

In August 1979 some of the student movement members founded the Burundi Workers' Party (Umugambwe wa'Bakozi Uburundi, UBU), a revolutionary socialist political party.

To join the party, an applicant had to be sponsored by a member and was accepted on a probationary basis while they were educated in Marxism.

Ntibantunganya was sponsored by one of the founding members and after three months became a full member of the party.

After working as a journalist for Burundi National Radio and Television during the 1980s, Ntibantunganya was elected to Burundi's National Assembly following FRODEBU's victory in the country's multiparty elections in June 1993 over the Union for National Progress (UPRONA), the Tutsi dominated-party that had ruled Burundi as a one-party state since 1966.

He was named Minister of Foreign Affairs the following month under Burundi's new president, party-mate Melchior Ndadaye.

Ndadaye's assassination during a coup attempt in October after three months in power provoked the Burundian Civil War between Tutsis and Hutus.

During this time, he was named President of the National Assembly two months later.

By 1981 he sat on its central committee as its national secretary for external relations.

UBU developed two factions, with the first advocating armed revolution and the second—led by Ntibantunganya and Melchior Ndadaye—advocating democracy and political freedom.

As a result of these ideological divisions, the two men left UBU in 1983.

He graduated in 1984 with a bachelor's degree in history and geography and sought out a teaching position but could not obtain one.

From April 1984 to December 1987 he worked as a journalist for Burundi National Radio and Television.

He cofounded the Front pour la Démocratie au Burundi (FRODEBU) in 1986 and for a time edited its official newspaper, L'Aube de la Démocratie, and in 1993 served on the party's central committee.

In 1988, President Pierre Buyoya decreed the creation of a 24-person commission to study ethnic divisions in Burundi and create a plan for national unity.

Ntibantunganya served on the panel, which produced a Charter of National Unity, but it was denounced by Hutu members of the political opposition for being dominated by Tutsis and presenting an elitist point of view of the country.

Ntibantunganya later called the project a failure.

In May 1991 he founded Tujujurane, a Kirundi newspaper.

He was President of the National Assembly of Burundi from 23 December 1993 to 30 September 1994, and President of Burundi from 6 April 1994 to 25 July 1996 (interim to October 1994).

In Burundi's legislative elections held on 29 June 1993, Ntibantunganya was elected to a seat in the National Assembly representing Gitega.

He became Minister of Foreign Affairs in Prime Minister Sylvie Kinigi's government on 10 July.

Early in the morning on 21 October 1993 Tutsi soldiers in the Burundian Army launched a coup and attacked the presidential palace.

The president's wife called Ntibantunganya called to warn him about the putsch.

Thus informed, he began calling FRODEBU leaders in an attempt to rally the government and warned Minister of Communications Jean‐Marie Ngendahayo.

He also called the chargé d'affaires at the United States embassy and extracted his assurances that the United States government would condemn the coup.

He then resolved to flee.

Distrustful of his military guard, Ntibantunganya changed into his gardener's clothes and walked to a friend's home, where he remained in hiding for the next two days.

His wife, Eusébie Nshimirimana, was murdered by soldiers while attempting to hide at a different home, though their infant child survived.

He subsequently found refuge at the French embassy with Kinigi and other government officials.

President Ndadaye was ultimately killed in the coup, as were the other officials in the presidential line of succession.

The assassination of Ndadaye's successor Cyprien Ntaryamira in April 1994 made Ntibantunganya the interim president in the midst of the civil war, becoming the permanent President in October of that year.

During the war, he was overthrown during a coup in 1996, and was replaced by former UPRONA president Pierre Buyoya.

Following the end of the war in 2005, Ntibantunganya became a senator for life under the civil war's peace accords until 2018.

He also ran as an unsuccessful candidate in the 2015 Burundian presidential election.