Melchior Ndadaye (28 March 1953 – 21 October 1993) was a Burundian banker and politician who became the first democratically elected and first Hutu president of Burundi after winning the landmark 1993 election. Though he attempted to smooth the country's bitter ethnic divide, his reforms antagonised soldiers in the Tutsi-dominated army, and he was assassinated amidst a failed military coup in October 1993, after only three months in office. His assassination sparked an array of brutal tit-for-tat massacres between the Tutsi and Hutu ethnic groups, and ultimately led to the decade-long Burundi Civil War.
Early life
Melchior Ndadaye was born on 28 March 1953 in the commune of Nyabihanga, Ruanda-Urundi. The son of Pie Ndadaye and Thérèse Bandushubwenge, he was the first of ten children in a Hutu family. He attended primary school in Mbogora and in 1966 enrolled at the normal school in Gitega. Following the 1972 Ikiza, in which the government of Burundi targeted and massacred educated Hutus, he fled to Rwanda, fearing what would happen if he returned to school in Gitega. He enrolled at the Groupe Scolaire Officiel in Butare to complete his secondary studies, graduating in 1975. He then enrolled at the National University of Rwanda to take up pedagogical studies, earning a license degree in 1980. Ndadaye taught at the Lycée pédagogique in Save, southern Rwanda, from 1980 to 1983.
Early political involvement and return to Burundi
left|thumb|Ndadaye speaking at a FRODEBU rally following his electoral victory in 1993
Ndadaye became involved in politics while in Rwanda, and in 1976 founded the Mouvement des Étudiants Progressistes Barundi au Rwanda (BEMPERE), a progressive movement for exiled Burundian Hutu students. In August 1979 Ndadaye and other Burundian exiles founded the Burundi Workers' Party (Umugambwe wa'Bakozi Uburundi, UBU), a Marxist-Lenininist political party. He served as the party's secretary for information and editor-in-chief of its newspapers, Le Flambeau and Ukuri. From 1982 to 1983 ideological divisions arose in UBU, with one faction advocating armed revolution and another—led by Sylvestre Ntibantunganya and Ndadaye—advocating democracy and political freedom. Ndadaye published a document calling for an "alliance of Burundian progressive forces," further distancing himself from other members. As a result of the fracture, Ndadaye left UBU and returned to Burundi in 1983.
In July 1984 Ndadaye married Laurence Nininahazwe, with whom he had three children. From that year until 1986 he worked at the Centre Neuro-Psychiatrique Kamenge in Bujumbura. During this time he was a member of another political party, Front de Lutte pour la Démocratie (FROLUDE), but the group disbanded after fears grew that it had been infiltrated by the government and some of its members were arrested. From 1986 until 1988 Ndadaye directed the Coopératives d'Épargne et de Crédit in Gitega. In 1989 he returned to Bujumbura and became head of Meridian Bank Biao's credit service. He then took up study with the Institut Technique de Banque at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers in Paris, securing a diploma in higher banking studies in 1992.
Leader of FRODEBU
In June 1986 Ndadaye and other former UBU members, seeing the growing international preference for democracy and peaceful electoral processes, founded a new underground political movement, the Front for Democracy in Burundi (FRODEBU). He subsequently became the party's president. In 1988 he was named first secretary of the Gitega branch of the Union des Travailleurs du Burundi, a labor union affiliated with the ruling Union for National Progress (UPRONA) party. That year Burundi became beset by ethnic violence, and on 23 October he criticised the government of President Pierre Buyoya in a meeting called by the governor of Gitega Province. As a result, he was imprisoned for two months in Rumonge. In February 1991 Ndadaye became one of the twelve founding members of the Iteka League, a human rights association. In March Buyoya appointed a 35-member Constitution Commission to study the country's ethnic and political problems and draft a new basic law. Ndadaye was the sole member of the political opposition to serve on it. The body produced a 145-page report titled, "The Democratisation of Institutions and Political Life in Burundi." Ndadaye resigned in August, citing the commission's lack of diversity, and omissions and undemocratic provisions in the report. He was also dissatisfied with UPRONA's control over the political transition.
The 1991 constitution made provisions for multiparty politics, and on 25 May 1992 FRODEBU petitioned the Ministry of Interior for official recognition, which was granted on 23 July. Ndadaye remained critical of the transition, expressing anger at the government's domination by UPRONA members and accusing UPRONA activists of using state resources to support their activities. On 18 April 1993 a FRODEBU congress nominated Ndadaye as its candidate of choice for the upcoming presidential election. Viewed as a liberator of Burundi's Hutus, he also obtained the support of a coalition of minor Hutu-dominated opposition parties, the Forces pour le Changement Démocratique (FCD). Ntibantunganya, another founding FRODEBU member, said that Ndadaye further benefitted from a public perception that he was a "political virgin". Advocating change, Ndadaye and his allies made frequent use of the phrase "new Burundi" (Kirundi: uburundi bushasha). He put forward a platform titled, "Our proposals to build a new Burundi", comprising 46 specific measures involving political, economic, and socio-cultural issues. He advocated disbanding the Tutsi-dominated armed forces and recreating the army and gendarmerie based on equitable recruitment from each colline, thus ensuring more ethnically balanced forces. UPRONA members were stunned by Ndadaye's landslide victory. According to Buyoya, some party members asked him to falsify the returns to show a victory for himself, but he refused, feeling it would compromise his integrity and risk civil war. Foreign observers were also surprised by Buyoya's loss, but were generally satisfied that a civilian would assume power and that democratic processes were being followed. In the subsequent parliamentary elections on 29 June, FRODEBU won 71.4 percent of the vote and earned 80 percent of the seats in the National Assembly.
Rumours circulated in Burundi that the army would attempt to intervene to disrupt the transition. He appointed Lieutenant Colonel Jean Bikomagu as Army Chief of Staff. During President Pierre Nkurunziza's tenure as president, the government erected a monument jointly honouring Ndadaye and Louis Rwagasore at a roundabout in Bujumbura.