In 1994, sticks, stones, and machetes broke Tutsi bones, but words hurt them first. On September 27, 1959, in Ngoma, southern Rwanda, words spoken at a political rally would leave a long and deadly shadow. At a meeting of the APROSOMA party, its leader Gitera described relations between Hutu and Tutsi using metaphors of disease and bodily harm.
These words would later be posted in 'Kangura' in 1990, as the Hutu Ten Commandments, ultimately allowing the social ground-work for Genocide.
The first commandment read, "All Hutus must know that the Tutsi woman, wherever she may be, is serving the Tutsi ethnic group. In consequence, any Hutu who does the following is a traitor:
- Acquires a Tutsi wife
- Acquires a Tutsi mistress
- Acquires a Tutsi secretary or dependent."
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Framed as morally justified, even biblical, the message first uttered on September 27, 1959, cast Tutsi women as a danger to society. Dehumanization precedes violence, this is the pattern history teaches. Before the first blow is struck, language does its work, transforming neighbors into threats, people into problems to be solved.
Sixty-six years later, on December 27, 2025, similar words resurfaced, this time nearly 2,000 kilometers away, in Kinshasa. During a broadcast on the Congolese national television station 'RTNC', the spokesperson of the Congolese army, Sylvien Ekenge, read, "This means that if you marry a Tutsi woman today, you have to be careful. You have to be careful because, if you are in a position of responsibility, and this is what they did with the traditional chiefs, the great traditional chiefs, pretty much everywhere, they give you a woman, but then you end up with a family member, like a cousin or nephew, who comes to live with you.
"From the woman's family. And they will introduce him to you as her nephew or cousin, when in fact he is neither a nephew nor a cousin, but the person who will come and have children with your wife at home. And they will tell you that no, the children are born Tutsi, as Tutsi, because the Tutsi race is superior, so it's treachery. Indeed, It is always treachery, Ubwenge, instilled even in Tutsi women."
A senior military spokesperson portrayed Tutsi identity as inherently deceptive and threatening. Though the setting was different, the logic was familiar: an entire group reduced to suspicion and blame.
These words did not emerge in a vacuum. The FDLR was founded by perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. For three decades, Kinshasa has framed them as a marginal 'remnant,' a numbers problem to be managed. But FDLR is not a count of fighters in the bush. It is an ideology that has found new hosts. When Ekenge speaks, he channels the same dehumanizing logic that FDLR has preserved and exported across the region.
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What links Ngoma in 1959 to Kinshasa in 2025 is not coincidence, but continuity. The ideology that emerged in Rwanda on the eve of independence did not disappear with time. Instead, it crossed borders, adapting to new political crises in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Each time it reappeared, it did so in moments of fear and instability, often amplified by those in positions of power.
The coalition is explicit. In January 2026, when BBC Gahuza asked Burundi's President Évariste Ndayishimiye whether his government collaborates with FDLR, he did not deny it. Instead, he chuckled and invoked a proverb: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Rwanda, he made clear, was the shared enemy. What unites Kinshasa, Bujumbura, and FDLR is not strategy or geography, it is the target. The Tutsi of the Great Lakes Region. The Tutsi of DR Congo, and of Rwanda. An ideology finds its power not in isolation, but in alliance.
The consequences are written in the region's history.
The journey of this ideology, from Ngoma to Kinshasa, shows how hate does not respect borders. Political boundaries mean little when narratives of fear and exclusion are allowed to circulate unchecked. Distance offers no protection when history is ignored.
As the Great Lakes region searches for stability, the lesson is stark. Peace cannot be built on silence in the face of dehumanization. When old ideas return in new voices, the past is not gone: it is warning the present.
