Burundi President Warns On Coup Rumour

Burundi President Évariste Ndayishimiye has condemned rumors of a coup against him while he was away for two weeks for meetings in Cuba and at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.

Barely a week after the president left the country on 10 September, stories of a plot against him started circulating on social media.

The source of the rumours is not clear yet.

In his address after arriving back to the country on Sunday night, Mr. Ndayishimiye blamed them on “people who have always wanted to paint a bad image” of Burundi.

Burundi has experienced more than 10 successful and failed coups.

On Sunday before his arrival, the country’s Ministry of Interior announced on X (formerly Twitter) that “no house is burning”, urging people not to care about “those rumours that distract”.

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Burundi had gone through turmoil since it gained its Independence in 1962 with the most recent political crisis dating back in 2015 when protests against the former president Pierre Nkurunziza led to deaths of more than 1,000 people. There was a coup attempt to overthrow Nkurunziza’s government as he attended a summit of the East African Community in Dar es Salaam. The culprits are still serving jail terms.

“A coup d’état at this moment is more difficult but what we need to understand is that there is a crack within the system, and who knows what comes tomorrow? The president is facing a big challenge now,” the professor argued.

Burundi has witnessed three coups, two presidential assassinations, in addition to the failed coup in 2015 that plunged the country into deadly unrest.