Boniface Benzinge

 A member of a family of royal historians, Benzinge was a courtier to King Kigeli V, who was the last reigning king of his country before being deposed in 1961.

Following that event, Benzinge and his fellow Abiru announced his nephew as Kigeli's titular successor. Although a faction of the royal family opposed this act,^[1] the new king was nevertheless subsequently crowned as Yuhi VI in 2017.

Since this occurred, Benzinge has continued to serve as the head of the royal court.

Emmanuel Bushayija (born 20 December 1960) is the claimant to the historical Kingdom of Rwanda, which was abolished in 1961. He was proclaimed the ceremonial successor to the royal title (Mwami) on 9 January 2017 under the reign name Yuhi VI.^[2] He succeeded his late uncle King Kigeli V and is a grandson of King Yuhi V.^[3]

Contents

• Biography
• Achievements as King
  • Honours
    • Rwandan Dynastic
    • Other Dynastic
• External links
• Ancestry
• References

Biography

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He grew up in exile in Uganda, where he studied at Iganga Secondary School and worked for Pepsi Cola in Kampala.

He also lived in Kenya, working in the tourism industry, before returning to Rwanda in July 1994 before moving to the United Kingdom six years later.

The accession of Yuhi VI was made by proclamation of the Royal Council of Abiru, who are a group of elders and privy to the king's wishes as advisors. According to custom, the Council of Abiru announces the king’s selection of successor from among his family members.^[4] Bushayija, his nephew, was named as his successor. The announcement was made by Boniface Benzinge, chairman of the Abiru council.^[5]

He is a naturalised British citizen and lives currently in Sale, near Manchester in northwest England.^[2] His wife, Lilian, is a local mental health support worker.

Achievements as King

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King Yuhi VI has been active in the Royal Commonwealth Society^[6] and serves as the Chief Patron of The Crown Society.^[7] The King is regularly seen in European royal and aristocratic circles, and has conducted visits to strengthen ties with the royal houses of Albania, Austria, Portugal and Spain.^[8] A close relationship has developed with the House of Braganza, which was historically supportive of Kigeli V Ndahindurwa and played a key role in welcoming Yuhi VI into royal circles.^[9]

In February 2025, King Yuhi VI became the first Rwandan monarch in history to set foot in Asia. The King's first stop was in Manila, where he was feted as one of the laureates of the 2025 Sino-Phil Asia International Peace Awards in the field of humanitarianism.^[10] Subsequently, a visit to Macau followed where the King was the guest of honour at the signing ceremony for the Medical Simulation Training Centre Pilot Program, a partnership between the Faculty of Medicine at Macau University of Science and Technology, the Global Fair Pay Foundation, and The First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University.^[11] The Asia tour concluded in Hong Kong, where the King was hosted by the Royal Commonwealth Society Hong Kong Branch which convened a white tie dinner in His Majesty's honour.

Kigeli V Ndahindurwa (born Jean-Baptiste Ndahindurwa; 29 June 1936 – 16 October 2016) was the last ruling King (Mwami) of Rwanda, from 28 July 1959 until the end of the UN-mandate with Belgian administration and the declaration of an independent Republic of Rwanda 1 July 1962. On 25 September 1961, a referendum voted for the abolition of the Rwandan monarchy following the Rwandan Revolution.

After a brief period of moveabouts after leaving Rwanda, the titular King lived in exile during the final part of his life in the town of Oakton, Virginia, United States. In exile, he was known for heading the King Kigeli V Foundation, an organisation promoting humanitarian work for Rwandan refugees. He was also notable for his activities in maintaining the dynastic, cultural heritage of his formerly reigning royal house, including noble titles, dynastic orders of chivalry and other distinctions.

After the king's death, a successor was said to be shortly revealed. In January 2017, it was announced that Yuhi VI would succeed him. Yuhi VI is the nephew of both the late King Kigeli V and the previous King Mutara III, as well as a grandson of King Yuhi V.

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Early life and education

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Kigeli was born Ndahindurwa on 29 June 1936 in Kamembe, Rwanda, to Yuhi Musinga (the deposed King Yuhi V Musinga), and Queen Mukashema (born Mukashema Bernadette), the seventh of his eleven wives.^[5] He was ethnically Tutsi.^[6] Kigeli had fourteen siblings, being one of the youngest of his father's many children.^[7]

When Kigeli was 4 years old,^[6][8] his father was exiled by the Belgian government to Moba, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.^[8][9] Following the death of his father, in 1944 he returned to Rwanda.^[10] Kigeli was baptised in the Catholic Church in his teens,^[11] taking the Christian name Jean-Baptiste,^[12] and remained a devout Catholic throughout his life.^[6]

He received his education at the Groupe Scolaire Astrida (now Groupe Scolaire Officiel de Butare) in Rwanda,^[5][13] and at the Nyangezi College in the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo.^[5][14] After he finished school in 1956,^[6] he worked in local government in Rwanda until 1959.^[5]

Reign in Rwanda

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Brass lapel pin Vive Kigeli V "Long Live Kigeli V"

After his half-brother, King Mutara III Rudahigwa, died under mysterious circumstances on 25 July 1959, it was announced on 28 July that Kigeli would succeed him as King Kigeli V Ndahindurwa.^[6][15] "Kigeli" is sometimes transcribed as "Kigeri".^[16][17] Though married, Kigeli's late half-brother had had no children; the abrupt, shocking nature of the death prompted widespread talk of some kind of assassination having occurred.^[7]

Kigeli's appointment was a surprise to the Belgian administration, who were not involved in his selection, and who described the event as a coup d'état,^[6][18] a view shared by the newly politically empowered Hutu elite.^[19] Kigeli himself also felt shocked and overwhelmed at the news of his ascension.^[7] The tense atmosphere and presence of armed Rwandans at the funeral prevented the Belgians from objecting,^[11][20] as well as preventing Hutu interference.^[21] Despite this, Kigeli was initially favoured by all sides: Tutsi traditionalists, Hutu nationalists, and the Catholic clergy all felt optimistic on his appointment.^[11] However, the manner of his appointment led to a loss of prestige for the Belgian authorities, and gave both Hutu and Tutsi revolutionaries the impression that violence might further their goals. The fact that the Tutsi establishment had engineered the rise to power also compromised Kigeli's ability to act in the traditional role as a neutral arbiter of differing factions.^[20]

Kigeli V in 1961

Kigeli duly followed regal tradition by disregarding past ethnic and ideological affiliations, embracing the role of the 'father of all Rwandan people'. However, political instability and tribal conflict grew despite efforts by the monarchy and others. Only a month after Kigeli's November 1959 ascension, Hutu versus Tutsi militancy increased to the point that hundreds died. Many Tutsi went into exile. Issues with the increasingly restive Hutu population were encouraged by the Belgian military, promoting widespread revolt. Kigeli later wrote, "I am not clinging to power... I will always accept the people’s verdict; what I cannot accept is that the Belgian Administration should influence or distort this verdict."^[7]

In July 1960, Kigeli sought safe haven in the newly independent nation of Congo.^[7] In 1961, Kigeli was in Kinshasa to meet Secretary General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld when Dominique Mbonyumutwa, with the support of the Belgian government, led a coup d'état that took control of the Rwandan state.^[7] The monarchy's rule was formally overthrown on 28 January 1961.^[22] The coup resulted in the 1961 referendum about the fate of the nation's royal system.^[7]

The election results showed that, with about 95% turnout, around 80% of voters opposed the continuation of the monarchy. Kigeli criticized the affair as rigged; soon after re-entering Rwanda prior to the election, Belgian officials put him under house arrest.^[7]

The government officially deported Kigeli to what is now Tanzania on 2 October 1961. He subsequently lived in multiple other locations, leaving the region of Tanganyika (living in Dar es Salaam) for places such as Kampala, Uganda, and Nairobi, Kenya. He was granted political asylum in the United States in July 1992. He resided in the U.S. for the rest of his life.^[7]

Exile activities

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Granted political asylum by the United States, he settled near Washington, D.C., where he claimed welfare, and lived in subsidized housing.^[6][23] He subsequently settled in the Oakton, Virginia, area.^{[citation needed]}

He travelled internationally to speak on behalf of the Rwandan people and repeatedly called for peace and harmony between the different groups. Kigeli continued to remember the victims of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda and attempted to reconcile all political, ethnic, and religious parties in Rwanda to use the democratic process to solve any disputes. Kigeli was a friend of former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela and the Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Patrice Lumumba.^{[citation needed]}

In 1995, while in Southern California, Kigeli met author and historian Charles A. Coulombe, an American representative of the International Monarchist League, a London-based organization that attempts to reinstate deposed royalty in various parts of the world.^[24]

In an August 2007 BBC interview, Kigeli expressed an interest in returning to Rwanda if the Rwandan people were prepared to accept him as their constitutional monarch. He said that he had met President Paul Kagame and that Kagame had told him that he and his family were free to return, but Kigeli said that in order to do so, he needed to know if the people still wanted him to be king. According to Kigeli, Kagame said that he would consult the government about the issue.^[25]

Charity

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He was the head of the King Kigeli V Foundation,^[26] whose mission is to bring humanitarian initiatives on behalf of Rwandan refugees.^{[citation needed]}

Death and succession

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Kigeli died of a heart ailment at the age of eighty on the morning of 16 October 2016 in a hospital in Washington, D.C.^[1] His private secretary, Guye Pennington, said that an heir had been chosen and would be announced shortly.^[27] Kigeli never married, in obedience to a rule banning marriage for kings while they were out of the country.^[27]

Although Kigeli never married, on 9 January 2017, the Royal House announced that his nephew, Prince Emmanuel Bushayija (to reign as Yuhi VI of Rwanda), would succeed him as pretender to the Rwandan throne.^[28] He is the son of the half-brother of Kigeli, Prince William Bushayija.

After Kigeli's death, it was revealed he had at least one daughter, Jacqueline Rwivanga, married to Andrew Rugasira 1998-2015 and a mother of five.^[29]

Abiru

The Abiru (Kinyarwanda for royal ritualists) are the members of the privy council of the monarchy of Rwanda. They emanate from the earliest pre-colonial Rwandan traditions, and are tied to the monarchy's mythic origins. They are oral repositories of the ubwiiru, an esoteric code of kingship. Due to the mythopoetic nature of accounts of the early history of the Abiru and the Rwandan monarchy, an accurate history of the Abiru is difficult to codify or study.^[1]

The council as a whole can be described as a priestly body that elects, advises and/or deposes Rwandan kings. Debate continues over the pre-colonial functions of the body, which makes definite statements on the subject needing further research.

The wider ethnic community that is traditionally expected to provide the membership of the council is also known as the Abiru. Both the council and this community are currently led by Boniface Benzinge.

An Excerpt From The Oral Records Of Rwanda

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Kigwa (or The Landed) also known as Sabizeze, a divine being, descended from Heavens and became one of the first god kings Ibimanuka Kings of Rwanda. To establish his divinely ordained authority to rule and to legitimize his position and power, he subsequently created court musicians and ritualists that were to serve under him. These were the first abiru, and their council would go on to become the most important politico-religious institution in the kingdom that he left to his heirs.

^[1]

Functions

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The Abiru function as advisors to the king in political matters, and may or may not have a political role assigned to them. Their primary function as a group is to determine the continuing suitability of the king in terms of ritual and political function. Historically, the Abiru depose 'unworthy' kings and proclaim successors based on secretive ritual practices, acting as a fons honorum for Rwanda.^[2]

The chairman of the Royal Council of Abiru is the de facto prime minister of Rwanda's monarchy; the current incumbent served at the pleasure of Kigeli V, and now serves - along with the rest of the council - the reigning king-in-exile Emmanuel Bushayija, who was proclaimed Yuhi VI in 2017.

When thought of as an ethnic group, the class of elite families that has provided members of the Royal Council of Abiru for centuries on a hereditary basis is also referred to as Abiru. Although sometimes thought of as being a distinct community, the Abiru are traditionally considered to be part of the wider Tutsi ethnicity. A Burundian near-analogue would be the Ganwa.

Alexis Kagame

 Alexis Kagame (15 May 1912 – 2 December 1981) was a Rwandan philosopher, linguist, historian, poet and Catholic priest. His main contributions were in the fields of ethnohistory and "ethnophilosophy" (the study of indigenous philosophical systems).

As a professor of theology, he carried out wide research into the oral history, traditions and literature of Rwanda, and wrote several books on the subject, both in French and Kinyarwanda. He also wrote poetry, which was also published.

Kagame was also active in the political field, and was seen by some European scholars as the intellectual leader of Tutsi culture and rights under the colonial system starting in the 1940s.

Kagame was born in Kiyanza - Buliza Rwanda, in actual Murambi Sector, Rulindo District, Northern Province, to a long line of court historians. His family had high status in the kingdom of Rwanda, being of the ruling Tutsi class, and also belonging to a group called Abiru, the traditional ministers in the court of the Mwami. At the time of his birth, Rwanda was a German colony, but the Mwami still had considerable power as the colonial authorities ruled indirectly through him. When the area passed to Belgium, some in his family converted to Catholicism. After attending a missionary primary school, Kagame studied in the Minor Seminary of Kabgayi from October 1928 to 1933. He continued his studies at Nyakibanda Regional Seminary and was ordained a priest in 1941. During this time, he was also the editor of an important Catholic newspaper, Kinyamateka, in the 1940s and 1950s (The National University of Rwanda has a nearly complete run of Kinyamateka). In 1950, he became the first African to gain membership in the Institut Royal Colonial Belge.

A turning point came in 1952, when he wrote Le Code des Institutions Politiques de Rwanda (in support of his friend King Mutara III Rudahigwa), which was a defense of the Rwandan system of rule by clientage. The colonial regime, which was trying to break up Rwandans' linkages through clientage, found this threatening to their efforts to control the kingdom and pressured his bishop into reposting him to Rome. While there, he studied at the Gregorian University and took his doctoral degree in philosophy. He also became a member of "Les Prêtres Noirs", a group of African Theology students who wanted to employ Christianity as a basis for African nationalist aspirations.^[2]

After returning to Rwanda in 1958 he became a teacher at the Catholic seminary and a prominent member of the independence movement which, despite his identification with the Tutsi monarchy, may have saved him during the Belgian-led Hutu uprising in 1959. He later became one of the first professors at the new National University of Rwanda (1963) and visiting professor at the University of Lubumbashi.

Kagame collected a large number of very important oral documents from high Rwandan functionaries of the pre-colonial Rwandan administration, but he published only summaries and interpretations of them, not the full accounts, because he'd promised his informants to wait to do that until they died. The European Catholic clergy and the Belgian colonial administration heartily disliked his research, writing, and politics because they seemed at odds with their post-war project to end the Rwandan royal system in favor of a modern republican system that they could, they hoped, influence more readily. As a result, the church and state at various times censored his publications either by stopping publication or cutting sections out of publications.^[3] Ten numbered paragraphs are missing from Alexis Kagame, Un Abrégé, 2:335-336. Furthermore, his 1945 transcript of the Rwandan kings esoteric code was felt so dangerous to Belgian interests that the colonial military confiscated it, and it was only published in 1964 by Belgian scholars who at the time denied it was Kagame's, though they later admitted it was.^[4] Kagame was put under house arrest at times by the colonial military administration to limit his political influence.^[5]

Following Rwandan independence, he became a strong advocate for the Africanization of Christianity, maintaining that missionary attitudes were still prevalent.

Alexis Kagame is a first cousin once removed of Landoald Ndasingwa and his sister Louise Mushikiwabo who describes him as a very tall, massive jolly man with a big sense of humor, despite his critical inclinations. Mgr. Kagame died unexpectedly in 1981, while on a visit to Nairobi.^[6]

Political

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According to Claudine Vidal, Kagame's overarching goal was the creation of a constitutional monarchy.^[7] Kagame studies portrayed a pre-colonial Rwandese society in which ubuhake cattle clientship created a harmonious society that allows easy social mobility. He eventually partnered with Belgian anthropologist Jacques Maquet [fr], who reworked Kagame's thesis into highly influential academic works. Subsequent academic research largely disproved the Kagame-Maquet depiction of an idyllic pre-colonial society by taking into account the degrading uburetwa land contract. Uburetwa was largely ignored by Maquet, whose research relied upon Kagame's manuscripts.^[8] Kagame's depiction of a stable, socially progressive nation, as well as his maps showing expansive territorial influence, were used by the Rwandan Patriotic Front in the late 1990s to justify their rule and invasion of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.^[9]

Linguistic

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His international linguistic reputation rests mainly on two works:

• La Philosophie Bantu-Rwandaise de l'Être (1956): an analysis of the Kinyarwanda language and culture as it relates to their concept of "Being". and,
• La Philosophie Bantu Comparée (1976): A broader study including all the Bantu languages.

In these works, Kagame attempts to demonstrate that the structure of the Bantu languages reveals a complex ontology that is uniquely African in nature. Critics charge that he is imposing Aristotelian concepts on something that is non-logical. In other words, that language structure was not consciously designed but, rather, developed randomly over a long period and therefore is the cause, not the effect, of the way people think.^[10] Nonetheless, Kinyarwanda is generally accepted to be one of the most orderly, complex, and difficult languages in the world.

• Un Abrégé de l’Ethno-histoire du Rwanda. Butare, Éditions Universitaires du Rwanda, 1972-75. 2 volumes
• Introduction aux Grands Genres Lyriques de l’Ancien Rwanda. Butare, Éditions Universitaires du Rwanda, 1969
• Les Milices du Rwanda Précolonial. Brussels, 1963

He also wrote several books of poetry and translated the Bible into the Kinyarwanda language.