Pierre Buyoya

Pierre Buyoya (24 November 1949 – 17 December 2020) was a Burundian army officer and politician who served as the seventh president of Burundi from 1996 to 2003. Having previously served as the fifth president from 1987 to 1993, Buyoya was the second-longest-serving president in Burundian history, after Pierre Nkurunziza.

An ethnic Tutsi, Buyoya joined the sole legal party, UPRONA and quickly rose through the ranks of the Burundian military. In 1987, he led a military coup d'état that overthrew his predecessor Jean-Baptiste Bagaza and enabled him to seize power. Leading an oppressive military junta, Hutu uprisings in 1988 led to the killings of an estimated 20,000 people. Buyoya then established a National Reconciliation Commission that created a new constitution in 1992 which allowed for a multi-party system and a non-ethnic government. Running as a candidate in the 1993 Burundian presidential election, he was defeated by Hutu candidate Melchior Ndadaye of the FRODEBU opposition party.

Ndadaye was assassinated during another attempted coup after only three months in office, leading to a series of retaliatory killings that culminated in the Burundian Civil War. During the war, Buyoya returned to power in another coup d'état in 1996. During his second presidency, he created an ethnically inclusive government by establishing a partnership with FROBEDU. This led to the 2000 Arusha Accords which introduced ethnic power sharing. He selected Domitien Ndayizeye, a Hutu as his vice-president, who succeeded him as president in 2003. The war ended two years later.

Following the end of the war, Buyoya became a senator for life under the terms of the 2004 constitution. During his post-presidency, he was also sent as an African Union envoy during peace missions in Chad and Mali. In November 2020, he was sentenced to life in prison in absentia by a Burundinan court for his suspected role in the 1993 coup attempt that assassinated Ndadaye. He died of COVID-19 two months later.