Burundi’s Obama

originally published in Africa Review, Kenya

Alex Sinduhije is seen as the Barack Obama of Burundi. A former journalist who got imprisoned for fighting against rampant corruption, Mr Sinduhije is planning to run against current President Pierre Nkurunziza in the June presidential elections.

He is trying to promise something new: Change.

Mr Sinduhije is one of the more intriguing personalities in Burundi’s upcoming elections. A relatively young and articulate political outsider, he is marketing a fairly uncommon vision. Though relative peace has finally come to this small Central African country, Mr Sinduhije thinks the work has just begun.

“Leaders in Africa don’t respect their people. They think that because they are richer, they have to make choices for people,” he said during an interview with Africa Review at his home in Bujumbura. “We must make more courageous decisions.”

While media attention has focused on nearby Rwanda, which holds its elections in August, and even in Uganda, where elections are still a year away, those in Burundi could be even more important for the region’s security.

Armed to the teeth

In a country with 44 political parties, some of whose followers are armed to the teeth, the voting can either drive this long-embattled country back to civil war, or turn around the young democracy, which is still struggling to get to its feet.

Mr Sinduhije says that President Nkurunziza and his posse are part of the problem, but his own reach doesn’t extend very far. Yet outside the tight confines of Burundi’s political circles, there are influential voices who think the former journalist is worth more than a second look.

“There are not a lot of guys out there,” says Jean Habimana, a self-described businessman in the country. “But I like, maybe Sinduhije. He could be our Obama.”

Mr Sinduhije’s biography has made him famous abroad. He has appeared on blog sites featuring the large Burundi diaspora and in European newspaper articles.

In 2008, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He started as a journalist for Reuters and BBC in Burundi and Rwanda, and covered the genocide in that country in 1994. After years as a reporter, he founded African Public Radio, a controversial and popular radio station in Burundi that he said was focused on bridging the gap between Burundi’s two ethnic groups – Hutu and Tutsi – that has ripped the country in half before.

African Public Radio gained a lot of attention, but for Mr Sinduhije, it wasn’t doing enough, and in early 2007, he founded his political party, the Movement for Solidarity and Democracy.

Insulting the president

In November of 2008 he was arrested and imprisoned on charges of ‘insulting the president’ when he said that Mr Nkurunziza focused more on football then building the country. “Nkurunziza has become a classic African strongman,” Mr Sinduhije says. “When you fund the government, you are funding the ruling party.”

He pulls no punches when it comes to Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who he accuses of being responsible for the problems in Rwanda, and Burundi too.

“Kagame is supporting dictatorship in Burundi,” he says. But, like Obama, Mr Sinduhije’s idealism is buffeted by realpolitik. Since the predominantly-Hutu rebel National Liberation Forces signed a peace agreement with the government last year and began disarming, Mr Sinduhije has been luring the many of the disenchanted rebel supporters to his party.

This is not unusual, or criminal. Virtually all of the important political parties in Burundi are former rebel groups and the country remains heavily armed.

A Human Rights Watch report released in 2009 claimed that the two biggest political parties in the country had hired political criminals to eliminate each other’s leaders.

Widespread violence

Mr Sinduhije says that all new members must relinquish their weapons and commit against violence, which will help him to occupy the moral high ground in case – as many observers predict – the upcoming elections end up in widespread violence.

In some ways, it is paying off. While he does not yet have mass appeal, he has caught the attention of foreign diplomats and the Burundian diaspora in Europe.

Moreover, there are good chances of his party acquiring sufficient seats in parliament from where to build on his longer-term ambitions.

“It would be impossible for us to not get any seats,” he says, chewing on mangoes and fish on his porch overlooking Lake Tanganyika.

“We’re not going to be able to change lives overnight, but we can put together a base.”