Opinion – Nkurunziza Cup or evidence of lack of patriotism

Since his accession to the top of the CNDD-FDD, Révérien Ndikuriyo has traveled throughout the country militarizing the party’s youth, including small children. To properly evaluate the young people, he launched Nkurunziza Cup. This event takes place in Makamba (southern Burundi). Looking at the logistics, this analyst can’t believe it, especially since the small East African nation that “the Supreme Guide bequeathed to those who call him their grandfather, is sinking.”

Opinion by Gahungu (SOS Médias Burundi)

A stadium with more than 25,000 seats, full of people in “Nkurunziza Cup” t-shirts, thousands of children and young people wearing shoes, socks, tights, kepis, uniforms, not to mention ankle boots. for some, while it is forbidden to wear them because only the military and police have permission to do so in Burundi, rather in the Eden Garden.

Dozens of public transport vehicles (buses and large buses) from Bujumbura, the commercial capital whose inhabitants have chosen walking as an alternative following the lack of fuel, transport the participants – the Imbonerakure, members of the youth league of the former Hutu rebellion which became the ruling party in 2005 thanks to the Arusha peace and reconciliation agreement (August 2000), children who must go to the military parade in Makamba not far from the border with Tanzania. Outside the stadium (the largest in the country, even without FIFA* standards), thousands of people were unable to enter due to lack of space.

More than difficult to imagine the billions of Burundi francs that were spent on the event. Here we are not talking about a Spanish team which came to cross swords with the Aigle Noir FC team, belonging to the Pax Burundi Foundation of Révérien Ndikuriyo, secretary general of the ruling party.

Two questions must then be asked : where do these billions come from? Why all these logistics in a country in agony? Is this really the much-sung patriotism? Who benefits from this? It is enough to remember that there is no fuel in Burundi, inhabitants of the commercial city Bujumbura where the central administration is concentrated being obliged to go to neighboring Congo to obtain supplies, but hundreds of vehicles must converge towards Makamba. I’ll let you calculate, or rather estimate, the number of liters consumed.

These transport buses could have relieved parking lots in different corners of the country, a national interest. But we will proclaim loudly and clearly that what took place in Makamba was “a patriotic act”. Here we are not talking about this population that stopped going about their activities too early in the morning of June 29, 2024. Hunger and thirst were easy prey.

If Révérien Ndikuriyo had estimated the cost of logistics for this event and provided all the fuel to facilitate public transport, it would have been more interesting and more “flagical”.

In addition, what can you call Nkurunziza Cup “something which pits two teams against each other in a friendly match, and especially one of them being foreign”.

Let us think of these children who spent more than 10 hours without eating, in the name of the famous military parade in memory of “a Supreme Guide whose name was pronounced only once by his successor on the sidelines of the celebration of the day dedicated to him”, on June 8 in the political capital Gitega where the former Hutu rebel leader described as “Sogo or even grandfather” by CNDD-FDD activists for propaganda purposes aimed at “cajoling the Hutu electorate”, rests.

FIFA*: The Federation Internationale de Football Association