Rwandan Last Tutsi Monarch Kigeli V Ndahindurwa
Kigeli V Ndahindurwa, the last Tutsi Monarch of Rwanda, died on Sunday, October 16, 2016. He has been living in exile in the US since early 1990's, where he applied for a political asylum in 1992, after criss-crossing Eastern African countries, from Congo, Tanzania, Burundi, Uganda, to Kenya.
Kigeli, who was driven into exile less than a year into his reign, became the monarch of Rwanda in 1959 after his half-brother, Mutara III Rudahigwa, died suddenly under mysterious circumstances. Mutara Rudahirwa, having no children, left the throne to his half brother in a contested succession, that some at the court viewed as not compliant with the usual Rwandan royal customs. Kigeli Ndahindurwa's reign also coincided with a wave of independence movements across Africa and the rising discontent among the majority ethnic Hutus, maintained under a virtual slavery by both the
