Banyamulenge

The Banyamulenge are a community that lives mainly in South Kivu Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Banyamulenge are not culturally and socially distinct from the Tutsi of South Kivu, with most speaking Kinyamulenge, a mix of Kinyarwanda (official language of Rwanda), Kirundi (spoken primarily in Burundi),^[1] Ha (spoken by the Ha people, one of the largest ethnic groups in ethnically diverse Tanzania), and Swahili.^{[citation needed]}

The Banyamulenge played a role in Mobutu's war against and victory over the Simba Rebellion, which was not supported by the majority of other tribes in South Kivu. They supported him to be naturalised in what was then Zaire. Their role during the First Congo War and subsequent regional conflicts (Rally for Congolese Democracy–Goma, Movement for the Liberation of the Congo, National Congress for the Defence of the People, and more importantly for the fact that two of the most influential presidents of their country declared them as enemies of the state, in both 1996 (Mobutu Sese Seko) and 1998 (Laurent-Désiré Kabila).

The Banyamulenge have been a point of controversy in the country since they played a key role in tensions against the Simba Rebellion (1963–1965), First Congo War (1996–1997), Second Congo War (1998–2003), and Joseph Kabila's regime (2001–2019). The wars in the DRC have affected more than 10 million lives most of which are congolese who are not bayamulenge, with casualties continuing in Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, and Tanganyika provinces.

In the late 1990s, the political scientist René Lemarchand stated that the main ethnic groups claimed that the Banyamulenge numbered around 50,000 to 70,000.^[2] Gérard Prunier quotes around 60,000–80,000, a figure of about 3% to 4% of the total provincial population.^[3] Lemarchand states the figure of 400,000 given by Joseph Mutambo ^[4] "is grossly inflated". Lemarchand also noted that the group represents "a rather unique case of ethnogenesis".^[2]