On the evening of December 27, 2025, the state broadcaster RTNC featured Major General Sylvain Ekenge in a segment ostensibly providing updates on security in eastern DRC, particularly South Kivu amid ongoing conflict.
While the primary focus was on military developments, the discussion largely shifted to attacks on Rwandans and Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese, especially Tutsis, whom Ekenge accused of deception.
He warned viewers to be cautious about marrying Tutsi women, alleging that traditional leaders facilitate such unions only for the woman's relatives, such as cousins or uncles, to later intervene.
Ekenge claimed these relatives father children with the wife, attributing the offspring to supposed genetic dominance in the Tutsi community, and described the practice as a scam to infiltrate marriages.
Minister Nduhungirehe noted that this came after the DRC government had cooperated with the FDLR terrorist group in attacks on Banyamulenge in Minembwe and hosted Jean-Claude Mubenga in Kinshasa, where the latter allegedly called Tutsis "cockroaches" and a virus that must be eradicated.
He added that General Ekenge was now endorsing Gitera's document.
'The spokesperson of the Congolese army now, FARDC, is adopting on national television RTNC the first of the 'Ten Commandments of the Hutu' [1990] from the extremist Rwandan newspaper Kangura,' he said.
Gitera founded the Association for the Social Promotion of the Masses (APROSOMA), which fostered division and hatred among Rwandans. He issued the set of ten commandments during a party meeting in Ngoma, Butare, on September 27, 1959.
The first prohibited Hutus from trusting Tutsis, while subsequent ones forbade praising them, forming relationships with them, among others designed to divide Rwandans.
These ideas were later republished and expanded in Kangura, a magazine that promoted genocidal ideology, in its December 1990 edition.
Minister Nduhungirehe observed that General Ekenge appeared to be drawing from material by intellectuals such as Professor Filip Reyntjens , as the term "intelligence" (often used by the Belgian academic to describe Tutsis) was a focus of the military officer's remarks.
'This Congolese general does not stop there and even goes as far as repeating colonial theories that laid the foundation for the 'ethnic' division and the Genocide against the Tutsi, specifically the idea that the Tutsi are 'Nilotics' who conquered Rwanda and oppressed the Hutu, even appropriating 'their Bantu language'' Kinyarwanda,' Nduhungirehe said.
The minister concluded by warning that, even if President Félix Tshisekedi dismisses General Ekenge due to embarrassment or Western advice, the Congolese Tutsi community would still suffer the consequences of his words unless the international community responds decisively.
IGIHE
