Editor,

This is in reference to the story "Uncertainty in Burundi as top general is assassinated” (The New Times, August 3).

Isn’t it rather interesting that he was so deadly alive and may be even more so dead?

But perhaps a more pressing question: what kind of security is there in Pierre Nkurunziza’s land when one of the regime’s most powerful and feared kingpins can be assassinated like this by men in military uniform in broad daylight in the country’s capital?

Only insiders with knowledge of his planned trajectory and with full powers of movement under arms themselves could do this. Which begs yet another question; who within the Nkurunziza military wanted Gen. Adolphe Nshimirimana out of the way? Was it political or merely revenge for the many people he has himself reputedly rubbed out? And what does this do to the already shaky and rapidly crumbling Nkurunziza edifice?

A last question: should widespread killings occur as a result of this assassination and as has already been threatened by extremists on social media, what does the East African Community or the wider African Union plan to do to contain them or even prevent them since, it seems, the Nkurunziza government may have its own hands full just trying to survive? Or are we going to see all these worthies sit on their collective hands only to claim later—as with the Genocide against the Tutsi 21 years ago—that they didn’t know and, in any case, had no power to do anything?

Let’s hope nothing like close to what we saw just over two decades in this country happens across the Akanyaru to our Burundian brethren. But if something very bad does and we all simply look on, the last nail will have been hammered into the coffin of that untruthful ritualistic slogan, "Never Again!”

Mwene Kalinda