1987 — The Coup That Seized Burundi

On September 3, 1987, Major Pierre Buyoya seized power in Burundi while President Jean-Baptiste Bagaza attended a Francophone summit in Quebec. The takeover was bloodless. Buyoya announced the Military Committee for National Salvation, suspended the constitution, and dissolved the ruling party, accusing the regime of corruption and persecuting the Catholic Church.

He promised national unity to a country divided between Hutu and Tutsi, but ethnic tensions exploded in massacres in the north in 1988. Buyoya later oversaw a return to multiparty democracy, seized power again in 1996, and ruled until 2003 — a career that mirrored Burundi's own unfinished search for stability.