By Sofia Bouderbala
Paris - A far cry from the catwalks of Paris, France's first black supermodel, a real-life princess from Burundi, has decided to run for president when her war-ravaged native country holds elections in April next year.
Speaking in Paris, where she has lived for the past 30 years, Esther Kamatari revealed her ambitious plans to bring peace to the nation which for the past 11 years has been torn apart by civil war fuelled by ethnic tensions between the Tutsi minority and Hutu majority.
With her new party Abahuza (Rally) officially recognised last month by the Burundi interior ministry, the 53-year-old princess wants to "reconcile Burundians with themselves" by electing her as president, thereby restoring the monarchy and at the same time the ethnic harmony which has been lost.
"We lived together for 500 years without anyone taking a machete to go and kill his neighbour, because there was a management of power, a social and economic balance based on tradition", says the niece of the last king of Burundi.
She blames the former colonial powers for imposing the ethnic distinction dividing the population of Burundi into Hutu (85 percent) and Tutsi (14 percent). As a member of the "ganwa" (royal clan), she says she belongs to a group with no blood on its hands and is in a unique position to offer a political "third way".
She is appalled at the current state of affairs in Burundi, where she describes life expectancy as only "24 hours, on a renewable basis".
"In a country where people are still armed to the teeth and where children don't go to school, where the health system is non-existent, it is social deprivation that we must combat."
But for many years, Kamatari turned her back on her homeland, where more than 300 000 people have been killed in a decade in "cold-blooded genocide".
Shaken by the violence which marked the years immediately after independence in 1962 and her father's assassination in 1964 in a palace plot, she left Burundi as soon as she had completed her studies at the National School of Administration.
On arriving in France in August 1970, she carved out a successful career in fashion, becoming the first black model on the Paris runways. "I arrived at the right time, the designers were looking for new blood." For many years, her lean, 1,78 metre frame and dark complexion graced the catwalk shows of Paco Rabanne, Lanvin and Christian Dior.
Gradually, she got over her anger with her native country and in 1987 set up Burundi Expansion, an agency aimed at relaunching tourism to Burundi.
In 1990, she became president of the Association of People of Burundi in France, essentially a humanitarian organisation. "The emergency came in 1993, with the civil war. I chose to champion the plight of orphans because I am an orphan myself."
A self-styled "princess of the rugo" (traditional housing in Burundi), she launched the initiative One Child Per Rugo, enabling 500 orphans, Tutsis and Hutus alike, to find new homes. She also toured refugee camps with food and books for children marooned there.
The peace accord signed in Arusha in Tanzania in 2000, under which the country is to have a new constitution and general and presidential elections, has given her new hope.
"We have no choice: these elections must be held or we will plunge back again into chaos," she warned.