Mwami Mutaradreef / Burundidreef /Rwandadreef

Mwami Mutaradreef / Burundidreef /Rwandadreef

The street names in this area recall the colonial period of our country. The year 1955 is recorded in the Keerberg annals as the year of the Mwami. Together with his wife, Mwami Charles Mutara III Rudahigwa, one of the most special chieftains from Rwanda, came to Keerbergen on a visit at the hands of the then mayor Peere. On October 9, 1955, he was presented with the diploma "honorary citizen of Keerbergen" by the city council during a large-scale ceremony. In the neighborhood where he purchased a few plots of building land, the adjacent streets were appropriately named: Rwandadreef, Burundidreef and Mwami Mutaradreef.

Only 4 years after his stay in Keerbergen, the Mwami died under suspicious circumstances in Rwanda. His wife, Rosalie Gicande, was murdered much later, at the age of 80, during the Rwandan Genocide (April 20, 1994).

After the death of the Mwami, his descendants donated the Keerberg lands to the Municipality of Keerbergen. Today the former domain is known as the nature reserve "Kruisheide", and around the "Mwami Mutaradreef", "Ruandadreef" and the "Burundidreef" are the last witnesses of this "forgotten" piece of history.

Bart Denayer