Radegonde Nyiramavugo III Kankazi, mother of King (Mwami) Mutara III Rudahigwa of the Kingdom of Rwanda. Photograph by Casimir Zagourski, c. 1931-1937.

Queen (later Queen Mother) Kankazi, was married to King Yuhi V Musinga. A marriage that produced a son who would later take the throne as King Mutara III Rudahigwa after his father, Musinga, was deposed by the Belgian colonial authorities in 1931. Fearing the influence of Kankazi on her son, the newly enthroned Rudahigwa, the Belgian administration attempted to keep her away from the new king, though she continued to exert considerable influence and continued to discreetly advise her son on matters of governance, until her son’s untimely death in Burundi in 1959, where he had travelled for a meeting with Belgian colonial authorities. An event that sparked widespread rumors of foul play in a country already rife with rising ethnic tensions due to the formalization of the "ethnic" categories, Tutsi, Hutu and Twa, that had occurred under Belgian rule during the reign of Rudahigwa, who himself sat at the pinnacle of the Tutsi elite.