Noela Rukundo: The Woman Whose Husband Tried To Have Her Killed By Hitmen
BBC/Noela RukundoNoela Rukundo and Balenga Kalala on their wedding day.
In 2004, Noela Rukundo immigrated from Burundi to Australia with her five children. This is where she met her future husband Balenga Kalala, a Congolese refugee. Over the course of the next 10 years, the two of them settled in Melbourne, married, and had three children together.
But by 2015, Kalala had convinced himself that Noela Rukundo was cheating on him. So when she flew home to Burundi for her stepmother’s funeral in January 2015, Kalala decided to seek brutal revenge.
Shortly after the funeral took place in February, Kalala called her under the guise of checking in and advised her to leave her hotel for some fresh air. Almost immediately, she was approached by a man holding a gun. He ordered her to get into a car, where two other strangers were waiting.
In most stories, Noela Rukundo’s life would have ended shortly thereafter. This, however, is not most stories.
The hitmen asked Rukundo what she could have done to make a man want to kill her. Since she was speechless and terrified, her captors decided to phone the man who had paid them to abduct and murder her. And on the other end of the line, Rukundo heard her husband say, “Kill her.”
But in a shocking twist, her captors later said to her, “We’re not going to kill you. We don’t kill women and children.” Instead, they extorted more money from Kalala. Then, according to the BBC, they supplied Rukundo with enough evidence to definitively prove her husband had ordered her death.
Kalala, meanwhile, was organizing a funeral for Rukundo, telling friends and family she had died in an “accident” while she was in Africa.
When Rukundo returned to Melbourne on February 22, 2015, she went home to confront her husband. She found him escorting guests to their cars, just after the conclusion of a memorial service in her honor. Then, she emerged. “Surprise!” she said to a stunned Kalala. “I’m still alive.”
Kalala was ultimately sentenced to nine years in prison for one count of incitement to murder. Rukundo, remarkably, holds no grudge against him.
“From my heart, I forgive him,” she said. “Let God judge him.”
