Banyamulenge, also referred to as nyamurenge and banyamurenge (literally 'those who live in Mulenge') is the name that they adopted in the 80’s describes a Tutsi community in the southern part of Kivu. The Banyamulenge of South Kivu are culturally and socially distinct from the Tutsi of North Kivu. Most Banyamulenge speak Kinyamulenge, a mix of Kinyarwanda (official language of Rwanda, Kirundi (spoken primarily in Burundi) with specific phonological and morphological features found in the two. Banyamulenge are often discriminated in DRC due to their Tutsis morphology similar to the horn African people. The ambiguous political and social position of the Banyamulenge has been a point of contention in the province. The Banyamulenge played a key role in tensions during the run-up to the First Congo War in 1996–7 and Second Congo War of 1998–2003. The war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo caused more than 6 million lives, with casualties continuing in North Kivu and South Kivu. In the late 1990s, political scientist René Lemarchand stated that the main ethnic groups claimed the Banyamulenge numbered around 50,000 to 70,000. Gérard Prunier quotes around 60,000–80,000, a figure of about 3–4 percent of the total provincial population. Lemarchand notes that the group represents "a rather unique case of ethnogenesis". Etymology Mulenge is a term historically referring to mountains concentrated on the High Plateau of South Kivu, in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, close to the Burundi-Congo-Rwanda border. Origins and early political status While the Banyarwanda/banyamulenge may have migrated from East Africa in the seventeenth century, the first significant recorded influx of Banyarwanda into South Kivu is dated to the 1880s. Two reasons are given for their migration: the migrants were composed of Tutsi trying to avoid the increasingly high taxes imposed by Mwami Rwabugiri of the Kingdom of Rwanda. Secondly, the group was fleeing the violent war of succession that erupted in 1895 after the death of Rwabugiri. This group was mostly Tutsi and their Hutu abagaragu (clients), who had been icyihuture (turned Tutsi), which negated interethnic tension. They settled above the Ruzizi Plain on the Itombwe Plateau. The plateau, which reached an altitude of 3000 meters, could not support large-scale agriculture, but allowed cattle grazing. Banyarwanda migrants continued to arrive, particularly as labour migrants during the colonial period. The Union Minière du Haut Katanga recruited more than 7000 workers from 1925 to 1929. From