SA-Rwanda relations sour over Sisulu insults

Pretoria has officially protested to Kigali and recalled its envoy from Rwanda for consultations. The short-lived normalisation of South Africa’s fraught relations with Rwanda has been by frustrated by insults flung at International Relations and Cooperation Minister Lindiwe Sisulu by the Rwandan government. The Daily Maverick reports that a website which Rwandan exiles say is run by the country’s military intelligence, went as far as labelling her a sex worker. The story was quickly deleted from the site. Sisulu suspended the normalisation of relations, according to some government sources. However, her spokesperson Ndibhuwo Mabaya denied however that the process of normalising relations – ordered in March by both President Cyril Ramaphosa and Rwandan President Paul Kagame – had been suspended. The report notes that the spat began last month with Sisulu’s disclosure at a press conference that she had met former Rwandan army chief General Faustin Nyamwasa Kayumba in South Africa. Kayumba fell out with his former close ally Rwandan President Paul Kagame in 2010 and subsequently fled to South Africa. Shortly afterwards, he was shot outside his home in Johannesburg but survived. A military court in Kigali tried him in absentia for trying to overthrow the Rwandan government by force and sentenced him to 24 years in jail. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-12-10-normalisation-of-sa-rwanda-relations-has-been-suspended-after-insults-to-sisulu-sources-say/