By David Himbara
South Africa expelled 3 Rwandan diplomats suspected of attempting to assassinate Kayumba Nyamwasa, the exiled former Rwanda army chief of staff who lives in SA.
Rwanda retaliated and expelled 6 diplomats – effectively the entire South African embassy in Rwanda.
Lesson? How to shoot yourself in the foot. Why?
Ever since SA allowed Rwandans to study in that country on same fee structure as nationals, many Rwandans went to study there. Many Rwandan doctors studied in SA for example. Many business people buy material and equipment in SA. RwandAir flies to Johannesburg daily.
So who will process visas for these Rwandan travellers, students and business people into South Africa, after Rwanda has expelled almost the entire staff of SA embassy in Kigali?
Hello? Am I missing something here?
There is more – economic, trade and investment relations.
South Africa is Africa’s largest economy in Africa with gross domestic product (GDP) of USD384billion versus Rwanda’s GDP of USD7billion. South Africa is also an industrial giant in African context. It is therefore not surprising that some of most innovative investors into Rwanda came from South Africa. One of the biggest success stories in Rwanda is no other than South Africa’s MTN, interestingly partly own by President Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). Besides being a cash cow to RPF, MTN Rwanda is widely recognised as one of the largest Rwanda’s taxpayers. MTN paid USD35million in tax in 2012 for example.
More recently, South Africa’s PPC bought majority shares of Cimerwa, the only producer of cement in Rwanda, with the goal of increasing production capacity from 100,000 tons to 600,000 tons of cement a year.
Do you mean to tell me these SA investors won’t feel nervous with hostility between their home and host countries?
Let me bring in two “unrelated” factors to the tit-and-tat between a mosquito and an elephant.
* Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the former South African foreign minister, heads the African Union Commission.
* On Kagame doorstep in DRC is a military interventionist unit comprised of South Africa and Tanzania.
Boy oh boy! We live in interesting times.
