KIGALI, Rwanda—For a milestone year in Rwanda’s post-genocide history, 2014 began with an ugly start. In the early morning hours of Jan. 1, as revelers flooded Kigali’s nightspots, Patrick Karegeya lay half a continent away, dead in a Johannesburg hotel room. Once among Rwanda’s most powerful men, Karegeya had served for a decade as Rwanda’s head of external intelligence before falling out with the regime of President Paul Kagame. After spending time in prison, in 2007 he fled to South Africa, where he was granted asylum and put under state protection. But sometime on New Years Eve, in the upscale [...]
Relations between South Africa and Rwanda have suffered a sharp downturn in the first three months of 2014 with the murder in South Africa on New Year’s Eve of Patrick Karegeya, the former head of Rwandan external intelligence, and the attempted murder in Johannesburg in early March of the former head of the Rwandan army, Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa. Both men were once close confidants of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, but since fleeing Rwanda for South Africa, in 2007 and 2010 respectively, both have been viewed by Kigali as traitors, terrorists and legitimate targets for elimination. Indeed this was the third [...]
In theory, South Africa’s national and provincial elections, to be held on May 7, should give the opposition its best opportunity to date to erode support for the African National Congress (ANC) and to advance a realignment of South African politics. The ANC has had a difficult and unsuccessful period in government since the 2009 election, beset by problems of leadership, internecine strife, countless corruption scandals, confusion over economic policy and daily “service delivery” protests. The country’s post-1994 nadir came in August 2012 with the killing by police of 34 striking miners, a tipping point for many who had previously [...]
