South Africa’s diplomatic tiff with Rwanda stiffens

Five Rwandese female journalists attending media management training in Johannesburg were last week denied entry into South Africa as the diplomatic tiff between the two countries intensified.

The training that attracted over 30 women journalists was organised by World’s Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WANIFRA) and Women In News, in partnership with the School of Journalism at Wits University.  “It is with sadness that we could not fix the diplomatic issues between the two countries of Rwanda and South Africa to bring you to training next week.

We are working closely with Wits University to see how we can bring the training to you,” read an email from the organisers and addressed to the journalists, adding that, “We hope to have a solution soon so we can welcome you in person to the Women in News programme.

”One of the organisers Alison Meston Bunting told participants that they were planning to travel to Rwanda to conduct the training of women in the media there. This saga follows another incident in which South African government expelled three Rwandan diplomats that were linked to a raid on an exiled Rwandan general’s Johannesburg’s home in 2014.

Rwanda, according to Reuters retaliated by asking six South African envoys to leave. During that period, the source says armed men broke into the Johannesburg home of a former Rwandan army chief, General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, an exiled critic of Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame.

It is reported that he was not home at the time. A diplomatic official said that South African security services had tracked the intruders and determined that they were ‘intelligence personnel attached to the Rwandan Embassy.’South African police had also been investigating the murder in Johannesburg of another exiled Kagame opponent, which Kagame and officials denied any involvement in the attacks on exiled opponents but rather called them traitors.

Meanwhile, the media management certificate course introduces the participants to management principles, finance for finance managers, people management, marketing and advertising, research and new technology, strategic planning and governance.

The theoretical principles are presented in the context of how they apply to the effective management of media organisations. It attracted female journalists from Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Malawi and Kenya.