Gen. Kayumba leaves hospital
Johannesburg
Exiled Rwandan general, Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa has been discharged from hospital in South Africa after the doctor’s at Morningside Clinic in Johannesburg gave him a clean bill of health. He left hospital shortly after midday.
Gen Nyamwasa, a former Chief of Staff of the Rwandan army, was on Saturday shot in the stomach by a lone gunman who fled after the pistol jammed as the general tried to disarm him in the midday attack at his Melrose Arch residence Daily Monitor broke the story online.
The South African police have arrested half a dozen people in connection with the weekend shooting of Gen. Kayumba which the official says was an assassination attempt.
South Africa Police spokesman Govindsamy Mariemuthoo declined to give particulars of the suspects or where they are being held. However, sources familiar with the ongoing investigations told this newspaper in Johannesburg, that the six suspects are believed to be Rwandan nationals living in South Africa.
The nationality of the suspects is likely to be a major factor in helping explain the motive of the attack. Eyewitnesses said the gunman had spoken in Swahili as he fought of Gen. Nyamwasa’s driver.
The South African High Commission in Kampala on Monday said the matter of Gen. Nyamwasa’s shooting is “sensitive”.
“We can at this stage only confirm that certain arrests were made by the South African Police Force in this regard,” Van Niekerk, the counsellor (political), wrote in reply to our e-mail enquiries yesterday. “The investigations are ongoing and at a sensitive stage and we thus have no further comment on the matter.”
Gen. Nyamwasaäs wife has accused President Paul Kagameäs government of complicity in the shooting but Rwanda has vehemently denied the allegations. The Rwandan government has dismissed the allegations that it plotted to assassinate Gen. Nyamwasa as “preposterous and far-fetched”. “This [assassination of opponents] is not something that President Kagame does. He’s a man of integrity,” Foreign Affairs Minister/government Spokesperson Louise Mushikiwabo told Daily Monitor on Sunday.
Rwanda had previously asked South Africa to arrest and extradite Gen. Nyamwasa who fled to the country in February. President Jacob Zuma, however, said his country will commit to international obligations for asylum seekers. President Kagame says the general, who was Rwanda’s Ambassador to India at the time he fled, was “running away from accountability” after being linked by prosecutors to grenade explosions in Kigali between February and March.
