Rwanda National Congress (RNC) Coordinator in South Africa, Seif Bamporiki has just been assassinated by criminal Paul Kagame’s external intelligence operatives, BBC reports.
Reports say Seif Bamporiki was killed while delivering furniture to a client on Sunday afternoon in Cape Town. It is not clear whether the murder was politically motivated. The assailants took mobile phones and wallets before they fled the scene. No arrests have been made.
Party spokesman, Etienne Mutabazi, told the BBC that a client had made contact with Mr Bamporiki – who runs a bed shop – asking if he had a bed to sell. The client then asked for the bed to be delivered in Nyanga township and drove with Mr Bamporiki and his associate to the area where the bed was supposed to have been delivered.
Police are yet to make arrests in the incident that has shocked Rwanda’s opposition in the diaspora.
Nyanga, a Cape Town slum, remains South Africa’s murder capital. According to the 2018/19 crime statistics, Nyanga police station recorded the highest number of murders in South Africa, followed by Delft and Khayelitsha. A total of 289 murder cases were reported in Nyanga, compared to 308 the previous year.
The violent groups in the area are ripe for infiltration by anyone with a political agenda. Residents blame most of the crime on the “maparapara,” a slang word for the idle youths who are often hooked on crystal methamphetamine, known locally as “tik”.
Several Rwandan opposition figures have been killed in South Africa over the last ten years. Relations between Rwanda and South Africa have been strained over the murder of Patrick Karegeya, Rwanda’s former spy chief and later a critic in exile, in a Johannesburg hotel on January 1, 2014.
Four men were found guilty of trying to murder Rwanda’s former army chief, Gen Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, in South Africa in June 2010. The general had gone to live in exile in South Africa several months earlier after falling out with his former ally, Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
The details of what happened thereafter are yet to be confirmed, but Mr Bamporiki was killed by a single shot fired through the window of the vehicle.
Nyanga township is known to be one of the most dangerous townships in South Africa. At some point it had the highest murder rate per annum.