{"id":37159,"date":"2018-03-21T06:28:56","date_gmt":"2018-03-21T06:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/sa-president-ramaphosa-assures-rwandans-on-visas\/"},"modified":"2018-03-23T12:45:43","modified_gmt":"2018-03-23T12:45:43","slug":"sa-president-ramaphosa-assures-rwandans-on-visas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/sa-president-ramaphosa-assures-rwandans-on-visas\/","title":{"rendered":"SA President Ramaphosa assures Rwandans on visas, good relations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ramaphosa made the revelation on Tuesday as he gave comments as a panelist in the African Continental Free Trade Area Business Forum on the margins of the African Union Extraordinary Summit of Heads of State and Governments held at Kigali Convention Center.<\/p>\n<p>Asked by a Ugandan journalist, Andrew Mwenda about how Africa can create a Free Trade Area  when there are still hurdles in accessing visas and integration, Ramaphosa said that people should consider visa issues between Rwanda and South Africa as a matter that has been solved.<\/p>\n<p> \u201cI think the issues of Visas by Rwandese to South Africa consider it as a matter that is solved. We have been talking earlier with President Paul Kagame and we have decided that we are going to put the relationship between South Africa and Rwanda on a much better footing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>He said that gaps and the challenges that both countries had are going to be resolved through ministers of international relations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have beautiful ministers who are going to work on this immediately. They are going to work on this, bring us solutions and I and president Kagame are going to sign what the two sisters are going to bring to the table,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n<p>He added that people should consider that the problem in the solved basket.<br \/>\nRamaphosa who will also join other Heads of States in the signing of agreement establishing African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) said the visa problem will be solved based on principals.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe principal here is you cannot have Africa as the Free Trade Area and impede the movement of people and business opportunities, you can\u2019t have that. So, we are going to solve this based on that principal as it unlocks a lot of opportunities including the flow of money, people and everything else,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday Ramaphosa also paid a courtesy call on President Kagame, at Village Urugwiro.<\/p>\n<p>Rwandans, with the exception of government officials carrying diplomatic and service passports have not been able to legally travel to South Africa since 2014 following a falling out over South Africa\u2019s offer of asylum to people Rwanda considered dissidents.<br \/>\nIn contrast, South Africans get visas upon arrival in Rwanda.<\/p>\n<p>Once the problem is solved among others, the newly elected South African President Ramaphosa will have brought a new chapter to the relationship between both countries.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-24480 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/rama2-5e419.jpg\" alt=\"Kagame welcomes Lamaphosa in Village Urugwiro\" \/><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-24481 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/rama4-f3583.jpg\" alt=\"Lamaphosa and Kagame agreed to solve issues in Visas\" \/><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-24482 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/rama3-4a908.jpg\" alt=\"Kagame chats with Lamaphosa yesterday in Village Urugwiro\" \/><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-24483 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/rama1-637cc.jpg\" alt=\"President Kagame and Lamaphosa alongside Rwanda&#039;s Foreign Affairs Minister Louise Mushikiwabo (R) and South Africa&#039;s Lindiwe Sisulu (L)\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa has said that his country and Rwanda are going to put the relationships of both countries to a good path and promised to solve issues of visas for the benefit of the people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[72],"byline":[197],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-37159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-featured-news-home","byline-john-mbaraga"],"bylines":[{"id":197,"name":"John Mbaraga","slug":"john-mbaraga","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":19}],"contributors":[{"id":197,"name":"John Mbaraga","slug":"john-mbaraga","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":19}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37159"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=37159"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=37159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}