DEFENDING DEMOCRACY IN EXILE Policy Responses to Transnational Repression from reporting incidents to police due to a lack of legal immigration status, official identity documents, or fear of deportation. Potential targets might be disincentivized from reporting incidents to police due to a lack of legal immigration status, official identity documents, or fear of deportation. Relationship with foreign governments South Africa’s foreign policy considerations, including a desire for closer relations with states in the region, limit the government’s responsiveness to transnational repression. This tension is most apparent in South Africa’s treatment of transnational repression perpetrated by the Rwandan government. In 2014, South Africa expelled three Rwandan diplomats in response to an attack on the Johannesburg home of RNC cofounder General Kayumba Nyamwasa.16 Later in 2014, South African courts found four individuals guilty of a 2010 4 @FreedomHouse assassination attempt against Nyamwasa, describing it as a politically motivated attack.17 Public diplomatic responses and application of criminal law are both important mechanisms for accountability. At other times, South Africa has appeared to temper its response to transnational repression in service of diplomatic relations. Under pressure from Kigali to extradite Karegeya and Nyamwasa in 2011 and wanting to preserve good relations with Kagame, the South African government proposed resettling the two exiles to Haiti. This solution— which Karegeya and Nyamwasa rejected—would have allowed South Africa to wash its hands of their fate without officially cooperating with or defying Kigali.18 The Nyamwasa diplomatic tiff also came shortly after Karegeya’s assassination. Karegeya’s family and other observers have speculated that the slow progress on investigating Karegeya’s assassination reflects the South African government’s hesitancy to damage relations with Kigali.19 The inquest began in 2019, five years after the assassination occurred, and several months later resulted in arrest warrants for two Rwandans accused of the murder.20 Slow and inconsistent responses to Rwandan transnational repression undermine the impact of such inquests. The entanglement of transnational repression and South African-Rwandan diplomatic relations leaves the future of accountability—and security of Rwandans in South Africa— in doubt, particularly as South Africa and Rwanda work to normalize diplomatic relations, including announcing new plans for cooperation in June 2021.21 #TransnationalRepression