Exiled general Kayumba Nyamwasa, who has been accused of hijacking the exile-based opposition group Rwanda National Congress (RNC) has spoken out on the split in the party, weeks after one of its founders broke away and formed a rival faction.

Lt-Gen Nyamwasa, who is exiled in South Africa, said the split is not unique to the party.

“It happens everywhere in political organisations,” he said last week on the party’s Radio Itahuka. “We have since regrouped after this split and put things in order. We will continue with our programmes.”

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He said RNC will go ahead with the planned elections in August to vote in new officials.

Theogene Rudasingwa, a co-ordinator of RNC, accused Lt Gen Nyamwasa, a former confidante of President Paul Kagame and chief of staff, of crowning himself chair of the party’s electoral process and creating a clique within the party.

Dr Rudasingwa left the party at the beginning of July and formed the New RNC outfit, citing longstanding disagreements between former allies of President Kagame who created RNC in 2010 and vowed to overthrow the Rwandan government.

“Lt Gen Nyamwasa created a new party within the party, using former soldiers who were members of Rwanda Patriotic Front, to create a clique of people, mainly Tutsi, who are loyal to him,” Dr Rudasingwa told the BBC.

Dr Rudasingwa, a former cabinet secretary and secretary-general of the ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) Inkotanyi, had accused the general of dictatorial tendencies, which he said were worse than what they accuse RPF of.

The RNC was formed by former high ranking government officials in Rwanda, Lt-Gen Nyamwasa, Dr Rudasingwa, Gerald Gahima and the late Patrick Karegeya, but the government does not recognise the party and its founders have been handed lengthy sentences in absentia.

Susan Thomson, an assistant professor at Colgate University in the US who focuses on Rwanda and the Great Lakes Region, said the Rwandan opposition is fractured along ethnic lines and this favours the ruling party.

“It makes it easy for the RPF to legitimately claim that these parties wish to return Rwanda to the ethnic politics that it believes caused the genocide.

“The opposition poses no electoral or military threat to the government because of its inability to appeal to Rwandans at home or abroad. And being abroad just makes their politics more visible as they are not subject to the genocide ideology and other laws governing public life/space in Rwanda,” said Dr Thomson.