MINISTER in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni has pleaded with the South African media to stop reporting negatively about the African Peace Mission trip.
She said the world was applauding the African countries who went on a peace mission to Ukraine and Russia, yet South Africans are bashing the government about it.
Ntshavheni said this during a during a media briefing in Tshwane on Thursday, 22 June.
She said Cabinet had welcomed a briefing by President Cyril Ramaphosa on the African Peace Mission, in which the president participated alongside leaders and representatives of the governments of Senegal, Comoros, Zambia, Egypt, Congo-Brazzaville, and Uganda.
Ntshavheni said the mission underscored South Africa's principled position of non-alignment and the country's commitment to the peaceful resolution of the conflict.
She was asked how Cabinet would be responding to the incident in which Ramaphosa's security detail and media representatives were not allowed to disembark from a chartered SAA plane by the Polish authorities on the grounds that it was carrying dangerous goods which were not permitted into the country.
The minister said it was an unfortunate incident, but the president was able to do what he had set out to do on the trip.
"I want to make this clear: no one was detained in Poland. On our part, everything was done properly. There were no dangerous goods - the only weapons we had were the ones needed to protect the president."
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"We wish people could stop focusing on the negative side of the trip and look at the positive side of it, which is African countries doing something that other countries haven't tried to do, which is to engage both presidents of these countries," she said.
Ntshavheni said Africa is used to having European countries coming to the continent on peace missions. Still, this time around, it was the African countries doing the opposite, which needed to be applauded.
The minister also lashed out at those who were enquiring about the death of member of parliament Tina Joemat-Pettersson.
She pleaded with the public to give the Joemat-Pettersson family space to mourn her death and leave the investigations to the police.
