Durban - As President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the ANC wants South Africa to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), the US revealed yesterday that it would not pressure the country to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin when he attends the BRICS summit later this year.
The ICC has issued the warrant for alleged war crimes related to the abduction of children from Ukraine.
This is the second time that the ANC has taken a decision to withdraw from the ICC after an initial one in 2016.
This was after the ANC government had come under fire from the opposition for failing to arrest the former president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, in 2015.
At the ANC National Executive Committee meeting at the weekend, the party took a decision to again leave the ICC.
Ramaphosa, who was hosting his counterpart from Finland, Sauli Niinistö, yesterday, said the ANC had decided to withdraw from the ICC for a number of reasons.
At the engagement, Niinistö explained that Finland, which recently joined North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) after many years of staying neutral, had seen the immediate need to join Nato after the eruption of war in Ukraine because of the security threat and to guarantee its own security.
Ramaphosa said: “The governing party, the ANC, has taken the decision that it is prudent that South Africa should pull out of the ICC, largely because of the manner in which the ICC has been seen to be dealing with these types of problems.
“There has been a complaint in the past that African leaders have not been fairly treated by the ICC.
“Our view is that we would like this matter of unfair treatment to be properly discussed. But in the meantime, the governing party has decided once again that there should be a pull-out. That’s a matter that will be taken forward.”
Speaking yesterday during the launch of the US-South Africa Racial Justice Fellowship at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Edgewood Campus in Durban, US ambassador to South Africa, Reuben E Brigety II, said his country could not pressure South Africa to arrest Putin.
The ICC, of which South Africa is a full member, has urged the 123 countries who are signatories to the Rome Statute to arrest Putin.
Brigety said the US was not a signatory to the Rome Statute and therefore not a member of the ICC and could not pressure South Africa.
“We have never said such a thing. Our vice-president (Kamala Harris) has said Russian forces have committed war crimes. We have made no public statement pressuring the government of South Africa to arrest Putin should he come, presumably for the BRICS summit. We note that other countries have said such things … the government of the US has not.”
Brigety said that as to South Africa’s policy with regards to BRICS, it was not his place to explain the country’s foreign policy to anyone.
“I explain my country’s foreign policy, and I would respectfully direct those questions to colleagues in the government of South Africa. What I would say is the government of the US deeply values its partnership with South Africa.
“We hope to grow and strengthen that partnership. We have noticed and been extremely concerned about some of the explicit anti-Americanism that comes out of, certainly the governing party and others, and quite frankly that is inconsistent with what we believe is necessary to grow and strengthen the partnership,” Brigety said.
Last week, South Africa’s BRICS Sherpa, Professor Anil Sooklal, confirmed that Putin had accepted an in person invite to attend the 15th BRICS summit in Durban in August.
Sooklal said Ramaphosa had sent out invites to the leaders of Russia, Brazil, India and China. He said all of the leaders, including Putin, had accepted the invitation.
Sooklal said he was in Moscow earlier this month where he met the Russian BRICS Sherpa who confirmed a delegation would attend the summit.
While South Africa said it was waiting for a legal opinion on the ICC arrest warrant, International Relations and Co-operation Minister Naledi Pandor speaking at a joint economic co-operation meeting with Russia last month said no one could tell South Africa to dump Russia.