South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday said his country's governing party will try to quit the International Criminal Court, which last month issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin for alleged war crimes.
According to Reuters, Ramaphosa said during a joint press conference in Johannesburg with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto that his country's governing African National Congress (ANC) party "has taken that decision that it is prudent that South Africa should pull out of the ICC."
Hague investigators worked on evidence against Putin for over a year before the ICC issued an arrest warrant in March that accused the Russian leader of being "allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation."
Though Ramaphosa did not say the decision about the ICC was based on Putin's warrant, Agence France-Presse reported that the South African leader indicated that the ANC's stance was "largely" due to how the ICC treats certain countries.
"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," he said.
South Africa has maintained a neutral stance on the Ukraine war, but the country's international relations and cooperation minister, Naledi Pandor, said last month that his government had sought legal advice regarding the ICC warrant should Putin visit.
The possibility of a Putin visit could come as early as this summer, as the Russian president is invited to the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit, which South Africa is hosting in August. As long as South Africa remains in the ICC, the country is obliged to arrest him and turn him over to The Hague should he enter its territory.
Currently, it is unclear if Putin will attend the BRICS conference. Anil Sooklal, a South African official for the summit, told Reuters that Putin "has been invited by President Ramaphosa, and Russia has indicated attendance."
On Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that while Russia "will actively take part" in the BRICS summit, "appropriate decisions will be made closer to the time" in regards to Putin attending in person.
Reuters reported that two days before Ramaphosa's comments, South Africa's parliament formally dropped a bid that had been stalling for seven years to pull out of the ICC's Rome Statute.
The withdrawal attempt that began in 2016 came after Sudan's then-President Omar al-Bashir visited South Africa a year earlier. Though an ICC arrest warrant for alleged war crimes had been issued for al-Bashir during his trip to South Africa, the country did not arrest him.
South African officials argued at the time that the ICC was inconsistent with laws that give sitting world leaders diplomatic immunity.
Later on Tuesday, a statement from Ramaphosa's office walked back the president's comments. The office blamed a "communication error" made by the ANC for the confusion and added that the "presidency wishes to clarify that South Africa remains a signatory" of the ICC.
Newsweek reached out to a spokesperson for Ramaphosa via email for comment.
Update 04/26/23 9:00 a.m. ET: This story has been updated to include information from a statement released by Ramaphosa's office.
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Jon Jackson is an Associate Editor at Newsweek based in New York. His focus is on reporting on the Ukraine ... Read more
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