Russia made it clear that a detention of President Vladimir Putin in South Africa would amount to a declaration of war. The country’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, made the warning when there is a month left before an international meeting takes place in Johannesburg, to which the Russian president was invited, who ultimately will not attend.
Russia will be represented by its foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, who is not at risk of being extradited. Hanging over Putin is an arrest warrant on charges related to the war in Ukraine by the International Criminal Court.
South African authorities had addressed Moscow saying they “would be happy” if Putin did not attend the summit. The government of the African country suggested that the Russian delegation be headed by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, but the idea was rejected at first, although the Kremlin never officially confirmed Putin’s intention to fly to South Africa.
After announcing Wednesday that Putin will not go to the summit, the Kremlin said it had never told South Africa that arresting the Russian president would mean “war.” However, presidential spokesman Dimitri Peskov told reporters in Moscow that everyone understood, without being explained, what an attempt to infringe on Putin’s “rights” would mean.
Before Moscow gave up sending the president, the opposition in South Africa tried to prepare an arrest of the Russian leader by cornering the government. According to the ‘Independent Online’, the South African president testified in relation to a lawsuit by the main opposition party, Democratic Alliance, which demanded that the court order the government of the country to execute this arrest warrant against Putin.
In his testimony, Ramaphosa admitted that South Africa would have “obvious problems” arresting the Russian president. “It would be incompatible with our constitution to risk going to war with Russia. I have constitutional obligations to protect the national sovereignty, peace and security of the republic,” he explained.
Ramaphosa also argued that arresting Putin conflicted with South Africa’s efforts to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. He himself accompanied several African leaders last month to a meeting with Ukraine’s president in Kiev and then Putin in St. Petersburg to discuss a path to ending the war, a mission that was met with skepticism from both.
South Africa has been between a rock and a hard place these weeks. She has ratified the Rome Statute, so she would be legally bound to arrest Putin by order of the International Criminal Court and extradite him to The Hague. These months South Africa has been exploring options to avoid arresting Putin if he had decided to go to Johannesburg. President Ramaphosa went so far as to ensure that national security is at stake.
South Africa has already avoided fulfilling its obligations to international justice in the past. In 2015, the country hosted then-Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir at an African Union meeting, after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for him for, among other crimes, genocide. He stopped short of arresting Al-Bashir and hastily sent him out of the country from a military airport. Attempts had been made to force the arrest through the High Court, which upheld the fact that he should be detained, but this was not followed through. The government appealed to the Supreme Court of Appeals and once again lost.
Putin was invited to South Africa for the big event in August, which is when the country hosts a summit for members of the BRICS countries, an acronym that encompasses Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. This bloc of fast-growing economies is seen by some as an alternative to the G-7 group of advanced economies, from which Russia was expelled when it was called the G-8 as punishment after the 2014 invasion of Crimea.
African countries have been notable for their reluctance to endorse UN general assembly resolutions condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine. Links from the past weigh heavily on the fight against apartheid in South Africa, where the Soviet Union was much more involved than the US. But above all the current dependence of some African countries on Russian Wagner mercenaries to fight the jihadists, as well as economic agreements between Russia and African nations. But South Africa is also waiting to renew trade agreements with the US, a country that has not signed the Treaty of Rome that supports the order but that views Putin’s arrest positively.
According to the BBC, a sanctioned Russian oligarch, Viktor Vekselberg, is one of the biggest donors to South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress.
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