By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has filed a confidential affidavit responding to the Democratic Alliance (DA) case asking the court to declare that South Africa has a duty to arrest Russian president Vladimir Putin.
The DA approached the Gauteng High Court last month for a declaratory order on the process government should follow if Putin visits the country for the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India and China) Summit in August.
Putin is accused of committing war crimes in Ukraine.
The DA said it doesn’t want to see a repeat of the situation in 2015 when government failed to carry out an ICC arrest warrant for former Sudanese leader Omar al Bashir.
Presidential spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said the confidentiality of the president’s affidavit was in line with requirements by the International Crimes Court (ICC).
He said: “The respondents are obliged in terms of international law to keep the interactions with the ICC on the warrant of arrest against President Putin confidential. The ICC requires the fact of the request for cooperation to be kept confidential. To date, there has been no relaxation of the requirement of confidentiality by the ICC.”
Affidavits filed in court matters are usually public documents.
But the Rome Statute prescribes that all interactions with the ICC on the execution of an arrest warrant be kept confidential.
An attorney for the DA said on Thursday it had consented to the president filing on a confidential basis, but would argue that there was no need for the entirety of his papers to remain confidential.
“We agreed to them filing the affidavit confidentially but reserved our right to challenge the need for confidentiality once we received the affidavit,” said Elzanne Jonker, of Minde, Schapiro and Smith.
“While we accept that certain portions of the affidavit can remain confidential, we do not accept that there is any basis for the majority of the affidavit to be confidential.”
The DA thus plans to argue that the court should refuse to keep the rest of the president’s papers secret.
South Africa has been mulling its legal options if Putin decides to attend the BRICS summit because the International Criminal Court (ICC) in March issued an arrest warrant for Putin over the Ukraine conflict.
South Africa is an ICC member and would theoretically be required to arrest him if he attends the BRICS summit.