President Cyril Ramaphosa has reiterated that the government is still in discussion about how it should handle the visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin during the BRICS summit in August.
Ramaphosa said they have noted the warrant of arrest issued by the International Criminal Court, but the government was still in discussion on it.
The government indicated a few weeks ago it was seeking a legal opinion on the Putin visit with the ICC arrest warrant hanging over his head.
South Africa came under fire in 2015 when it did not arrest former leader of Sudan Omar al-Bashir who was facing charges of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity by the ICC.
At the time Al-Bashir, who was toppled in 2019, was attending an African Union summit in Johannesburg.
The BRICS leaders are meeting in a summit in Durban.
But Ramaphosa said the matter was still under consideration in government and no decision has been taken yet.
Putin was charged with his official over the war in Ukraine.
Ramaphosa said as the chair of BRICS South Africa was issuing invitations to all leaders of member states and they must indicate whether they will attend or not.
“As the chair of BRICS naturally we issue invitations to all BRICS members. They will themselves indicate whether they will be able to come or not. We have noted what the ICC has said in relation to President Putin and we ourselves are still discussing this matter. We await all the BRICS members to indicate whether they are coming or not. The matter is still being discussed,” said Ramaphosa.
Ramaphosa also said they were not bitter that South Africa has not been invited to the G7 summit in Japan.
South Africa has over the years been invited to G7 summits and it was left out of the current meeting in Japan.
This was interpreted as a snub to South Africa because of its position on Russia in relation to the war in Ukraine.
But Ramaphosa poured cold water to this saying in fact, they were glad that the G7 leaders had invited the African Union.
He said the decision on who to invite depends on the host country, Japan.
He said when South Africa hosted the BRICS summit in 2018 it invited a number of countries outside of BRICS and those that were not invited did not take it as a snub.
The same thing applied in G7 where Japan decided to go for regional blocs instead of individual countries.
siyabonga.mkhwanazi@inl.co.za
Current Affairs