S.A has major role to play in Africa

Victor Kgomoeswana Correspondent

This year appears to be the year of big exits; some of them quite unforeseen. Brexit left analysts and scenario planners gob-smacked. Barack Obama leaves the Oval Office to Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump soon. These signal the end of an era in many ways.The announced intent by South Africa to leave the International Criminal Court (ICC), ostensibly to facilitate peacekeeping across Africa, wrong-footed me. Still, I would not get too frazzled by it.

After all, if it materialises, South Africa will not be alone, even though in signing it, the country was taking the lead instead of emulating others.

Could it be that Pretoria no longer considers its role as the leader on the continent; or is it really convinced that being outside of the ICC will enhance the chances of peace in countries such as South Sudan and Burundi?

The Rome Statute, since July 17, 1998, was supposed to create a framework to prosecute perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and crimes of aggression.

Curiously, it never got the support of the US, the People’s Republic of China and Israel, among others.

Why would these superpowers not back a means to eradicate the very antithesis of civilisation?

Before it came into effect in 2002, US heavyweights offered plausible explanations, but way too spurious for the “world’s greatest country”.

In 2000, then US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld decried “the lack of adequate checks and balances on the powers of the courts, prosecutors and judges”.

He also cited possible “dilution of the UN Security Council’s authority over international criminal prosecutions”, and probably closer to home, the absence of “any effective mechanism to prevent politicised prosecutions of American service members and officials”.

Who would want to mount a politicised campaign to prosecute Americans? The answer is simple.

Claims abound that the ICC targets Africans while letting people like George W Bush and Tony Blair walk free. The US has previously waged war on other countries based on what turned out to be mere fabrications. The ever-elusive weapons of mass destruction were the putative cause of the Gulf War.

Now, it is South Africa’s turn to sell its own brand of spin-doctoring: “South Africa is hindered by the Rome Statute of the ICC, which compels the country to arrest officials who also have diplomatic immunity,” Justice Minister Michael Masutha is quoted as saying.

The officials in question here include the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who visited South Africa in June 2015 for an AU event with a pending ICC arrest warrant. He left stealthily, ducking a flurry of court actions to force the authorities to detain him. Arresting a sitting head of state runs contrary to local laws that offer such officials immunity from prosecution, Pretoria argues.

South Africa joined Burundi in deciding to quit the ICC last week.

Hardly a role model to imitate, Burundi has a humanitarian crisis created by the decision by President Pierre Nkurunziza to run for a third term.

South Africa, on the other hand, is a universal role model of constitutional democracy.

The decision to leave the ICC is indicative of the failed credibility of multilateral institutions to dispense justice.

The Rwandan genocide in 1994 took place on its watch.

South Africa had better be able to, as Minister Masutha said, “work with the African Union and the other countries in Africa, to strengthen continental bodies such as the African Court on Human and People’s Rights, created to deal with such crimes and to prosecute the perpetrators”.

If that works, who needs the ICC, right?

South Africa continues to play a major role in stabilising the continent, but it cannot do so on its own. — Independent Online.