NATIONAL NEWS - The Gauteng High Court on Tuesday ordered President Cyril Ramaphosa‘s confidential answering affidavit on the arrest warrant of Russian President Vladimir Putin be made public.
This comes after the Democratic Alliance (DA) approached the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria to request an order to arrest and surrender Putin to the International Criminal Court (ICC) should he attend the August summit among BRICS leaders in SA.
The party wanted Ramaphosa to share the document.
At the time, Ramaphosa’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said the confidentiality of the president’s affidavit was in line with requirements by the ICC.
“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,” News24 reported.
Judgement
However, the court has ruled the Ramaphosa’s affidavit must be uploaded to the court’s digital system and share it with all parties involved in the case.
DA leader John Steenhuisen has welcomed the judgement.
“It is clear that the South African government is making every attempt to obfuscate and cover up this pivotal matter to avoid public scrutiny, and to mask its inability to stand up to war mongers and despots like Vladimir Putin, as should be expected from any human rights-based foreign policy.
“Given the farcical nature of President Ramaphosa’s responding affidavit, it is little wonder that he did not want it to see the light of day.
"Deploying flimsy arguments which allege that the Russian Federation would declare war on South African should we arrest Vladimir Putin, are little more than strawman arguments when the Constitutional principle and both domestic and international law make the merits of this case crystal clear,” Steenhuisen said.
Public interest
Steenhuisen added it is the DA’s belief that the public interest in this matter overrode government’s attempts at supposed confidentiality.
“This especially given the enormous implications for all South Africans that hinge on government’s decision on this matter, including South Africa’s standing on the international stage should there be a repeat of the circumstances that surrounded the visit of Omar Al-Bashir where South Africa failed in its statutory obligation to both its own foreign policy and an instruction by the ICC.”
Steenhuisen said the party also looks forward to the merits of the matter being argued in open court on Friday.
Ramaphosa response
Magwenya told The Citizen the presidency has yet to study the judgment.
“We are at the Mandela Day celebrations at the Eastern Cape we haven’t read the judgement,” he said.
The ICC issued an arrest warrant against Putin in March, accusing him of war crimes relating to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine since February last year.
