South Africa's 'Vladimir Putin problem' now a headache to Brics bloc

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa will soon announce what will be done about the legally problematic August visit to South Africa of Russian President Vladimir Putin for a summit – while French President Emmanuel Macron has also asked to attend.

The Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (Brics) bloc of nations will have its summit in Johannesburg in a little over a month.

But South Africa is a party to the Rome Statute and is under international criminal law obligation to arrest Putin – who has accepted Ramaphosa’s invitation to attend – if he lands on South African soil, in the terms of a warrant issued under the authority of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Putin has been cited by the ICC for the war crime of abducting Ukrainian children from their invaded homeland to Russia.

The treaty requires members to act against all being sought for war crimes.

The ruling African National Congress, which harbours a deep affection for Russia – actually, at the time, the Soviet Union – for its significant help in overthrowing the race-based ‘crime against humanity’ of apartheid, has tried unsuccessfully to say that Putin may come to South Africa unimpeded as a head of state, since heads of state are usually afforded immunity, as a matter of course.

But the ICC statute is clear – no-one is above war crimes investigations and prosecutions, especially when the crimes involved are committed against children, the mass abduction of children being specifically mentioned.

Also Read: South Africa scrambles to avert Putin arrest headache

President Ramaphosa apparently raised the dilemma he is now in with Putin during his recent African Peace Mission in Russia and Ukraine.

The issue, say diplomatic sources here, came up during Ramaphosa’s apparently unsuccessful visit to St Petersburg, leading an African delegation attempting to forge an unlikely peace between the Ukrainians — who are unequivocal in wanting “all Russians gone”, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky put it — and the Russians, who seem intent on pursuing their war with their West-leaning neighbour.

The Putin-Ramaphosa meeting seems to have been a thorny affair, with Putin not letting the South African leader off the hook with regards to his attending the Brics summit “as usual”, though the generally-held view among the informed is that Putin was highly unlikely to have come, even before the failed June 23 insurrection of Wagner mercenary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Far from appearing the best of friends, Putin scowled through what amounted to a dressing-down from Ramaphosa over Russia’s violation of international sovereignty rights in Ukraine and grumpily defended his invasion on the grounds that the West had supported the ousting of the pro-Kremlin leadership in Ukraine in 2014.

Just a couple of days later, Ramaphosa was hosting the Dutch and Danish prime ministers, on a rare joint visit to put significant weight and money – €300 million – behind an EU and American effort to help South Africa out of its ongoing energy crisis and through a ‘just energy transition’ to green and renewable energy sources.

The twin visit of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was just one in a string of similar high-level interactions in recent weeks, as Western leaders have tried to woo South Africa away from its supposedly ‘neutral’ stance on the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, which in reality has been pro-Russian – at least until Ramaphosa’s peace effort, last weekend.

Talking openly of “Russia’s war”, and of “returning the children immediately to Ukraine”, did little to cement existing ties between Russia and South Africa.

The “value” of South Africa’s ties with the Kremlin have, meanwhile, been closely scrutinised in media and by analysts here, as the cost of being ‘pals with Vlad’ has been assessed as being far too high, relative to the risk of alienating helpful European and American administrations.

The twin European leaders’ visit, which underlines the proffered Western help that neither Russia nor China are offering, came as the Americans are still cogitating on what action to take over the docking in December of an American-sanctioned Russian cargo vessel at a major South African naval station near Cape Town.

That docking was bad enough, but the US ambassador’s much more serious allegation that arms or military equipment had been loaded onto that vessel triggered a flurry of diplomatic efforts to mend fences between Washington, backed by most of Europe, and Pretoria.

Also Read: Don't let Putin in, Nobel prize winner tells South Africa

The European leaders’ visit followed that of Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa as well as German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock last month, these latest envoys following a string of prior efforts by various governments unhappy with S Africa’s geo-political position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The mounting pressure on Ramaphosa to make a moral choice and not pretend to be sitting on the fence, as was perceived to be the case, appears to have come to fruition with Ramaphosa’s pointed and not well-received comments in St Petersburg.

The poor tenor of South Africa-Russian relations seemed to have settled the matter of Putin’s proposed visit, even as the South Africans headed home somewhat ragged at the edges over a very difficult ‘peace-making’ foray, after the Poles seized 12 pallets of cargo, mostly guns and ammunition, and refused forward progress of some 90 ‘security’ personnel and a few journalists accompanying Ramaphosa.

In Ukraine, face-to-face with Zelensky, who was polite but unmoving on “getting the Russians out of Ukraine”, Ramaphosa appears to have realised the untenable position he had been put in by his ruling party’s irrational and nostalgic attachment to its supposed Russian friends.

Ramaphosa’s subsequent remarks in St Petersburg, where he met Putin, may have ensured that the Russian leader, who was clearly angered, would not come – but the failed ‘Wagner coup’ has virtually ensured that outcome, due to insecurity on the Russian home front.

But there has been no formal word from Moscow, as yet, the assessment here from seasoned analysts being that a very annoyed Putin is letting his South African Brics partner – and current chairperson of that body, which portrays itself as part of the ‘global South’, but with Russia and China as members, is definitively not that – sweat it out for a while.

No sooner had the Dutch and Danish PMs left South African shores, than Ramaphosa followed them to Europe, there to participate in French President Emmanuel Macron’s Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris, called to address poverty and climate change.

Pretoria had already been informed by the visiting French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna – yet another of the many Western envoys who have been engaging with the seemingly recalcitrant South Africans over their position on the Ukraine war – that Macron wished to be invited to attend the upcoming Brics summit.

The rationale was that, just as Ramaphosa had been invited to attend a recent G7 meeting, so too could Macron visit a Brics summit, at the invitation of Ramaphosa, if he wished to offer it.

But, it was underlined, Macron would not come if Putin was present.

The Kremlin’s response was that it was inappropriate to invite Macron, a leader of a Nato country.

With Western leaders somewhat mollified by Ramaphosa’s unexpectedly much tougher line with Putin, and the prospects of a French leader at a Brics summit without a Russian one, the viability of Brics as a geo-political formation that ‘makes sense’ may turn out to be one of the many victims of Russia’s adventure into what Putin himself has called an “historic restoration of Russia to its former glory”.