The seventh point of agreement between the Zuma executive and the country’s judiciary just weeks ago was that court orders should be respected and complied with.
Their meeting, commitments to mutual respect and to the rule of law, came as a relief amid the growing estrangement between them. But they effectively tightened the pinch the Zuma administration finds itself in over Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.
Last Thursday, a full bench of the High Court in Pretoria reinforced an earlier ruling that Bashir, an international fugitive from justice, be arrested while on South African soil.
He had no right to immunity while here for an African Union summit in June, it said, rejecting the government’s argument that an AU summit enjoyed equal status and privileges to similar UN events.
But officials in Pretoria actively spirited Bashir out of the country, flouting the court. It was this clash, and other friction, that led to the meeting between Zuma, some ministers, and the country’s top judges.
The squeeze is that Sudan is a member of the Forum for China-Africa Co-operation (Focac), which is to hold a summit in South Africa in December – meaning another Bashir visit, and even greater embarrassment and constitutional strain.
But at least one journalist sharply noted that Zuma referred at a briefing last week to the “Sudanese government” participating, not Bashir by name.
Perhaps the delicacy of Zuma’s situation was quietly laid out to Bashir at their recent meeting in Beijing. After their discussion, Zuma spoke of “warm bilateral relations”. Maybe he already had an undertaking that Bashir would not again cause him to squirm.
If relations are that amicable, Bashir would not expose his South African counterpart to a crisis. For that is what it would be if he visited again.