Are we about to go through the trauma of another visit to this country by Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir in three months’ time?
The country is still reeling from the saga of his visit in June to attend the African Union (AU) summit in Sandton.
Bashir is a fugitive from the International Criminal Court (ICC), for alleged atrocities in Darfur, so South Africa as an ICC member should have arrested him – or at least warned him he would be arrested if he did come. The latter is what it did twice before,– in 2009 and 2010 – when he was expected to come for the inauguration of President Jacob Zuma and the opening of the World Cup. So he didn’t come.
And it seemed the same would happen in June. But the government surprised just about everyone by letting him in and then defied urgent orders from the Pretoria High Court by letting him leave, unarrested.
South Africa thus violated not only its commitment to the ICC, it allegedly also broke the South African act which has incorporated the ICC Rome Statute into local law and acted in contempt of court, for disobeying explicit court orders.
The government is expected to appeal against the high court judgments on the grounds that it acted from a higher responsibility to the AU to let Bashir in and to the Vienna Convention – also domesticated into local law – to grant immunity against arrest to sitting heads of state.
The Bashir case has strained relations between the judiciary and the government, and has raised very serious questions about the boundaries of the constitutional doctrine of the separation of powers.
Now it seems that Bashir will be officially invited to South Africa again, to attend a summit of the Forum for China-Africa Co-operation (Focac) in December.
Focac was going to meet at ministerial level, as usual.
But on Friday the Chinese embassy in Pretoria announced that Zuma and Chinese President Xi Jinping had decided at a meeting in Beijing earlier that day, to upgrade Focac to summit level.
That presumably means that all African leaders will be invited, including Bashir. The invitations will be issued jointly by South Africa and China. And Bashir is on good terms with both.
Xi greeted him warmly in Bejing last week as “an old friend”.
Zuma also met him there and accepted an invitation to visit Sudan soon. They were both there to watch the grand military parade to celebrate the 70th anniversary of its defeat of Japan in World War II.
The big question now, though, is whether Pretoria will in fact allow Bashir to visit again, if he is invited, as expected. Or will it unofficially disinvite him again, as in 2009 and 2010?
Anton du Plessis, managing director of the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, and an expert on international law, believes Pretoria would not dare defy the judiciary again by admitting Bashir.
Particularly, he says, because he expects the high court judgments against the government over Bashir’s June visit to end up in the Constitutional Court, which, he believes, will uphold the high court’s verdicts.
Du Plessis may well be right. But If he didn’t want Bashir to come here for Focac, why did Zuma upgrade it to a summit? As with the AU summit, which South Africa only offered to host in January, he seems to have deliberately created a problem for himself which he could have avoided.
Because it will not be a straightforward matter for South Africa to disinvite Bashir.
A Focac meeting is probably not as important as an AU meeting. Nevertheless it is also a multilateral meeting of all of Africa – with China, now possibly South Africa’s most valued ally, thrown in for good measure.
Barring Bashir would presumably offend both those important constituencies.
Is Zuma trying to underscore the point that he and the ANC – and not the courts – will make foreign policy?