There’s no place for ‘national secrets’

There must be times when the ANC wishes that, like its Moscow comrade Vladimir Putin, it didn’t have to deal with a pesky constitution and the rule of law.

Such a time might have been yesterday, when President Cyril Ramaphosa was forced to make public his answering affidavit in a court application related to the possible arrest of Putin, should he set foot on South African soil for next month’s Brics summit.

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It must have rankled, too, that the forced disclosure came as the result of a DA legal action to get the government to honour its obligations to the International Criminal Court and arrest Putin.

In the end, the affidavit’s content was nothing which couldn’t have been deduced from the government’s diplomatic two-step over the past few months.

Ramaphosa repeated what the Moscow administration has emphasised – that the arrest of its sitting president would be considered an act of war.

Declaring war was something which would violate the SA government’s constitutional obligation to protect the lives of its citizens, he added.

ALSO READ: Ramaphosa ordered to make affidavit on Putin arrest warrant public

All that is – whether the DA likes it or not – perfectly logical if you weigh up Ramaphosa’s obligations to the country and our global commitments.

Even the Rome Statute, which codifies ICC orders, acknowledges there might be occasions where a country could endanger its sovereignty by carrying out an arrest on an ICC warrant.

Whether the DA is ultimately successful in forcing the government to execute the ICC warrant is not the real issue at the moment.

It is more important, for our democracy and the right of all citizens to know what their government is engaged in, that there is transparency.

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This tendency for declaring so many things confidential, or national secrets, must be knocked on the head, legally, every time it emerges.

If we don’t, we will be surrendering to a dictatorship.