Ramaphosa ordered to make affidavit on Putin arrest warrant public

The Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg 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 in May 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.

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.

On Monday, the DA approached the court again to compel Ramaphosa to share his documents publicly and transparently.

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Judgment

Deputy Judge President Judge Roland Sutherland ruled in favour of the DA, ordering Ramaphosa to make the documents public by 2pm on Tuesday and share it with all parties involved in the case. 

“The answering affidavit, the replying affidavit, the letter from the state attorney of 17 July 2023 to the applicant’s attorney, and the heads of argument of all parties in the matter, shall be disclosed without qualification by uploading to the digital database of the Gauteng Division of the High Court of South Africa within two hours of granting this order and shall be accessible to everyone,” said Sutherland.

DA leader John Steenhuisen welcomed the judgment.

“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 warmongers 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 judgment,” 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. 

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