South African Judge blocks President Zuma from pulling out of ICC

Zuma

A South African judge has blocked the country’s planned withdrawal from the international criminal court (ICC), saying the move is unconstitutional without prior parliamentary approval.

Sitting in the high court in Pretoria, deputy judge president Phineas Mojapelo said on Wednesday that any move to pull out of the ICC must be “on the basis of the expressed authority of the constitution”. He ordered Jacob Zuma, the South African president, to retract the country’s “invalid” notification to the court of withdrawal.

Michael Masutha, the justice minister, said the government would decide how to proceed, including a possible appeal, after reading the full judgment but indicated it still intended to press ahead with the withdrawal. He described the judgment as a policy decision.

Pretoria said last year it planned to leave the ICC after receiving criticism for ignoring the court’s order to arrest the visiting Sudanese president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who is accused of genocide and war crimes, in June 2015.

Wednesday’s decision in Pretoria high court was largely expected as Mojapelo had already told government lawyers during a previous hearing that he was concerned that officials had exceeded their constitutional powers.

The application to stop the withdrawal was brought by one of South Africa’s two main opposition parties – the centre-right Democratic Alliance (DA).

“We have seen how our country’s approach to foreign policy under [president] Jacob Zuma has been at loggerheads with the human rights-based foreign policy spearheaded by the late president Nelson Mandela. By irrationally withdrawing from the ICC, South Africa is out of touch with other progressive and democratic nations on the continent,” James Selfe, MP and chairman of the DA’s federal executive, told reporters earlier this week.

The government will decide whether to appeal, officials said.