ANC MAD TO LEAD RSA OUT OF ICC
Congress of the People is astounded that the ANC is moving ahead to pull South Africa out of the International Criminal Court. According to Obed Bapela, deputy minister in the Presidency, the ICC had "lost its direction." This is no reason at all. It is just a self-serving excuse!
The dreams of the African Renaissance lie shattered. The vista of Nelson Mandela striding the world like a colossus begin to fade into a distant memory. South Africa is retreating on all fronts under the Zuma administration. As it does so, our beleaguered economy will suffer even more. The years ahead will see joblessness growing to calamitous levels. It is common cause that when vision is lacking, chaos ensues. That is where the Zuma administration is taking us.
COPE is alarmed but not surprised. We have a President who is wriggling every which way to escape the clutches of the law with 700+ charges to answer. He is doing so by manipulating the criminal justice system. Now he wants to suck up to the Sudanese dictator who is guilty of heinous and loathsome warm crimes. Birds of a feather flock together.
COPE urges South African citizens to consider this move very seriously. North of us, Cote d’Ivoire pushed with great determination to become the 122nd state to sign the Rome Statute and to ratify it on 15 February 2013. It began this process in 2003, when Cote d’Ivoire filed a Declaration recognizing the jurisdiction of the ICC. In order to overcome the ruling of the Ivorian Constitutional Court that the ratification of the Rome Statute would not be in line with the country’s Constitution, civil society organizations and Ivorian politicians joined together in an Herculean effort to pass a bill in 2012, which allowed Cote d’Ivoire to ratify the Rome Statute. That is how desperate Ivory Coast was to ratify the Rome statute.
Why did it do so? It needed international court intervention to deal with the serious political violence that had racked the country from 2004.
The ANC, in spite of all its protests, wants to lower the flag in much the same way it wants to muzzle the Public Protector and incapacitate the criminal justice system. All of its moves in combination are creating extraordinary perils and hazards for ordinary citizens.
What will it mean for South Africa to pull out of the ICC? The ANC will expose us and our children to war crimes and human rights abuses in South Africa without recourse to a higher court.
The subservient ANC cadres in parliament will forget that they owe their allegiance to the electorate. They will therefore submissively press the green button to appease Number 1 and push South Africa down the sliding slope. Soon, another pillar supporting our freedom from arbitrary rule and persecution will come crashing down. The deep state will take over and those who wield power will do so without constraint. That is the real danger we face.
COPE urges every citizen activist to do what is necessary to stop the ANC in its track. We must work to reform the ICC, not exit from it. We need it more than it needs us. We must not allow calamity to overtake us. Only political bullies will have nothing to do with the ICC.
Let us resolutely reject this mad and bad decision of the ANC just so that President Zuma can suck up to the Sudanese dictator who perpetrated serious war crimes against fellow Africans.
Issued by Dennis Bloem, COPE spokesperson, 12 October 2015
