Note to editors: The following speech delivered in Parliament today by the Chairperson of the DA’s Federal Executive, James Selfe MP during the debate of national importance on Omar Al-Bashir.

23 June 2015

A Cabinet of collusion to aide a fugitive

Madam Speaker,

The weekend before last, South Africa played host to President Omar Al-Bashir. He is the subject of a warrant of arrest from the International Criminal Court (ICC) on five counts of crimes against humanity, involving murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture and rape.

He is also wanted on two counts of war crimes – directing attacks against civilians and pillaging, and three counts of genocide. According to conservative estimates, he is thought to have been responsible for the deaths of 300 000 of our fellow Africans, and the displacement of more than 2.5 million, in the Darfur region.

South Africa is a signatory to the Rome Statute that established the ICC. Article 12(1) of the Statute obliges us to accept the jurisdiction of the ICC in respect of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. Our obligations in this regard were codified in the Implementation of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Act, 27 of 2002.

When the warrant was first issued in 2009, the then Director-General for International Relations and Cooperation, Dr Ayanda Ntsaluba, said the following –

If today, President Al-Bashir landed, in terms of the provisions of the Rome Statute, he would have to be arrested.

He went on to say –

The ICC has issued a warrant for President Al-Bashir and this requires signatory states to execute the warrant should he land on their soil….Not only that, our Parliament passed a law and that law is extremely explicit about what would happen if a situation like that happens.

That law was the Implementation Act, and it was debated in this Chamber on Tuesday 11 June 2002. On that occasion, Adv Johnny de Lange said, on behalf of the ANC, the following –

If there is some person somewhere who thinks that he or she can commit genocide or war crimes and hide in this country, this legislation will not allow that. There is an obligation upon our prosecuting authority to prosecute such a person.

Another very important principle spelled out in this legislation is that heads of state, heads of government and members of parliament will not be able to raise a defence that they are heads of state.

Then the hon Landers, now elevated to the position as Deputy Minister of International Relations, said in the same debate –

I reiterate, for perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, the world has just become a small place, and the number of safe havens has been drastically reduced.

Well under his watch, and presumably with his concurrence, the Deputy Minister made the world a bigger place for President Al-Bashir, and provided a convenient safe haven for him to escape arrest.

It is not as if President Al-Bashir arrived unexpectedly. On 28 May, the Registrar of the ICC reminded the South African Embassy in the Hague of our obligation to arrest Al-Bashir if he arrived here. On 13 June – the same day Al-Bashir arrived here – the Registrar was directed to formally inform the “competent authorities” in South Africa of that obligation. Yet the “competent authorities” sat on their hands.

But what is far worse is that this government did not merely lift its middle finger to its international obligations, in defiance of section 231(4) of the Constitution, it did so to our own Courts. The Gauteng High Court handed down an order prohibiting President Al-Bashir from leaving the country.

And yet he left and all sorts of people apparently colluded to circumvent it.

Al-Bashir’s jet was moved to Waterkloof AFB and hidden in a hanger. Al-Bashir was apparently escorted there by President Zuma’s Protection Team so he could escape arrest.

The Ministers in the Security Cluster reportedly had a meeting on 8 June to plan for this contingency. The Border Control Operational Coordinating Committee was told in an SMS to give instructions to all border posts. There can be no doubt at all that government colluded to defy the ICC and our Courts.

In the process, it has given South Africa the reputation as an unreliable country in the international community – as a country that does not honour its commitments.

But perhaps worse than this, the government has undermined the rule of law and the Constitution by wilfully ignoring the court order. Let me remind members of what the Supreme Court of Appeal said in a judgment handed down in March this year:

It is a most dangerous thing for a litigant, particularly a State department and senior officials in its employ, to wilfully ignore an order of court…It cannot be left to the litigants to themselves judge whether or not an order of court should be obeyed…No democracy can survive if court orders can be shunned and trampled on as happened here. That the State must obey the law is fundamental to any civilised society.

We could not have expressed it better.

Issued by the DA, June 23 2015