SA's withdrawal from ICC not being done legally - ISS
21 October 2016
Cape Town - The government's decision to withdraw from the International Criminal Court should have gone through Parliament for ratification first, the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) has said.
Justice Minister Michael Masutha said on Friday that the government's reason for removing itself as a signatory of the Rome Statute was due to a conflict between its obligations to the African Union to grant its heads of state immunity.
ISS executive director Anton du Plessis told News24 that Masutha was wrong in stating the decision to withdraw could have been made by Cabinet before consultation with Parliament.
"This is not a self-executing treaty. There are some self-executing treaties in South Africa but this is not one of them," he said on Friday.