From left: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. (Photo: Adam Berry / Getty Images) | Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Artem Geodakyan / Sputnik / Kremlin Pool) | President Cyril Ramaphosa. (Photo: Waldo Swiegers / Bloomberg via Getty Images) 
President Cyril Ramaphosa has spoken on the phone to Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the African peace mission on the Russia-Ukraine war as well as the Russia-Africa summit in St Petersburg next month. It seems highly likely that they also discussed the BRICS summit which South Africa is hosting in August, where the presence or absence of Putin has become an extremely thorny diplomatic and legal conundrum for Pretoria.
Did Ramaphosa politely tell Putin he couldn’t attend?
The Presidency, however, only mentioned the peace mission and the Russia-Africa summit as topics of the conversation.
Ramaphosa is scheduled to join the leaders of Senegal, Egypt, the Republic of Congo, Zambia, Uganda and Comoros when they travel next week first to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv and then Putin in St Petersburg to discuss ways of ending the war.
Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, said Putin had welcomed the initiative by the African leaders and expressed his desire to receive them. Magwenya noted that Ramaphosa’s call with Putin followed a discussion on Monday among the African leaders participating in the peace mission.
“The leaders discussed their forthcoming engagements with presidents Putin and Zelensky regarding exploring ways of bringing an end to the conflict.”
Read more in Daily Maverick: Cabinet to consider moving BRICS Summit to China
Conspicuously unmentioned was South Africa’s dilemma about the BRICS summit it is scheduled to host in Johannesburg from 22 to 24 August. As a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC) South Africa would be obliged to arrest Putin if he sets foot in South Africa as the ICC has issued a warrant for his arrest for the alleged war crime of complicity in abducting Ukrainian children in the parts of the country Russia has occupied and forcibly deporting them to Russia.
The South African government had earlier announced that it was seeking a legal solution that would allow it both to host Putin and also not violate its obligations to the ICC and to its own ICC Implementation Act which domesticates the Rome Statute of the ICC.
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But last week officials said it was unlikely that any legal solution would take effect before the summit and so they were exploring ways of holding the summit without Putin visiting South Africa. These include holding the summit virtually – either for all the BRICS leaders or just for Putin – or moving the summit to another country. China seems the preferred host if that is decided on.
A interministerial committee appointed by Ramaphosa and chaired by Deputy President Paul Mashatile met on Monday to discuss these options and is believed to have made a recommendation to Cabinet to be discussed at its meeting on Wednesday.
Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni is due to brief the media about the outcomes of the Cabinet meeting later on Thursday, where it is possible she will disclose what Cabinet has decided to do about the BRICS summit. It is conceivable that Ramaphosa called Putin just after the Cabinet meeting precisely to brief him about what it had decided. DM