Home boy: Russia’s President Vladimir Putin will attend Brics virtually. (Photo by Contributor/Getty Images)
President Cyril Ramaphosa was told by his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, that he will attend the August Brics summit virtually, shortly before he was to address a dinner in Johannesburg on Tuesday for Brics member state political parties.
Ramaphosa immediately informed the ANC top seven and the governing party’s former presidents, Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe.
Putin is said to have first given Ramaphosa the assurance during a Saturday night phone call and on Tuesday informed him that he would attend virtually. This came after protracted negotiations between Ramaphosa and the other Brics heads of state of Brazil, India and China.
The South African government had been grappling for a solution to the Putin problem as pressure mounted on Ramaphosa to declare whether he would arrest the Russian president on entering the country, as per an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant issued over the unlawful deportation and transfer of thousands of children in his country’s war in Ukraine.
Sources have told the Mail & Guardian that Ramaphosa relied heavily on his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to convince Putin to attend the Brics summit virtually and avoid a potential standoff over South Africa’s obligation to arrest him as a signatory to the Rome Statute, which established the ICC.
But the director general of international relations and cooperation, Zane Dangor, said all the Brics presidents were consulted during the negotiations. Russia initially insisted that Putin would lead its delegation in person, Deputy President Paul Mashatile told the M&G last week.
This led to South Africa initiating talks with China for the summit to be held in Beijing. But negotiations failed when India blocked the move.
Insiders said this led to Ramaphosa calling for assistance from Xi.
Mashatile last week told the M&G that Ramaphosa was in talks with Putin almost daily.
Russia is understood to have held South Africa to ransom in what ANC insiders saw as an attempt to leverage the two countries’ relationship for global political purposes.
During a media briefing on Thursday, head of public diplomacy at the department of international relations, Clayson Monyela, said the South African government knew that Putin would not attend when Ramaphosa visited Russia on an African peacekeeping mission in June.
This has been echoed by diplomatic sources, who said the first signs of an agreement being reached were already emerging by April during a visit to Moscow by teams from the international relations and other departments.
But last week Mashatile told the M&G that the Russians had rejected the virtual attendance proposal, insisting that the entire delegation led by Putin be physically present.
“The president has been in discussion with President Putin and advised that he should delegate, preferably his foreign minister. The Russians are not happy with that,” Mashatile said.
A senior South African diplomat with intimate knowledge of the events of recent months said there had been no “breakthrough moment” in the process of convincing Putin to stay at home.
“There has been consultation throughout the process following the ICC arrest warrant and its implications for South Africa. There has been engagement and discussion between President Ramaphosa and President Putin, and with all the other Brics leaders, to find a way to deal with the challenges,” the source said.
The diplomat said the approach taken by Ramaphosa and the other Brics leaders was “nothing new” and was in line with how the potential crisis thrown up by Putin’s proposed participation in the G20 summit in Indonesia last year was averted.
“President Putin was consulted and agreed that he didn’t want to jeopardise Indonesia’s situation,” the diplomat said. “Here we had a similar sentiment. What is clear is President Putin’s understanding of not wanting to put South Africa in a difficult position.
“That is in the spirit of Brics, that there is this understanding that we will not allow one participant to be painted into a corner by the actions of another.”
The diplomat said there was a belief from April, when a South African delegation visited Moscow, that they would find a solution.
The various Brics heads of state had, they said, participated in securing the agreement from Putin at some point during the process.
“The leaders would have all played a role; Brics is about consultation and consensus, that’s what we have seen. Over the past month and a half President Ramaphosa has spoken to each one more than once.”
The diplomat said the agreement had been achieved through “a continuous process rather than a breakthrough moment”.
The agreement had “stolen the thunder of those who were hoping to derail the summit and use this as their agenda against Brics and Putin.”
It also cleared the way for a successful summit, free from the distractions that came with the controversy regarding Putin’s participation in person, the diplomat said.
Dangor said South Africa was explicit in its negotiations with Russia that it would not do anything outside of its legal obligations. The Russian delegates understood this, he said.
ANC insiders privy to bilateral meetings with counterparts of the United Russian party said they had understood and appreciated South Africa’s difficult position.
Part of Putin’s reason for not coming was the political turmoil in his own country.
“No president under threat internally and currently waging a war against a neighbouring country which is supported by Nato can afford to leave for a week. The recent assault on president Putin’s state by the Wagner group would have been an important part of this, I imagine,” an ANC national executive committee member said.
The announcement that Putin would not attend the summit in person was made almost immediately after a supplementary affidavit Ramaphosa filed in litigation with the Democratic Alliance (DA) over the legal obligation to respect the fact that the ICC warrant became a public document.
The DA has asked the Pretoria high court for a declaratory order that the state was obliged to heed the ICC warrant issued against Putin. Ramaphosa filed an answering affidavit on a confidential basis last month. But the high court on Tuesday ruled, after the DA challenged the need for confidentiality, that it must be placed on public record.
In this affidavit, Ramaphosa argued that Moscow would consider it a declaration of war if South Africa were to arrest Putin, and that he had a constitutional duty not to allow a security threat to arise. He also said it would undermine the African initiative to help broker an end to the war in Ukraine.
In this second affidavit, signed on Tuesday and filed to oppose making the first one public, the president told the court that Putin would not come to South Africa to attend the summit. Ramaphosa asked that this submission be kept confidential until he had consulted the presidents of China and India.
“Importantly, I confirm that Vladimir Putin will not be travelling to South Africa to attend the summit,” Ramaphosa wrote, adding that he planned to inform the nation of this within a few days. “I am regrettably unable to do so immediately because of other pressing commitments and for reasons that appear below.”
He then added that determining the level of representation of Brics member states at the summit was the subject of consultations with fellow heads of state in the bloc.
He had raised the subject with Brazil’s President Lula da Silva at the Summit for a Global Financing Pact in Paris last month. Da Silva agreed that Putin should not attend in person.
Ramaphosa said he spoke to Putin again on 15 July, this past Saturday, but did not say expressly what the outcome of their call was.
He added that he has not talked to his Indian and Chinese counterparts.
“The Brics works on the basis of consensus. Releasing the content of this affidavit before I have had the opportunity to speak with my India and Chinese counterparts may strain diplomatic relations between South Africa and these countries, and also be in violation of the consensus model of the Brics. I really do not wish for that to happen.”
But the court on Tuesday ruled that this affidavit too would not be kept confidential, prompting the president to announce publicly that Putin was not coming to the summit.