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Hollow Man (continued)

While visiting South Africa for an African Union summit, the country’s high court issued an interim order to prevent Omar al-Bashir leaving the country in order to answer international criminal charges (accused of being a mass murderer of 300,000 deaths in Darfur. President Jacob Zuma had other ideas and facilitated his exit. Omar al-Bashir was allowed to escape the country in a private jet – in defiance of the domestic court order and international law. In October 2013, an extraordinary AU summit was called to deliberate the role of the ICC within Africa. The member states agreed to fight the ICC, and its global influence, through diplomatic channels by appealing to the United Nations Security Council. They chose to limit the ICC's mandate to take cases on any sitting heads of state and senior officials of governments across Africa. To do this, they expanded the powers of a unified African court and called on countries to individually withdraw from the Rome Statute, which established the ICC. By honouring this AU decision, South Africa directly disregarded its duties to the ICC, to the global community, and to its own judiciary's decision that issued the court order, which restricted Bashir's travel.In justifying their actions, the ANC painted Bashir as the latest in a long line of Africans to suffer agenda-driven prosecution. What is of great significance is the fact that the Zuma administration’s connivance with al-Bashir, would appear to be in contempt of court and thereby a threat to the legal and constitutional basis of South African governance. The independence and integrity of the judiciary upto now has been a bedrock of South African democracy based on the rule of law. South African law is clear. The Pretoria High Court is a superior court. A decision made by such a court may only be appealed to the Supreme Court of Appeal or even the Constitutional Court, both of which are primarily appellant courts. Absent such an appeal, the high court’s ruling stands. The Zuma government filed no appeal in the al-Bashir case.

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