SOUTH AFRICA’S decision to stomp out of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is deplorable. It is inconceivable that Nelson Mandela would have done such a thing. Virtually all right-thinking liberals and lawyers in his country have condemned the move. In the name of standing up against the supposed anti-African bias of the court, South Africa has aligned itself with the autocrats of the continent and given succour to those who have committed appalling human-rights abuses. Its announcement on October 21st followed that of Burundi, which is under “preliminary examination” by the ICC for its president’s bloody suppression of dissent; the Gambia, another nasty regime, followed suit this week (see article). It would be tragic if South Africa set in motion a domino effect that prompted ever more African countries to leave the court. A wave of withdrawals would reverse the progress towards greater rule of law across the continent and beyond.
The charge of anti-African bias laid against the court, mainly by a clutch of governments whose leaders are vulnerable to its vigilance, is understandable—but wrong. True, eight of the nine countries about which cases have been heard, or are under way, are African. And all those so far convicted have been African. But that is because African governments, mindful of the horrors of apartheid and the genocide in Rwanda, have been keenest to sign up to the court and have actively initiated cases. Indeed, most of the ICC’s cases were referred to it by African governments themselves, while two (Libya and Sudan) were brought by the UN Security Council. The only exceptions to this pattern involve Kenya. The ICC indicted the current president and deputy president after at least 1,300 people were killed in post-election violence in early 2008. It was Kofi Annan, the UN’s former head, a Ghanaian, who recommended that the ICC bring charges. After the cases against President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy were dropped a year ago, the court issued a “finding of non-co-operation”, a polite term that included accusations of witness-tampering.