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A South African judge yesterday granted what many in Africa view as a mischievous order for the government in that country to prevent Sudan President Omar Hassan al-Bashir from leaving South Africa until it hears an application calling for his arrest. President al-Bashir is in South Africa attending the African Union Summit.

Many take the order as mischievous indeed and an extreme attack on the integrity and sovereignty of the AU which has a standing position that sitting African Heads of State must not be arrested under International Criminal Court warrants.

Africans are angry that the ICC has arrogated to itself the task of arresting African leaders and citizens for alleged human rights abuses yet is allows war criminals in Europe and America to walk scot-free. Here we mean characters like Tony Blair and George W Bush who sparked illegal wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and other countries ostensibly as pre-emptive strategies. In Iraq the pretext was to rid former leader Saddam Hussein of purported weapons of mass destruction. They murdered him on April 9, 2003 in the most humiliating and animalistic manner, live on the global news networks they control.

Bush and Blair did not find the arms but they had already killed Hussein. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had already been killed as well in a blatantly unjust war where western troops also stand accused of deploying chemical weapons on civilians. Iraq has not regained its stability since then yet the chief instigators of that atrocity, Blair and Bush are free.

In 2011, Nato-backed rebels launched an illegal war against the Libyan government led by Muammar Gaddafi. They hunted him down for crimes he never committed and like Hussein; the westerners murdered him in the most brutal manner. The war that Nato started in Libya is continuing, with that country now reduced to a hodgepodge of warring fiefdoms. Like in Iraq, hundreds of civilians have died and continue to die and suffer because of a war they didn’t cause.

No sane mind will defend the ICC’s position of leaving the likes of Bush, Blair and their commanders free amid the human death and suffering their actions caused. Yet, they pursue Africans, including sitting Heads of State for punishment.

It is regrettable that some in Africa are ready to be used in a clearly Western design to perpetuate their unfair hegemony on the continent.

The ICC issued a warrant of arrest for President al-Bashir for alleged atrocities in the conflict in Darfur, in which 300,000 people were killed and two million were displaced in the government’s campaign.

While we regret the deaths and the suffering of the people of Darfur, we know that the reason why President al-Bashir is being ostracised is not exactly because of his personal or official role in that crisis, but his refusal to bow down to Western demands, particularly control over Sudanese oil and other resources.

The reason why he is getting such treatment is the same reason why President Robert Mugabe is being targeted by Europe and America over our land and minerals, not the fiction about human rights abuses.

The Southern African Litigation Centre is notorious for coming up with frivolous cases in South African courts, and getting judicial attention. Zimbabweans know this organisation as part of the Boer-Rhodesian lobby opposed to the land reform programme and our government’s nationalistic programmes, policies and outlook. A number of times, it sponsored cases in South African courts seeking to overturn our land reform programme.

The al-Bashir case was heard at the Pretoria High Court presided over by that judge, Hans Fabricius, who in June 2012, issued an order for South African authorities to investigate alleged cases of “torture and crimes against humanity” in Zimbabwe.

Addressing a summit of liberation movements in Harare, President Mugabe responded to Fabricius’ order:

“In this context, it is important to remember that this Harare meeting takes place after the recent ruling by one Boer Judge Hans Fabricius in the North Gauteng High Court in South Africa calling on authorities in that country to probe alleged atrocities in Zimbabwe, arrest and prosecute alleged offenders under the International Criminal Court of which South Africa is a party and Zimbabwe is not. Needless to say, we take umbrage at these residual Rhodesian and apartheid forces that are finding space in our midst, to use our courts in a manner that seeks to mollify their defeat at the hands of our liberation struggles.”

While alarmists were yesterday suggesting that the South African government was in a difficult position on how to proceed given that it is a member of the ICC and has obligations under the AU, we have no doubt that President Jacob Zuma will choose the latter. His party, the African National Congress set the tone:

The South African government, said the ANC, “granted immunity for all (summit) participants as part of the international norms for countries hosting such gathering of the AU or even the United Nations.” It added that African and Eastern European countries “continue to unjustifiably bear the brunt of the decisions of the ICC.”

Furthermore, South African officials at The Hague, The Netherlands, where the ICC sits said there was a “lack of clarity in the law” because of its “competing obligations” to the AU.

Fabricius’ order is ill-timed, mischievous and anti-African. It must be condemned and ignored.