African Revolt: Is ICC a Tool for Justice or Geopolitics?
African Revolt: Is ICC a Tool for Justice or Geopolitics?
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The debate surrounding the International Criminal Court in Africa has often been framed in purely legal and political terms: bias, sovereignty, and neocolonialism. A deeper interrogation traces the historical arc from Africa's early embrace of the Court as a tool against impunity to its current perception as an instrument of selective justice.
Today’s podcast begins with a piercing analysis of the ICC's operational paradox in Africa as Christopher Oyier, an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya, and Paternus Niyegira, a Tanzanian analyst, discussed with Sputnik Africa the legal precedents and political flashpoints that exposed the Court's structural vulnerabilities and its dependency on the cooperation of powerful global actors.
“At the early stages, in the case of Uganda and DRC as early as 2004, those were self-referrals, and many of the African states found this [ICC] as a useful accountability tool to deal with armed group conflicts and warlords. I think the turning point must have been the decision of the ICC to issue an arrest warrant against Sudan's sitting president, Omar al-Bashir [...] The argument of the AU from that point was that the ICC could potentially be used as a tool to destabilize peace processes and complicate the realities of enforcement,” Oyier explained.
“It is a serious problem because if other nations, which are a little bit superpowers or developed nations, cannot be brought to justice by the ICC, it is a direct manifestation that there is selective justice, and we can't operate that way, and this is what is seen,” Niyegira pointed out.
The episode then makes a compelling turn by pivoting to a provocative question: What underpins the power to resist or to command respect in the international arena? Introducing a critical perspective from Frans Kamokgelo Ngobeni, a member of South Africa’s Gauteng Provincial Legislature, the discussion anchors itself in the continent's tangible reality: its prominent youth population and vast mineral wealth.
“With all the minerals that we have in South Africa, Nigeria, Botswana, Guinea, Angola, and other countries, we form a very powerful economic hub as Africa. So, nobody will need to go anywhere if, really, we're in charge of our minerals because the minerals are there, but yet we're not in charge of those minerals. You look at the mines in South Africa; we're not in charge of our minerals; the mines are owned by the same Westerners. So, if we make sure that we nationalize our mines and take charge of our economy, all economic sectors, mostly the strategic ones, will be able to keep our people on the continent,” Ngobeni noted.
Curious to hear more? Tune in to the full conversation on the Pan-African Frequency podcast, brought to you by Sputnik Africa.
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