The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party plans to introduce a parliamentary bill on the withdrawal of South Africa from the International Criminal Court (ICC), which was announced by party leader Julius Malema in a media briefing.
"We as the EFF will be introducing a private members bill in Parliament to effect the withdrawal of South Africa from the International Criminals Court, which has thus far proven to be a biased instrument of global imperialism," Malema said.
Continuing the theme of bias, the party leader referred to the court's inability to bring charges against American presidents for their military actions against Middle Eastern countries.
"The ICC did not do anything about former US President George Bush for the wars in Iraq and turned a blind eye when Barack Obama and NATO illegally invaded Libya to assassinate brother leader Muammar Gaddafi. South Africa and other African countries must withdraw from the ICC and the EFF will lead that effort,” Malema contended.
Apart from that, Malema, who has already vowed to protect Putin if he decides to visit South Africa to, has accused the US of using the ICC as an instrument to pursue its narrow political agenda.
"It is clear that the US seeks the destruction of Russia, and has no interest in a peaceful resolution to the conflict. They preach non-alignment when they are spending billions of dollars to support Ukraine with military equipment," Malema said.
Last month South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa said the South African authorities would proceed to consider the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party's decision that the country should withdraw from the ICC in view of the upcoming BRICS summit.
This is not the first time South Africa has threatened to withdraw from the court: in 2016, former President Jacob Zuma sent a letter to the ICC expressing South Africa's intention to leave the court after refusing to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who was visiting the country to attend the African Union summit.
However, the decision to leave the international court was later reversed after the High Court ruled in favor of the opposition Democratic Alliance, which challenged the government's decision.
In March, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Putin and his commissioner for children's rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, alleging "illegal transfer" of children from a war zone.
The Kremlin stated that Russia is not a party to the ICC and that the alleged crime did not take place because Russian authorities, on the contrary, rescued children from Ukrainian shelling and took them from the war zone to safe areas.