The National Executive Committee (NEC) of South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) party has resolved that Pretoria should review its subscription to international organizations that are not of interest to the country, ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula has said.
"South Africa must investigate either withdrawing or amending our commitment to some if the international institutions that do not serve our national interest," Mbalula argued at the briefing.
The party leader added that ANC has not yet received an indication from the Kremlin whether Putin will be attending the BRICS summit in Johannesburg in August.
In early July, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said that the BRICS summit would be held in person. However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov remarked that the format of the summit had not been finalized and that discussions on the issue are ongoing.
On Friday, Vincent Magwenya, a spokesman for the South African president's office, said Ramaphosa was directly discussing ICC-related issues ahead of the BRICS summit with Putin and urged to await a statement from the country's head of state on the matter of inviting Russia to the bloc's meeting.
South Africa is subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC, whose pre-trial chamber issued an arrest warrant for Putin and Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova on March 17.
The ICC has imputed charges against the Russian side, which does not recognize the ICC's jurisdiction, including the alleged deportation of children whom Russian authorities rescued from Ukrainian shelling and took out of the war zone to safe areas.
The Kremlin's spokesman Dmitriy Peskov said that the ICC's raising the issue of the Russian president's arrest is unacceptable and Moscow does not recognize the ICC's jurisdiction with any of its decisions being "null and void" from the legal point of view.