Pretoria was reportedly planning to try to move the summit to China, which is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, the ICC’s founding document. But in a phone call with Ramaphosa last month, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that “China supports South Africa, as the rotating chair, in successfully hosting various BRICS cooperation activities this year”.

South Africa – like China – has refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but has called for dialogue.

China wants new BRICS members, but India, Brazil worry about ‘losing influence’

Moving the summit to China would be “logistically very challenging” at this stage, according to Paul Nantulya, a research associate at the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies at Washington’s National Defence University.

Nantulya said South Africa’s other option was to go ahead with the summit and deal with the consequences later. He said that approach was favoured by a number of senior members of the ruling African National Congress to avoid Pretoria looking like it was caving to Western pressure.

“That would be suicidal for Ramaphosa, who is desperately trying to garner support from various flanks of the party ahead of what is sure to be a hotly contested election next year,” Nantulya said.

China could be expected to provide political, economic and diplomatic support to South Africa, he said.

“If the summit is held in South Africa, China will send a high-powered team – probably Xi Jinping himself – to give the ANC diplomatic cover and potentially even extend preferential market access if the US withdraws its benefits under the AGOA [trade deal],” Nantulya said.

But after last month’s attempted insurrection in Russia by the Wagner Group, Putin will be even less likely to want to travel out of the country than he was before, according to Steven Gruzd, head of the Africa-Russia Project at the South African Institute of International Affairs.

He said it also seemed unlikely that Putin would be taken into custody if he did travel to South Africa.

Gruzd said it could be a repeat of 2015, when then-Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir – also under ICC indictment – attended an African Union summit in South Africa and was allowed to leave despite an urgent court order to arrest him.

“South Africa will not want to be labelled as a rogue state, and there is much more international attention on the Putin issue,” Gruzd said.

BRICS meet with ‘friends’ seeking closer ties amid push to expand bloc

Francois Vrey, a research coordinator at the Security Institute for Governance and Leadership in Africa at Stellenbosch University, suggested China could show solidarity with South Africa by funding the BRICS meeting to soften any blowback.

“South Africa is the smallest player in BRICS and does not want to upset the BRICS solidarity at a time when the first opportunity to gain greater solidarity and membership is on the cards,” Vrey said.

But he noted that Pretoria’s “economic interest is largely tied to the West and China” so it has to decide how to handle the dilemma. “If everything shifts to China, South Africa is off the hook,” Vrey said.

Putin’s attendance at the summit was ultimately a challenge for South Africa that created tension between its human rights legacy and Western connections on one hand and its BRICS ambitions on the other, according to Mihaela Papa, assistant professor at Tufts University in Massachusetts.

Papa said China’s support would not help much. “China’s engagement here would not empower South Africa to define its own global role and lead, and it would also not contribute to Chinese foreign policy on Ukraine,” she said.