Since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant of arrest for President Hassan Omar al-Bashir last month, the Sudanese President has taken to strutting around Africa and the Middle East dismissing the order as inconsequential and not being worth the paper it is written on.

The inauguration of Jacob Zuma as the next South African president on May 9, however, will present President Bashir with the first major test of just how far he can go in dismissing the ICC order.

President Bashir risks arrest should he attend the ceremony that will be held at the Union Buildings in Tshwane (Pretoria).

That is because he is considered a fugitive from the ICC, accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in his country’s Darfur region.

South Africa is a signatory to the Rome Statute of the ICC, and is therefore under obligation to facilitate, whenever possible, the arrest of fugitives and handing over of such persons to the court at the Hague in the Netherlands for trial.

South Africa, like most other African countries, was opposed to the idea of indicting President Bashir. But The Star daily on Friday quoted an unnamed government official as saying “it would be obliged as a signatory of the Rome Statute to arrest and surrender Al-Bashir’’ to the ICC.

Some of the countries the Sudanese leader has visited since the warrant of his arrest was issued are Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt and Libya.

In Sudan, President Bashir has attended several rallies condemning the ICC action and vowed never to be cowed by its order. President Bashir has also since ordered some 13 international NGOs out of Sudan for allegedly feeding the ICC with information that led to his indictment.