A turbulent few weeks for international justice. First, Sudan’s President Omer el Beshir arrived in South Africa on 13 June for the African Union summit despite his indictment by the International Criminal Court for genocide. He left barely two days later as the Pretoria High Court deliberated on the South African government’s legal obligations to arrest him.

It has emerged that foreign ministers at the AU summit had earlier called for the ICC’s charges to be dropped against both Kenya’s Deputy President William Ruto and Omer el Beshir. They also called for the UN Security Council to withdraw the referral of Sudan to the ICC. Last December, ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told the UNSC that she had 'hibernated' work on the Darfur investigation due to lack of international cooperation.

And on 20 June, British officials arrest Rwanda's spy chief General Emmanuel Karenzi Karake on a Spanish arrest warrant issued under European Union rules. Rwanda condemned his arrest on war crimes charges as outrageous, given his role in the military force that stopped the genocide.

Britain had little choice once Spain had submitted the warrant but to detain Karenzi and test the charges in court. If they are as weak as Kigali and others maintain, the court will throw them out and Karenzi will be on his way back to Kigali. If the London court finds merit in them and approves Karenzi’s extradition for trial in Spain, yet another politically charged case will be in the making.

From the start of the year, it's been clear that South Africa's local elections on 3 August would be a critical test of President Jacob Zuma's survival skills. There have been contradictory signs: it looked increasingly likely that Zuma would be pushed to resign before his second term ends in 2019. Then last month, the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the governing African National Congress gave Zuma a resounding endorsement and wound up an investigation into some of his business allies.

Whether it was Zuma's charm and charisma, which shouldn't be underrated, or the ANC's instinct for self-preservation before tough elections, it seemed the activists were closing ranks. Far from it. The trouble started in Gauteng, when the NEC tried to impose its choice of Thoko Didiza, a Zuma ally and former Agriculture Minister, as the ANC's candidate for Mayor of the Tshwane municipality, which includes Pretoria, and push out the incumbent mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa.

Protestors clashed with police in several townships around Pretoria; two people were shot dead in Mamelodi township on 20 June. There are similar disputes between the NEC and local ANC branches about the choice of candidates in the municipalities of Johannesburg, also in Gauteng, and Nelson Mandela Bay in Eastern Cape Province. The latest Ipsos opinion poll suggests that the ANC will lose overall control of all three councils to resurgent opposition parties, led by the Democratic Alliance and the Economic Freedom Fighters.