South African President Cyril Ramaphosa's staff in protracted standoff with Polish authorities at Warsaw Airport

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa arrived in Ukraine on Friday with his entourage still held up at Warsaw Chopin Airport in Poland since Thursday night as Polish authorities threatened to confiscate his protection team's weapons amid accusations of racism and bureaucracy by Ramaphosa's head of protection Wally Rhoode.   

President Ramaphosa's personal protection unit, and the media attached to the diplomatic mission were on their way to Kyiv as part of a peace initiative to calm tensions between Russia and Ukraine.   

However, Polish authorities are using bureaucracy over permits for the weapons and equipment traveling with the president to stall their transfer through Warsaw to the train meant to take them to Kyiv on Friday afternoon.   

A female officer who was part of the advanced guard of the president's protection unit was strip-searched before being allowed onto the plane carrying her compatriots to negotiate their onward passage.  

Wally Rhoode said, "We have permits. For some of them, they said we must have originals, which we have. When we gave them the copies from the high commission, they don't want the copies, they want the originals."  

Rhoode added that the standoff had impacted Ramaphosa's safety.  

"They are delaying us. They're putting the life of our president in jeopardy because we could have been in Kyiv this afternoon already."  

Polish citizen Janusz Walus - supporter of pro-apartheid and far-right movements, including the white supremacist Afrikaner Resistance Movement of Eugene Terre’Blanche - killed Chris Hani, leader of the South African Communist party and a commander of uMkhonto we Sizwe by shooting him at point-blank range in the chin, behind the ear and in the chest on the morning of 10 April 1993, in Boksburg, east of Johannesburg.  

Walus is widely celebrated in Poland as an anti-communist hero for his murder of the anti-apartheid legend.   

(Callan Williamson)