Calling Apartheid's Profiteers to Account
Action for Southern Africa
Twenty million South Africans still live in abject poverty, more than 4.6 million have no income at all and more than 2.7 million families have no shelter. These statistics are shocking enough alone, but become even more so when you consider that in comparison, the beneficiaries of South Africa's apartheid era still have their houses, cars, pensions and jobs and that apartheid's international profiteers continue to make ever-greater profits.
The UN declared apartheid a crime against humanity in 1973 and across the world, anti-apartheid movements began to press strongly for sanctions against apartheid. In 1987, an investigation into the responsibility of multinational corporations for the continued existence of apartheid by the UN Commission on Human Rights' concluded that "by their complicity, those transnational corporations must be considered accomplices in the crime of apartheid and must be prosecuted for their responsibility in the continuation of that crime".
Yet, there was no relent. When the apartheid state was bankrupt in 1986, the world's biggest banks from Germany, Switzerland, the United States, the UK and France rescued apartheid by favourably extending its loan terms three times. The apartheid regime used this lifeline to postpone negotiations and to intensify its repression. A criminal system which repressed the majority of the people of South Africa through imprisonment, torture, murder, an enforced migrant labour system and forced removals from land and housing, was wilfully backed up by financial and business investments that generated massive profits.
More than $3 billion in profits was transferred out of apartheid South Africa by foreign banks and businesses each year between 1985 and 1993. The 21,000 victims of apartheid violations identified by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), although by no means representing all those affected, could all be compensated if foreign investors returned only 1.5 percent of those profits.
The victims of apartheid should be entitled to reparations, including compensation, for the suffering they endured. But foreign banks and businesses have been remarkably hard-nosed in rejecting calls to contribute to reparations payments, which has now led to the filing of an international legal suit. A claim against Swiss and American banks was filed in New York in June. German, British, French, and South African banks and businesses that prefer to ignore apartheid victims' call for justice will be similarly challenged in the months to come. The doors are still open to discuss and resolve the matter decisively, but the foreign corporations' refusal to communicate has so far left no other option.
In terms of who should foot the bill for post-apartheid reconstruction and development, to insist that the new South African government alone should pay is to ask the victims to pay for their own suffering. Businesses and banks that propped up and profited from apartheid are liable too. Adequate reparations for apartheid must include massive social programmes for the reconstruction and development of whole communities. The new South Africa's attempts at doing this are seriously constrained by the legacy of apartheid, including the $25.6 billion inherited in illegitimate foreign debt. Apartheid debt cancellation is one form of reparation that will allow greater room for national spending on job creation, housing, health care, education, and the provision of water and electricity to the poor.
* Njongonkulu Ndungane, Jubilee South Africa patron, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town
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