Clarion call on debt and reparations now

Clarion call to the people of South Africa on debt and reparations now, 16 April 2003

Today on the occasion of the final statement made by the President of South Africa on the matter of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Reparations, Jubilee South Africa and Khulumani Support Group wish to make the following call to the people of our country:

1. Our organisations comprise the mass movement of the people of our land who continue to bare brunt of the on going assault on our lives engineered and orchestrated by the system of racial capitalism, sometimes called apartheid. Our people live not with a mere legacy from the past; rather the past lives on in their daily lives in a multitude of ways. In this regard the question of the economic system set up by apartheid and the part played by debt in it is a fundamental problem contained in the process of the ongoing redistribution of wealth in our country from the poor to the rich.

2. We note with concern the gigantic retreat taken by our President today in his conclusion of the work of the TRC. We have no doubt hat the corporations in this country will find these provisions totally in ine with the economic system whose practice continues in the present. Our organisations will continue in the coming period to look for ways of reconstructing the given provisions in the interest of the poor. This applies to the 22 000 victims of crime who appeared before the TRC; many more others who are members of Khulumani; and millions of others who continue to bare the social chains set off by racial capitalism.

3. Our organisations note the position expressed by our President in relation to the civil suits currently before the courts in the USA. We will continue to debate these issues in a democratic spirit at all levels of social engagement in this country, certainly among ourselves, our labour unions, our youth formations, our women's organisations, our faith bodies, our social movements as well as the structures of national governance. We have no doubt that the justice of our belief in ensuring the advancement of corrective, political, social and judicial measures in reply to apartheid crimes will ultimately triumph.

4. Our current civil suits target foreign corporations. To the local corporations within the borders of our country we say; we would not prefer to deal with you in a court of law whether it be a foreign or a local court. Our preferences is to call on you to use this moment so the purpose of opening up a meaningful dialogue with our organisations in achieving the following outcomes:

• Acknowledgement of guilt
• Devising public processes of redress
• Searching for a human rights driven process of investment
• Reconstructing economic alternatives in South Africa whose aim is to invert the process of redistribution to make it flow from the rich to the poor
• Constructing models of bringing immediate relief to the pressure of poverty on our people as the basis of ensuring a process of eradicating poverty

5. To this end Khulumani Support Group and Jubilee South Africa are convening a national conference at a date and venue to be announced soon in order to allow the ordinary citizens of our land concretely to prepare an alternative position on reparations based on the stand we have taken in relation to foreign corporations. That specifically applies to South African corporations. This conference will designate a national process driven by the hand of ordinary citizens that will deal with the members of the business world in South Africa. Further it will serve to construct a process for reconciliation that denies the power of the past in our present.

Finally, the conference will designate a process of social mobilisation and political intervention that will not exclude the taking of South African companies to court if they are unwilling to address our platform.

Citizens of South Africa! The entire debt of racial capitalism consists in the extra judicial crimes of the apartheid system.

It also consists in these crimes which carved up our labour life; their mining, industrial and commercial system; their ghettos called locations, townships, homelands; their farm labour policies; their banking and financial systems; their internal debt as of 1993; their crimes against the ecology; their collarboration with the apartheid regime in illegal actions! This is the internal component of odius debt!

To the extent that these matters remain outstanding in the real work done by the TRC, and as concluded today, these continue to constitute the living social deficits caused by racial capitalism. The hour has now struck for the voice and hand of the people to guide our thoughts and actions on the question of reparations!

Issued by the National Executive Committee of Jubilee South Africa
Issued by the National Executive Committee of Khulumani Support Group
MP Giyose - National Chairperson of Jubilee South Africa
Ike Tlholwe - National Director of Khulumani Support Group

Apartheid Debt and Reparations Campaign

Apartheid Reparation Lawsuits Against South African Corporations are Untimely

Lawyer-led complaints filed in American courts against South African
corporations for apartheid reparations are untimely, Jubilee South
Africa's apartheid debt and reparations campaign said in a statement
issued today.

After thorough consultation over the past two years, the apartheid debt
and reparations campaign believes that a different approach is required to
encourage South African corporations, as compared to foreign corporations,
to repair the persistent social and individual damage done by apartheid.
South African big business was complicit in apartheid and benefited from
apartheid. However, the corporations should at this stage be engaged
through processes of national dialogue in the framework of the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission (TRC) recommendations for reparation, rather
than in courts.

Such processes of dialogue should be guided by agreed principles
including:

• Disclosure of discussions that may be held;
• Participation of apartheid reparations claimants through their representative organisations.

The apartheid debt and reparations campaign acknowledges and respects the
integrity of the TRC process and expresses its confidence that there is
sufficient pressure to ensure that South African corporations make a
meaningful contribution to apartheid reparation. While there are legal
grounds for reparations claims, court proceedings should be a last resort
only if business fails to respond adequately to a process of dialogue
about their liability for apartheid reparation, as was the case with the foreign
corporations.

Recognising that South African corporations have to date not made
significant contributions to reparations funds, we urge the corporations
to engage with the victims of apartheid in whose name lawsuits have been
filed, through their representative organisations, including the Khulumani
Support Group and Jubilee South Africa, on how they can contribute to
apartheid reparation.

Such engagement will go a long way to avoid the negative consequences of
long legal battles. It will also contribute to building a broad national
consensus towards a new South African society, which the lawsuits cannot
achieve in isolation.

For more information and comment please contact Neville Gabriel,
Spokesperson: Apartheid Debt & Reparations Campaign, cell. +27 83 449 3934


Apartheid Debt & Reparations Campaign - Jubilee South Africa Media Statement Pretoria, Wednesday 9 April 2003

Apartheid Debt and Reparations Campaign

Apartheid Debt and Reparations Campaign: Jubilee South Africa
Media Release
Thursday 27 March 2003
Pretoria, South Africa

International Campaign for Apartheid-Caused Debt Cancellation and Reparations Stepped Up
As pressure mounts for reparations from multinational banks and businesses that propped up and profited from apartheid human rights abuses, Jubilee South Africa's Apartheid Debt and Reparations Campaign today announced thatn it is holding two major international campaign events in Amsterdam (Netherlands) and Frankfurt (Germany) over the coming days. A delegation of six Apartheid Debt & Reparations Campaign representatives, including a representative if the Khulumani victims support group, will travel to Amsterdam and Frankfurt from today until 3 April 2003. On Friday, 28 March, the international campaign will host a round-table discussion in Amsterdam with representatives from business, political parties, and civil society organisations to highlight the case for apartheid reparations based on the illegitimacy of the apartheid debt. On Saturday, 29 March, corporate accountability will be highlighted during a public manifestation on Jubilee Day in Amsterdam. The event will focus on the need for a new human rights ethic for international business in today's world. From Monday, 31 March, to Tuesday, 1 April, the International Campaign for Apartheid-Caused Debt Cancellation and Reparations will hold its strategy meeting in Frankfurt. Representatives from solidarity campaigns in Britain, the United States of America, Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Germany will join the South African delegates at the internal meeting. During the meeting, the international campaign will review its activities over the past months and agree on plans to intensify its research and advocacy initiatives in support of the claims by apartheid victims. Part of international meeting will include a high-level televised discussion on similarities between the apartheid reparations claims and the recent Nazi slave labour reparations claims against businesses. Panellists will include key researchers, lawyers, economists, and campaigners from both the international apartheid reparations campaign and the German slave labour campaign. The delegation will return to South Africa on 3 April. To contact the delegation for comment, please call cell. +31 64 137 2462 in the Netherlands from 28 to 30 March and cell. +49 160 736 8968 in Germany from 30 March to 2 April. Issued by Neville Gabriel, Convenor: 

Apartheid Debt & Reparations Campaign Liz Johnstone
Coordinator Apartheid Debt and Reparations Task Team Jubilee South Africa. Email: ljohnson@sacbc.org.za. Ph: +27 (0)12 323 6458
Fax: +27 (0)12 326 6218
Fax: +27 (0)12 325 6125

Business Must Respect the Rule of Human Rights Law

It is appropriate that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) final report is delivered to the President of South Africa on Human Rights Day because we must reverse the erosion of the human rights discourse in addressing social and economic injustices, Jubilee South Africa said today in a statement welcoming the report.

The unresolved TRC issue is accountability for reparations for apartheid human rights violations.

For more than four years, Jubilee South Africa's Apartheid Debt and Reparations Campaign has been calling on the multinational banks and businesses that aided and abetted the apartheid state in its criminal activities to acknowledge their role in apartheid and to repair the damage that their profiteering made possible. However, the corporations have refused to take the call seriously. The victims of human rights abuses under apartheid therefore filed legal complaints against those corporations for apartheid reparations.

Today, we call on the corporations to respect the rule of international human rights law by making a commitment to reparations for the victims of apartheid.

Reparations must include individual compensation for the victims of severe human rights violations and social programmes for the reconstruction and development of communities left impoverished by apartheid. In the spirit of Truth and Reconciliation, we reaffirm our commitment to the future of the victims of apartheid and demand transparency and accountability from private corporations that were complicit in apartheid.

For more information and comment please contact Jubilee South Africa
spokesperson Neville Gabriel at cell. +27 83 449 3934 or Jubilee South
Africa chairperson MP Giyose at cell. +27 82 350 0361.
Email: ljohnson@sacbc.org.za

Apartheid Debt and Reparations Campaign: Jubilee South Africa

Media Statement

Apartheid Reparations

Jubilee South Africa welcomed on 21 February 2003 the filing of a further major apartheid reparations complaint against international corporations and banks that aided and abetted the apartheid state, in the New York Eastern District Court today. The complaint names seven banks, and thirteen international corporations from Germany, Switzerland, Britain, the United States, the Netherlands and France. For more information on the filing see:

Meanwhile, on the domestic front the South African government continues to ignore its responsibilities to fulfil its commitments in the TRC Report regarding reparations. The excuse is they are waiting for the Amnesty Report, when in fact they got the recommendations in October 1998! In his State of the Nation speech Mbeki ignored it making some vague comments about the TRC, I quote:

"It is in this spirit that we should engage in a national dialogue on how we take forward the report and recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which we hope will be presented to government in the next few months. This will afford us the opportunity to understand a critical part of our past and join hands in forging a people's contract for a better tomorrow."

"People's contract" - what is that? I presume is code for "the people" should benefit and not only those who went to the TRC - despite the implicit contract, not to mention clear obligations for reparations (and truth) as a poor trade-off for justice. A trade-off validated by the South African Constitutional Court. In practice, the "people's contract" will mean "community reparations". A fine concept in theory, don't get me wrong, but a way the government can minimise cost by saying they are already serving communities with new infrastructure. Infrastructure as reparation! Although this is important, if I am not mistaken this is the type of "reparation" what people voted for...

Backing for International Apartheid Reparations Grows

Apartheid Debt and Reparations Campaign

Media Statement

Embargo: 07h00 (South Africa); 00h00 EST (USA); 05h00 GMT

Friday, 21 February 2003

Backing for International Apartheid Reparations Grows

Jubilee South Africa welcomes the filing of a further major apartheid reparations complaint against international corporations and banks that aided and abetted the apartheid state, in the New York Eastern District Court today.

Despite growing international popular opinion that the multinational banks and businesses that propped up and profited from apartheid abuses should acknowledge their complicity and take measures to repair the damage their actions made possible, the corporations have refused to take responsibility for their actions.

The campaign is now being backed up by concerned and highly respected members of the legal fraternity. Finkelstein, Thompson and Lougrhan, the American legal firm filing today’s complaint, have a long and distinguished history in class action litigation.

The complaint names seven banks, and thirteen international corporations from Germany, Switzerland, Britain, the United States, the Netherlands and France.

Instead of threatening undue economic and political pressure on South Africa to stop the call for apartheid reparations, the corporations and the governments of their home countries should respect the right of citizens to legal recourse, as has the South African government.

The relevant European and American governments should support the South African government in its position regarding the lawsuits, acknowledging that the rule of international human rights law must be upheld. We have always indicated that several legal suits would be filed by various groups of victims and lawyers. In today’s complaint and those that preceded it, South Africans express their commitment to the future of apartheid’s victims, to the protection of human rights, and to the rule of law.

For comment please contact:

South Africa: Neville Gabriel, Spokesperson: Apartheid Debt & Reparations Campaign, cell. +27 83 449 3934 Charles Abrahams, Lawyer: Jubilee SA, cell. +27 82 560 7152

Germany: Theo Kniefel, German Campaign for Apartheid-Caused Debt Cancellation & Reparations, tel. +49 (6221) 785545 Gottfried Wellmer +49 (228) 694792 Anne Jung +49 69 944 3827

Switzerland:    Mascha Madoerin, Swiss Camapign for Apartheid-Caused Debt Cancellation & Reparations, tel. +41 61 693 1700 Joe Elsener, Swiss Campaign for Apartheid-Caused Debt Cancellation & Reparations, tel. +41 41 375 7223

USA: Bill Fletcher, Director: TransAfrica, tel. +1 202 223 1960

American Lawyers:    Douglas Thompson, Jr., Finkelstein, Thompson, Loughran, tel. +1 202 337-8000 Michael Hausfeld, Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll PLLC, tel. +1 202 408 4600

Note to editors:

The full text of the filed complaint will be available on the website http://www.ftllaw.com.

Attached are the following documents (available here in on PDF, 13 pages):

• Summary of Plaintiffs
• Summary of Defendants
• Legal basis for the complaint
• Briefing on the Apartheid and Reparations Campaign
• Declaration of the International Apartheid-Caused Debt Cancellation and Reparations Campaign

To download all the documents on the second apartheid reparations complaint against international corporations and banks that aided and abetted the apartheid state, filed in the New York Eastern District Court on 21 February 2003 (available here in on PDF, 13 pages)