Foreign companies should face up to the truth about their roles in apartheid, a recent NGO conference in Germany concluded
Geoff Rodoreda Multinational corporations that did business with South Africa’s white minority government are facing renewed calls to pay compensation to apartheid’s victims, following the launch of an apartheid-reparations campaign in Europe. South African NGOs and former anti-apartheid groups in Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom have wound up a three-day apartheid-reparations conference in Bonn, Germany, with an appeal to foreign banks and enterprises to “compensate the people of Southern Africa for the brutal repression they helped finance”. The conference has been organised by a coalition of NGOs in Germany that has launched the International Campaign on Apartheid-caused Debt in Southern Africa.
Companies based in South Africa, many of whom were major investors during the apartheid era, this week expressed irritation that they were not invited to the conference or even approached to discuss the possibility of paying apartheid reparations. The Southern African-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry said its members had made sizeable contributions to local development programmes, adding that they had yet to be approached to make reparations. The chamber said the German business community recognised “the need for more cooperation and support to achieve an equal-opportunity democracy”. Christph Kopke, the managing director of Daimler-Chrysler South Africa, left the door open to discussions about reparations. “If there was a legal framework to enforce reparations then obviously we will comply with the law of the land,” he said this week. Conference organiser Theo Kneifel said the Bonn conference “represents the first attempt to bring the process of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission overseas. We want to get foreign banks and corporations and governments to face up to the truth about their role in apartheid. We also want to enlarge the concept of perpetrators: these companies supported and profited from the apartheid regime and were responsible for prolonging its crimes.”
The national secretary of Jubilee 2000 South Africa, Neville Gabriel, a guest speaker at the conference, spelt out the demands of European and South African campaigners: “We’re calling for the cancellation of apartheid debt, the reimbursement of debts already paid by democratic South Africa and the return of company profits made during apartheid in the form of reparation payments.
“Reparations should also be paid to the people of Southern Africa, who also suffered under apartheid.” Former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda, in a keynote speech, appealed to people in Western countries to join the campaign. “We need people in the north, who were involved in the anti-apartheid movement, to come out again and lobby on this issue.” The Bonn conference was organised in the light of a series of recent studies into apartheid-caused debt and the role of foreign banks in funding white minority rule. One German/Swiss study has found that 90% of all long-term loans to the South African government in the 1980s came from just four countries: Germany, Switzerland, the United States and the UK. But during the period of international sanctions after 1985, German capital became the most important direct financier of apartheid. By the end of 1993, according to the study, South Africa was indebted to German business to the tune of R14,6-billion. Most of that debt (R10,5-billion) was public sector debt money which had been lent to the apartheid government. Representatives of Germany’s three major banks, Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank and Dresdner Bank, were invited to participate in the Bonn conference but declined. A representative for Deutsche Bank, Ronald Weichert, said: “This question of debt repayments is something you should ask the South African government or the South African Reserve Bank about. They’re not happy about asking for debts to be cancelled … It creates problems later on in securing new loans.” The South African government does not support calls for cancelling apartheid debt. It says only 5% of government debt (around R17-billion) is foreign debt, and most of that was accumulated after it came to power in 1994. Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel says a debt write-off would cause turmoil in the markets and could trigger a recession.
But debt campaigners say South Africa’s foreign public debt is really much higher than the government claims. They say government figures for the end of the apartheid period do not include the foreign debt of public corporations and public authorities. When this is included, the government’s foreign debt, at the end of 1993, amounted to almost R50-billion. “We understand the nervousness of the South African government on the debt issue, given the way the global economic system functions,” said Gabriel. “But our call is not on the South African government to repudiate the debt. Our call is on apartheid’s creditors those who profited from the suffering of people in Southern Africa to recognise the odious nature of the debt and cancel it.” European and Southern African groups, meeting in Bonn, also discussed legal options open to them, to win compensation for apartheid’s victims. Cape Town human rights lawyer Charles Abrahams told the conference that recent developments in international law opened up new possibilities to debt and reparations campaigners. “It’s quite clear that companies and financial institutions which [dealt] with the apartheid regime were in flagrant violation of United Nations resolutions on apartheid. They were dealing with a state which was not only declared illegitimate, but a criminal state. And international law is quite clear about that,” he said. “If a state is guilty of criminal conduct, all other states are under an obligation not to conduct business or perpetuate any act which might further the criminality of that state … And states like Germany, Switzerland and the US are obliged to ensure that their nationals [that is, their companies] do not enter into agreements with a criminal state.” Abrahams said overseas courts, including the International Court of Justice in The Hague, might provide one avenue of legal opportunity. But he said common-law possibilities might also exist within South Africa’s courts. “As public-interest lawyers in South Africa we have not even begun to look at the possibilities of [court] action against foreign corporations who conducted business during apartheid,” he said. Campaigners concede that getting foreign companies and governments to hand over money to apartheid’s victims might seem like a lost and hopeless cause. But they’ve taken heart from Neville Gabriel’s final words to the Bonn conference. He quoted Mahatma Gandhi’s campaigning philosophy: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Additional reporting by Nawaal Deane