Former South African president F W de Klerk has advised Swiss banks to fight the legal action launched against them by victims of apartheid, and has raised the ire of Jubilee SA.
”The actions launched against the Swiss banks are completely unjustified,” F W (Frederick Willem) de Klerk told the Swiss weekly Weltwoche in an interview published today.
De Klerk, the last South African leader to preside over the country’s former segregationist regime, dismissed the claim that investments from Swiss banks helped to prolong apartheid.
”It wasn’t sanctions or the withdrawal of international companies that ended apartheid but rather the economic growth of the 1960s and 70s,” he said.
In response to De Klerk’s comments, Jubilee SA — an organisation fighting for cancellation of third world and apartheid debt — said it was unfortunate, but came as no surprise, ”that Mr de Klerk actively supports the banks that provided a lifeline to the apartheid regime, but does not seem to have much concern for healing the victims of apartheid”.
”Jubilee SA calls on Mr de Klerk to back up his comments by supporting the call for the banks’ archives to be open so that the truth can be known.”
De Klerk said foreign investors had contributed to the demise of apartheid by encouraging the country’s growth.
US attorney Michael Hausfeld last week filed a lawsuit in New York against 20 companies including Swiss banks UBS and Credit Suisse Group, accusing them of extending financial support to South Africa in breach of a UN embargo against the apartheid regime.
Three similar suits have also been filed by another lawyer, Ed Fagan.
De Klerk, now 66, was a key figure in the apartheid regime. In 1999, as president, he announced the end of apartheid and the release of Nelson Mandela, the leader of the anti-apartheid African National Congress (ANC), after 27 years in prison.
Mandela and de Klerk both won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 for their roles in bringing three centuries of white supremacist politics in South Africa to a peaceful close. – Sapa