Jubilee South Africa was still in the process of defining the parameters of its international legal action on apartheid reparations, leading holocaust lawyer Michael Hausfelt, said in Johannesburg on Saturday.
Hausfelt was visiting South Africa at the invitation of the Apartheid Debt and Reparations Campaign.
The movement has had ongoing and detailed discussions with him over the past year with regard to legal strategies.
In reference to the case that another American Lawyer, Edward Fagan, is making against Swiss and American Banks for supporting apartheid, Hausfelt said Jubilee SA will field other complaints for other clients and that these claims will be much broader and approached in a different way.
He said by definition apartheid was a crime against humanity and that it was under this heading that the organisation will decide how to seek reparation for past, present and future victims against companies, corporations and countries, that aided and abetted the apartheid system.
Jubilee South Africa is part of the international Jubilee movement for debt cancellation and economic justice. It is a broad-based coalition of NGO’s, trade unions, religious communities and popular movements.
Meanwhile the class action lawsuit against various banks and corporations that ”profiteered” from apartheid will start in New York on August 9, the leader of the legal team leader, US attorney Ed Fagan, announced on Saturday.
Briefing the media in Cape Town, he said the suit was based on ”unfinished business”, and the team wanted to ensure it was filed timeously under American law.
On August 9, the team would explain to the judge the ”universe of known defendants and potential claimants”.
After that date, the lawyers would still be able to include new defendants they ”discovered”, but the judge would ”put a timetable” on it, so it was not an open-ended process, Fagan said. – Sapa