The South African government will not stand in the way of apartheid reparations lawsuits filed overseas but it does not support them, Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Penuell Maduna said on Wednesday.
The minister was speaking in Randburg at the Civil Society Reparations Conference organised by representatives of various organisations including the Congress of South African Trade Unions, Jubilee 2000, Khulumani and the South African Council of Churches.
”We recognise everyone has the right to approach the courts and have matters settled … We are not taking away this right, but spelling out our own position,” said Maduna.
In July Maduna wrote a strongly worded letter to United States District Judge John E Sprizzo, asking him to dismiss two apartheid reparations lawsuits.
The letter and an accompanying nine-page declaration urged Sprizzo to abstain from adjudicating in the cases South African Apartheid Litigation, Khulumani and others.
The declaration repeated the government’s assertions that the lawsuits, brought against a number of corporations that did business in South Africa before 1994 under an arcane US law, would hurt the economy and the very people it was meant to help by increasing unemployment and crime.
On Wednesday Maduna said: ”Once we decide international courts should decide for us, we impair our sovereignty and proclaim we are subservient to those countries”.
He said the South African courts had the capacity the handle any matter including class actions.
Maduna took what he called a ”pro-South Africa” stance and accepted that South Africans had to solve their own problems. This did not mean, however, that South Africa was not part of the international community and would ignore international law and obligations, he said.
Responding to a question asking why Maduna had sent the declaration to the US, he said South Africa was asked by the US government to educate them about the government’s position regarding litigation in the US courts.
He said the government would rather use dialogue than litigation to solve the problem of big business reparations.
”We are prepared to engage in dialogue. This is much more helpful than going down the route of litigation.
”We have no desire whatsoever to prejudice the right of those to go that route, but let’s have the opportunity to dialogue on these matters. [This would] get a better result on a long-term basis,” Maduna said.
Anglican Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane said lawsuits had been filed against corporations on the basis of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s finding that they were significant beneficiaries of apartheid.
He said the lawsuits were filed out of ”sheer frustration” after people were not being taken seriously in a call for dialogue with corporations.
Ndungane urged corporations to participate in dialogue and appealed to the government to support and facilitate this process.
Court action was the last resort, he said.
Ndungane also suggested South Africans, both big business and individuals, should mark the 10th anniversary of democracy in 2004 by contributing to a national reparation fund, of which 20% would be used to pay out victims of apartheid and 80% would be spent on restructuring.
”I know times are tough, but I am told that South Africans spend in the region of R11-billion annually on toiletries alone. Just think what this nation could give us if each of us simply did without a small luxury for a month. Just think what we could achieve if every business responded with a small percentage of profit,” he said. — Sapa