The South African government vowed on Tuesday to oppose a multi-billion dollar lawsuit lodged by apartheid victims against it and eight big corporations, but said it had received no official notification of the action.
”We have read the reports in the papers but we haven’t received any documentation,” Justice Ministry spokesperson Nathi Kheswa said in Pretoria.
The presidency was also in the dark. ”We have not received any correspondence from (United States lawyer) Ed Fagan,” said spokesperson Bheki Khumalo.
Fagan announced on Monday that a $10-billion (about R63-billion) lawsuit was filed in the New York District Court on Saturday for ”genocide, expropriation and other wrongful acts” by international companies under apartheid.
The claimants also wanted another $10-billion in damages because the post-apartheid government ”continued to allow companies to exploit victims without protecting them, allowing industry to violate people’s rights”, the AFP news agency reported.
The full amount would be paid into a ”humanitarian fund”, said Fagan, a well-known class-action lawyer.
The plaintiffs were six apartheid victims — including Dorothy Molefi, the mother of teenager Hector Peterson who was killed in Soweto in June 1976 when police opened fire on protesting pupils.
They accuse Mbeki of taking sides with business people by interfering with claims against corporate defendants and making secret deals to frustrate legal action against them.
The companies named are computer company IBM, mining giants Anglo American and Gold Fields, the Union Bank of Switzerland, the Fluor Corporation, Sasol/Natref1, Startcor/Union Carbide and Vatmetco.
Khumalo said the government would oppose the application and defend its position in court.
”South Africans are not gullible. They know that this government has always been on the side of justice and those who seek justice. South Africans don’t need outsiders to tell them that this government has not sided with other people against them.”
Khumalo said the government disapproved of the action being launched in a foreign court, ”but we will oppose it wherever it is”.
President Thabo Mbeki had always been of the opinion, Khumalo added, that matters of this nature had to be dealt with by South Africans themselves.
In 1998, Fagan won a $1,2-billion compensation claim by Holocaust survivors against Swiss banks. He has also been involved in a separate class action by apartheid victims currently before a New York court. – Sapa