The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) is backing a bid by apartheid victims who are suing United States multinationals for the role they played in support of the regime.
”Our decision rests on the belief that the apartheid system was based on the white South African minority striving to secure a cheap and pliant workforce to reap the benefits of the country’s vast natural resources, in particular its mineral wealth,” Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi told reporters in Johannesburg on Monday.
He said certain multinational corporations actively collaborated with the apartheid government and ”aided and abetted its abhorrent crimes”.
”A customised administrative and technological assistance provided by multinational enterprises facilitated the commission of the regime’s crime,” Vavi said.
The legal action currently under way in the US is backed by both the South African and US governments.
A US attorney assisting the South African legal team, Paul Hoffman, said the case would go before the Second Circuit Court in New York on January 11.
This is where legal teams will argue on why the case should proceed.
Earlier this year, trial Judge Shira Scheindlin, found the case could go forward after an attempt to halt the litigation.
The defendants, five multinational corporations, appealed her decision and argument on the appeal will take place on January 11.
The defendants are General Motors, Ford, Daimler, IBM and Rheine Metal.
Hoffman said the chances were good that the defendants would lose the appeal, especially since the plaintiffs received the support of both governments. — Sapa