Lawyers have filed a class action for reparations against US computer conglomerate IBM and three big German banks Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank and Commerz Bank.

An attorney acting for the SA claimants, John Ngcebetsha, said yesterday the three banks invested “between themselves $4,5bn in SA part of which is still being serviced by this government”. He said they have filed in a New York court for an order to preserve evidence.

Such action could prompt the defendants to respond “within a week or two” to the claims which he estimated were “in excess of 1000”.

Ngcebetsha says IBM “provided software to implement the policies of the apartheid government”.

He says the machines also helped make the implementation of the notorious pass laws more effective.

The suit states that IBM and other US and European computer companies yet to be named knew their technology facilitated “the violation of human rights and the commission of atrocities”.

Ngcebetsha is an SA lawyer representing apartheid victims in the action against apartheid-era sanctions busters. The victims are accusing the companies of benefiting from the apartheid system.

“We have asked the court to preserve the evidence until the trial starts,” he said.

The initial claims have been filed on behalf of Lulu Petersen, younger sister of Hector Petersen, the first victim of police shootings during the June 16 student riots of 1976 in Soweto; Sigqibo Mpendulo, the father of two 12-year-old twin brothers who were shot dead in a 1993 police raid at a house in Umtata (Eastern Cape); former truth commissioner Dumisa Ntsebeza’s brother Lungisile, who was detained and banished several times; and Themba Maqhubela, a US citizen who fled SA after refusing to testify against Ntsebeza in a political trial, are also in the group of claimants.

The first claims were filed in New York and Zurich in the middle of last month in an action le d by US attorney Ed Fagan.

In the late 1990s, Fagan played a leading role in pressing compensation claims against Swiss banks by holocaust survivors, triggering international pressure on Switzerland to account for its Second World War record.

The SA claims have met with mixed reaction. Local legal experts say the suit faces daunting hurdles, while critics argue it has raised false hopes among victims frustrated by long- delayed government reparations. Fagan’s group are encouraging South Africans to phone a toll-free number to join the class action.

Swiss banks have dismissed the claims as “preposterous”, while the Swiss government said it was not the way to resolve a political problem.

Bonile Ngqiyaza And Sapa, Business Day, July 2, 2002