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.

It would not be a long, drawn-out process.

He expected the case to be finalised fairly quickly, and estimated it would last between two and five years.

The class action is being brought on behalf of victims of apartheid against several banks and business corporations in the US, Switzerland, Germany, France, Britain and elsewhere.

They include Swiss banks Credit Suisse and UBS, the US’s Citibank and IBM, and German forms Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank and Commerz Bank.

The victims are accusing the companies of benefiting from the apartheid system.

Others targeted include oil, electronics, weapons and pharmaceutical companies.

On Saturday Fagan said the suit had been endorsed by public representatives at the highest level, in the US, South Africa, and Germany.

He also said assurance had been given “at the highest level” that the South African government would remain neutral on the matter, which was “precisely where they need to be”.

The widow of the late Robert Sobukwe — founding president of the Pan Africanist Congress — Veronica Sobukwe also strongly supported the action.

Also present at the briefing was Gabrielle Lubowski, the widow of assassinated anti-apartheid lawyer Anton Lubowski.

In the late 1990s Fagan played a leading role in bringing claims against Swiss banks for money deposited by Jews before the Holocaust and never paid out to them or their families. This brought international pressure on Switzerland to account for its record during World War II.

The claims led Swiss banks to pay over $1,25-billion to victims. At Saturday’s briefing, Fagan denied that the lawyers were “in it for the bucks” for themselves.

They were bringing the case at their “own risk”, and in the hopes that at the end of it they would be “paid something”.

Fagan also denied that he was unnecessarily “raising the expectations” of apartheid victims.

Under US law, any proceeds won would be dealt with in two ways — individual monetary payments to proven victims, and a “humanitarian-type fund” to be used for the common benefit of all South Africans in general. The fund would not be administered by “lawyers or politicians”, but rather by a “proper group” of people, whole were “independent, perfectly clean, and with impeccable credentials”.

It would be up to the people to decide who, Fagan said.

The Apartheid Claims Taskforce (ACT), which included attorneys from the US, South Africa, and Switzerland, as well as others, such as historians and researchers, would be travelling around the country in the next few weeks to hold meetings with apartheid victims and publicise the lawsuit.

The ACT special “claims hotline” (086-110-1697) had already received over 2 000 calls from potential victims. – Sapa

Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg), July 7, 2002