Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who led South Africa’s search for post-apartheid reconciliation,on Tuesday gave cautious support to U.S. lawyer Ed Fagan’s bid for massive corporate compensation to the victims of white rule.

“I think the case is one that can be made,” Tutu said of Fagan’s allegation that foreign companies bolstered the white minority government during the final decade of a black uprising against apartheid. Fagan arrived in South Africa at the weekend to gather evidence for a class action suit due to begin in New York on August 9 against U.S., Swiss, French and German corporations including banks, oil companies and arms dealers.

Fagan told Reuters Saturday that he would not claim a specific amount, but that the $100 billion paid out in various ways to victims of Germany’s Second World War operations should serve as a guideline.

Thousands died in clashes with apartheid police in the 1980s and thousands more were detained without trial, with many activists terribly tortured by police and state hit squads.

“He clearly is an able lawyer. If we are able to get even a fraction of what he claims he can get, are we going to sniff at it?,” Tutu told Reuters in an interview.

Tutu, a Nobel peace laureate and chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that probed the long war over apartheid, urged foreign corporations that traded under white rule to volunteer redress.

“I would say that they would come out better if they were not going to try to be defensive,” Tutu said.

“I would hope that there would be an acknowledgement that morality, ethics are important for business as they are for politics,” he added.

Tutu, who has retained the title of an archbishop of the Anglican Church in retirement, said Fagan had proved his ability in his controversial campaign for compensation from Swiss banks that retained the deposits of Jews killed in the Nazi holocaust.

NAZI VICTIMS COMPENSATED

“You can’t argue with the fact that he got those billions, that he succeeded,” Tutu said in a reference to the $1.25 billion settlement Fagan won for his clients.

“I don’t think that he would take on a case that is not viable,” he said.

With most black apartheid foes killed, in jail or in exile, Tutu was the foremost opponent of white minority rule during the 1980s, urging international sanctions against the government despite the alleged harm they would do to poor blacks.

He said the fact that white rule crumbled in the face of escalating sanctions proved that foreign companies had helped to prop up apartheid. “If it has happened with the holocaust that they (the banks) have acknowledged that they profited to some extent, then here they can’t pretend that they didn’t.

“They were prepared to remain here despite the many calls that we made for them to go,” he said.

Tutu urged Fagan to be cautious, however, in the methods he used to gather evidence for his case and said he should not raise false hopes.

So far, more than 2,000 people have called a toll-free hotline set up by Fagan’s self-funded Apartheid Claims Taskforce and the group, which includes South African lawyers, is about to start a series of public meetings to gather more evidence. “That (public meetings) does raise very serious questions about the retraumatizing of people. You need a great deal of sensitivity in that area,” Tutu said.

The state-appointed truth commission gathered evidence of more than 20,000 apartheid-related atrocities during three years of research and public hearings.

Victims were counseled before, during and after their testimony at hearings in which the tales of abuse, torture and murder frequently reduced Tutu to tears.

“We often fell short of the kind of services that we should have provided,” he said.

The TRC recommended that the state compensate victims of apartheid, but no action has so far been taken on the proposal. The final volumes of the truth commission’s report, covering amnesty for perpetrators of human rights crimes in the battle for and against apartheid, are due out soon.

Brendan Boyle, Reuters, July 9, 2002