The Swiss government has spoken out against an American court deciding a class action lawsuit seeking reparations for apartheid from dozens of international companies.

Swiss ambassador Eric Martin addressing a group of South African journalists in Berne this week, said legal actions such as the class suit could not answer economic and human rights violations. “The Swiss government is not directly involved in the case . . . we are mainly observers . . . (but) we consider it inappropriate to resolve it in a US court,” Martin told reporters. “(We) don’t think litigation will solve the problems of the past.” Martin said his government was “particularly concerned about the extraterritorial application of US laws” and hoped the judge would dismiss the plaintiff. [Full story]

Switzerland is not the only government to oppose the multi-billion rand South African lawsuits filed by Khulumani, a Johannesburg-based human rights group, and Jubilee South Africa, on behalf of more than 91 individuals claiming human rights violations under apartheid. The South African government, which has offered reparations to more than 22,000 victims of human rights abuses during the decades of apartheid rule – a list of victims compiled from among those who testified at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in 1996 and 1997 – has officially requested that the class action suit be dismissed.

A request Judge John Sprizzo, the United States district judge who will decide whether or not to allow the litigation, said he would give serious consideration. Judge Sprizzo has publicly expressed scepticism about the plaintiff’s arguments, who claim complicity by international corporations enabled human rights abuses such as murder and torture to occur under the apartheid regime. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission among its conclusions at the time, found that “business was central to the economy that sustained the South African state during the apartheid years.” But, according to Judge Sprizzo, the corporations were motivated by financial gain and “that’s a different motivation than the apartheid government’s,” he said, comparing the corporations to “someone selling sugar to a bootlegger.” “Enjoying the benefits of crime is not enough to prove participation. There’s no indication that the defendants helped shape the policies of the South African government.” [Full story]

The suit’s plaintiff’s allege some 34 companies profited from loans and exports to the former South African government of white nationalists, helping to prop up the regime in contravention of a United Nations embargo. Targeting some of the world’s largest banks, car and computer manufacturers, petrochemical, food, weapons and construction companies, the list of business heavyweights includes ExxonMobil and Shell Oil, banks Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and UBS, transportation giants Ford and DaimlerChrysler, as well as technology multinational IBM.

One of the few defendants to speak publicly about the issue, albeit long before the lawsuits had been filed, IBM conceded to the Washington Post in 1985 that its equipment may have been used for repressive purposes, but that “it’s not really our policy to tell our customers how to conduct themselves.”

Another high-profile critic of the lawsuit, former President Nelson Mandela, says South Africans do not need “outside interference” and are “competent to deal with issues of reconciliation, reparation and transformation among themselves.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who acted as chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, lodged a separate appeal to Judge Sprizzo urging him to support the litigation.

Njongonkulu Ndungane, the Anglican Archbishop of South Africa, said the lawsuits had been filed “out of sheer frustration” after calls for corporations to participate in dialogue were not taken seriously.

A decision by Judge Sprizzo is expected before the end of February.

Lisa Peryman, Odious Debts Online, February 13, 2004