Apartheid

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and labour minister himself, as well as deputy prime minister, visited South Africa, apparently
for the same reasons. He was greeted by protesters, some holding placards saying ‘Free
Palestine’ or ‘Isolate Apartheid Israel’. 757
It might seem overly utopian to even consider invoking the concept of justice at this
stage of the conflicts, with regard to South Africa as well as to Israel. The combined efforts of
the Justice Department and the TRC in the new South Africa, as well as those of the World
Conference Against Racism and other UN initiatives, merely managed to hold a tiny number
of people and no institutions at all responsible for apartheid – for three and a half centuries of
racist oppression, slavery, genocide (physical as well as cultural), millions of people
murdered, and many other crimes against humanity. Merely a few lower-level police force
assassins and some extreme right-wing paramilitary murderers, but no politicians, no civil
servants, no soldiers, no businessmen, no companies, no foreign beneficiaries were punished
or even brought to trial yet, though there are further possibilities, especially with regard to
large civil lawsuits. Starting in 2002, lawsuits claiming damages worth several billion US
dollars have been filed against South African and western companies that profited from
apartheid in ways illegal under international law. 758 Money, the stand-in for justice in civil
757 N.N.: South Africa to Host Israel’s Likud Party at Talks, September 6, 2004; Sigonyela: South Africa, Likud
Hold Historic Talks on MidEast, 2004; Esipisu: S.Africa-Israel Talks End on Lukewarm Note, 2004; Quinn:
Israel’s Olmert Hails New Era of S.Africa Ties, 2004; Macharia: S.Africa Defends Ties with Israel amid
Protests, 2004
758 Adam & Moodley: Reconciliation Without Justice, 2003: 382-386. The possibility of redress for apartheid
crimes, once criminal law had been blocked, appeared to open up with the prospect of civil lawsuits for
substantial sums of money. A class action lawsuit for up to $50 billion against the two largest Swiss banks, UBS
and Credit Suisse, as well as US-based Citicorp. Inc., which owns Citibank, was announced by US lawyer
Edward Fagan on behalf of victims of South African apartheid on June 17, 2002. It was first filed by four
apartheid victims two days later in New York. Fagan had previously won $1.25 billion from Swiss banks in 1998
to be paid to Nazi victims. All together he helped win $6.75 billion from German, Austrian, Swiss, and other
institutions in two much-publicized class action cases over Nazi atrocities. (Both the Nazi and the apartheid
lawsuits, however, were dwarfed that same summer with the announcement of a $1 trillion dollar lawsuit against
a long list of individuals and Middle Eastern institutions over the deaths of 3,044 people in the infamous terrorist
suicide attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. It appears strange that 3,044 deaths in the
USA could be so much more damaging than tens of millions of deaths in Africa and, even, in Europe. See
Appleson: US Lawsuits Allege Iraq Involved in 9/11 Attacks, 2002.) The South African case is based upon the
illegal funding of the apartheid government during the UN sanctions between 1985 and 1993. When Fagan
announced the lawsuit at a press conference in Zürich, he was jeered and pushed by a hostile Swiss crowd, and
forced to retreat from Zürich’s Paradeplatz to carry on the press conference in a hotel. He subsequently criticized
Swiss police for not protecting him. The lawsuit was on behalf of 80 South African victims. They were joined by
another 500 plaintiffs on the next day. Fagan also announced that he would file additional lawsuits against other,
unnamed, Swiss companies, as well as companies and banks in Germany, France and Britain, which he said had
also benefited from human rights violations under apartheid in South Africa. Spokespersons for the banks, of
course, denied that there were any merits to the case, just as they had done with regard to victims of Nazi
Germany. Also on the following day, plans for another lawsuit over South African apartheid was announced in
New York by a team of around 20 prominent lawyers and legal academics. This lawsuit was eventually filed in
New York by 85 apartheid victims supported by the Khulumani Victims’ Rights Group and the anti-debt
campaign, Jubilee South Africa, on November 11, 2002, for an undisclosed amount of damages, and named as
defendants the following global businesses: Credit Suisse, UBS, Barclays, Exxon Mobil, BP, Caltex, Royal
Dutch Shell, TotalFinaElf, Citigroup, Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank (unit of Allianz), Fluor
Corp., Ford Daimler-Chrysler, General Motors, Fujitsu (formerly International Computers Ltd.), IBM, JP
Morgan Chase, and Rheinmetall, adding that up to 100 companies might eventually be named. See Stoddard:
S.Africa Groups File Apartheid Suit against 20 Firms, 2002. Yet another lawsuit by apartheid victims,
represented by the South African attorney, Gugulethu Madlanga, was announced later in the same week, naming
the German banks, Dresdner Bank and Deutsche, as well as the US computer giant IBM and Ford, the US car
company, as defendants who had profited from apartheid. Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell was later also named as a
sanctions-buster that would be targeted by Fagan. Desmond Tutu, Chairperson of the TRC and Nobel Peace
Prize laureate, one of the world’s most respected authorities on the suffering as well as the profits caused and
engendered by apartheid, voiced support for the Fagan lawsuits. Fagan was later joined by former South African
judge and TRC investigator, Dumisa Ntsebeza, to lead the legal action, which was now also to include French
firms among the companies targeted by the lawsuit. Both Fagan and the plaintiffs were repeatedly accused of