Nobody wants to talk about Apartheid. No one supported Apartheid. No one worked for Apartheid. Nobody should pay for Apartheid. At sometime everybody did resistance work. No one broke the law. Workers weren’t exploited. Everybody loved Nelson Mandela even when he was in jail for 27 years. The poverty, inequality and violence are now all the African National Congress’s fault. Well, a judge in New York City (yes, not in South Africa) has started chipping away at that myth. Somebody made profits. Somebody made a killing:
A United States judge has ruled that lawsuits can go ahead against several companies accused of helping South Africa’s apartheid-era government. [IBM, Daimler, Ford, General Motors and Rheinmetall Group, the German parent of an armaments maker are now] expected to face demands for damages from thousands of apartheid’s victims. They argue that the firms supplied equipment used by the South African security forces to suppress dissent.
Politics may still overtake the law here, but it is a good start.
Read the story on the BBC website.
Interesting to note that the South African government(ANC)supports efforts to dismiss the lawsuits in the interests of “international relations” and the development of the South African economy. Wouldn’t want a little thing like justice to get in the way of South Africa’s prized membership in the G20.
I’m sorry to say, but this is silly!
How is it silly?
A similar court case was thrown out against the builders of Sasol2&3 (Badger/Fluor, etc)… Some say because Sasol is the biggest income tax generator for the present government, others say Sasol has been BEE-ified and it’ll be the new shareholders that suffer the most, that’s why the Gov o’ the Day is against it…
Seeing you sourced your article from the BBC – here’s another one (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/20/newsid_4326000/4326975.stm) – it wasn’t just the Apartheid government that made a killing…