I read in the paper today of a £61 billion pound law suit against, well I'm not quite sure who it's against. It looks like any big business that had connections with South Africa during the regime. This looks far more like political profiteering here and than righting past wrongs. And has the potential to do more damage now than good.
The case against Swiss banks was fairly clear cut. The banks kept money that wasn't theirs. The lines of right and wrong are fairly easy to draw as well as the value of the compensation.
This case on the other hand annoys me. Firstly £61 billion is ridiculous. That amount of money in South African Rand terms is simply is massive. It's a quarter of the countries GDP. Granted, they are going after non South African companies too, but still £61 billion? Based on companies doing business with South African companies. Based on exploitation of South African labor? These are all nebulous accusations.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that profit wasn't made during apartheid. I'm just saying that it's an almost impossible task to put a figure on. And if international law has been broken, it's an issue for the world courts to handle, not a civil lawyer, who's fees I'm sure aren't cheap and who is at least the one person guaranteed to make money out of this.
My parent paid taxes during the apartheid years. Why not sue them too? Cases like this annoy me. I have no problem with specific suits where an individual or company is targeted for particular actions. But this seems like a general trawling net suit to see what they can catch. And I would be interested to see how any monies won will be allocated to those be people who suffered under apartheid. I'm sure it would all be distributed really fairly. Like fuck.
1. Roger