Phylicia Oppelt
24 November 2002
opinion
Johannesburg — NEARLY 100 elderly apartheid victims, angry about being disregarded by the government, marched to Parliament earlier this year.
As members of the Khulumani Support Group, which had participated in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's victim process, they wanted to know what President Thabo Mbeki and his government had done about recommendations that individuals receive financial reparation.
According to a report in The Star in March, one of the marchers, 70-year-old Laurence Ganca, had testified before the commission in 1997 and had been declared a victim. In 1986 he had been beaten by soldiers in the KTC squatter camp outside Cape Town and his house had been burnt down.
"The TRC promised me that my child would go to university this year. But so far I have only received R4 500 in interim reparations," Ganca complained then.
Last week, the Khulumani Support Group added its name to the lawsuits against several international companies, demanding financial compensation for their involvement in upholding the apartheid government.
Clearly, they no longer trust that the South African government will see to their needs. And, clearly, Ganca can no longer wait for Justice Minister Penuell Maduna to consider final reparations for those who were declared apartheid victims.
The decision to hunt down the multinationals that did business with the apartheid government has raised the ire of many prominent South Africans, including Mbeki and former President F W De Klerk.
But, whatever one thinks of them, the lawsuits did not suddenly appear without forewarning.
Khulumani and the others have to be viewed in the context of Mbeki's failure to live up to his promise of reparations.
In one of his more bizarre decisions, Mbeki appears to have reneged on the deal put forward by the commission's reparations committee.
It advised that recompense could take the form of an individual reparation grant - a payment "to acknowledge the suffering caused by a gross human rights violation" paid out over six years. Other recommendations included symbolic reparations such as reburials, headstones and tombstones and clearing criminal records.
While some interim reparations were made - like Ganca's R4 500 - Mbeki seems to have decided that most victims are not worthy of any consideration or claim.
Still, the Khulumani action and that of the other litigants raises serious and profound questions about how we are dealing with apartheid's consequences.
At what point does it start to look like brazen profiteering, and when will we say enough is enough? At some stage the book needs to be closed - not as a means of forgetting, but to put financial reparation behind us and end the litigation aimed at compensating for the hurt and pain.
We prided ourselves on the truth commission process, particularly the aspect of reconciliation. It is perhaps the reason why many of us are looking slightly askance at the new lawsuits.
We had deliberately designed a process that would be so different to the manner in which the Jews dealt with the Holocaust. We don't want to be hauling apartheid soldiers into court in 50 years' time.
I somehow doubt that Dorothy Molefi, mother of schoolboy activist Hector Petersen, decided of her own volition to add her signature to the list of complainants.
Perhaps cynically, I expect that Molefi, like some of the well-known litigants, was encouraged by the lawyers for the case. There's nothing like a few high-profile names to boost publicity .
The most disturbing aspect of the reaction to the lawsuits was De Klerk's comment this week when he advised the Swiss banks to fight the legal action.
The last commander-in-chief of the white minority regime is not in a position to tell the victims of that regime how to behave.
But back to Mbeki, whose attitude to reparations rests on the reasoning that people did not participate in the liberation struggle for financial reward. That reasoning is not only fallacious but insulting to the mothers of the children who were killed by police bullets.
A promise is a promise. And when a promise has been made to erect a tombstone for a child killed, then it is a promise to be kept.
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