The Congress of South African Trade Unions reaffirms its support for the class action lawsuit being brought in the USA against South African firms who collaborated with the apartheid regime, and rejects the narrow, legalistic and reactionary arguments against the action, being advanced by Comrade Kader Asmal.
Regrettably the honourable Comrade Asmal is increasingly embracing all the views held by the most conservative elements in our society. He speaks against this case being heard in the US courts, as if he would support a lawsuit in South Africa but in reality he, and the previous administration in which he served, opposed the court action when it was first launched.
They never supported any radical steps to force the companies that so blatantly connived with the apartheid regime to account for their crimes, but chose to spit in the face of apartheid victims in favour of big business interests.
Asmal also never supported the once-off wealth tax as a form of reparations. He never supported radical transformation of the economy that at least would help address the apartheid legacy of hunger and deprivation.
Instead of engineering a radical change in economic power relations, and ending the super-exploitation of black workers, Asmal and the previous administration imposed GEAR and a range of other policy measures which showered big business with gifts that made them the biggest economic beneficiaries from democracy.
All this combined to keep blacks, in economic terms, largely where they were under apartheid. They have every right to claim reparations for their suffering.
Trade union members experienced first-hand, how multinational corporations actively collaborated with the apartheid government and aided and abetted its abhorrent crimes, which could not have been committed without the provision of data-collection and procession systems, crowd-control hardware and vehicles, which were designed and maintained by such companies to meet the regime's repressive needs.
The companies now being charged refused to participate in the Truth and Reconciliation process. Their responsibility for their conduct during the apartheid era has never been fully accounted for, and their liability has never been discharged by any reconciliation process.
Asmal's argument is based on an outdated legal view that companies cannot be found liable for violating international law. This argument is based on old laws that were framed to protect and promote the interests of big business. But that is no longer the case. As Professor John Dugard and Advocate Anton Katz say in their submission to the court, "nearly every country in the world now accepts that companies can commit crimes" and "can be held criminally liable under international law".
Apartheid was defined by the United Nations General Assembly in 1966 as a "crime against humanity". Now that some of us want to bring those criminal companies who arrogantly refused to participate in the TRC to account for their crimes, Asmal steps forward to defend them. Shame on you Kader Asmal!