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The controversial US attorney Ed Fagan is to sue President Thabo Mbeki, former president Nelson Mandela and eight multinational companies for "siding with industry against the people" in the exploitation of natural resources.

Fagan, a class-action lawyer, court documents filed at the weekend in US District Court, which has jurisdiction over where the companies have representatives, accuse the government's actions of being "in (the) same or similar fashion as they did during the apartheid era".

The lawsuit also claims that Mbeki has done everything in his power to take sides with the business people by interfering with claims against corporate defendants and by making secret deals to frustrate legal action against them.

The companies named are IBM, Anglo American, Gold Fields, Union Bank of Switzerland, Fluor Corporation, Sasol/Natref 1, Startcor/Union Carbide and Vatmetco.

Fagan said the action demanded that the government, which is the legal successor to the apartheid regime, and the companies pay $20-billion into a "humanitarian fund".

He told Sapa that this was a quarter of what Germany's post-Nazi government had paid to victims of its oppressive predecessor.

"Unlike South Africa's present government, it was not the legal successor to the Nazi regime. Despite that it still established a programme that provided the opportunity for people to make claims."

Fagan added that one of the plaintiffs is Dorothy Molefi, the mother of 13-year-old Hector Pieterson, first child victim of the 1976 uprising.

A report in The Observer newspaper in Britain said IBM stood accused of "designing, marketing and managing" computer systems that helped the state control the black majority.

"All the companies deny liability and are believed to be contesting the action," the report said, referring to only six it had mentioned. – Sapa.

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