WORLDNEWS: S.Africa Plans Payment to Apartheid Victims
Apr 15, 2003 By Gershwin Wanneburg
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (Reuters) - South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Tuesday his government would make a one-time payment of $3,890 each to more than 19,000 victims of apartheid identified by the country's truth commission.
But Mbeki said the government would not follow a recommendation by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to levy a wealth tax on South African business to help pay for reparations.
"We do not believe that it would be correct for us to impose the once-off wealth tax on corporations proposed by the TRC," Mbeki told parliament in Cape Town.
He also signaled the government's opposition to a slew of class-action lawsuits filed in U.S. courts by lawyers acting on behalf of apartheid victims seeking billions of dollars in compensation from foreign and South African corporations accused of propping up or benefiting from nearly half a century of white-minority rule.
South African mining giant Anglo American Plc and its diamond business De Beers are facing a claim of up to $6.1 billion filed in a U.S. court this month on behalf of tens of thousands of apartheid victims.
"In this regard, we wish to reiterate that the South African government is not and will not be a party to such litigation," Mbeki said.
Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu had criticized big business for ignoring its role in apartheid when he handed down the TRC's final report last month after a nearly seven-year probe into murder, torture and other rights crimes committed by all parties during the apartheid era.
The TRC identified 19,050 victims of gross human rights violations and urged immediate reparations. The government has paid about $6.45 million in interim relief to 16,000 victims.
Mbeki said final reparations of 30,000 rand each to individuals or survivors designated by the TRC would be made during the current financial year.
"Combined with community reparations and assistance through opportunities and services...we hope that these disbursements will help acknowledge the suffering that these individuals experienced, and offer some relief," Mbeki said.
The payout would total $74 million.
The TRC was set up by former President Nelson Mandela in 1995 to look into the country's murky past and has since become a model for other countries emerging from internal strife, including Peru, Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone and Kenya.
But few of these countries have gone as far as South Africa, which gave the TRC power to grant amnesty to the perpetrators of rights crimes in exchange for telling the truth. Top