Multinational companies and banks face legal proceedings for “aiding and abetting a crime against humanity” by conducting business in South Africa under the apartheid regime.

A lawsuit lodged in November by anti-debt pressure group Jubilee South Africa’s Apartheid Debt and Reparations Campaign, and victims group Khulumani Support Group, targets banks, oil, transport, communications technology, and armaments firms from Germany, Switzerland, the UK, the US, Netherlands, and France that operated in South Africa during the apartheid era.

The South African government has distanced itself from the campaign and lawsuit as it is seen to fly in the face of the New Partnership for African Development, President Thabo Mbeki’s plan to attract FDI to Africa.

The campaign aims to develop good relationships between African governments and business and multinational companies to encourage investment into African countries. There is a fear that this case, especially as it becomes more publicised, will make companies reluctant to do business, as former South African president FW de Klerk put it, “with any country with a less than pristine human rights record”.

According to George Hulbert, spokesman for Barclays bank, one of the accused, this is the third such case that has been filed. He said that in this instance charges were being brought against Barclays National Bank, the South African affiliate, which pulled out in 1986. He emphasised that the bank saw no legal merit to the case and would defend itself vigorously. BP, another firm named, said it had not yet received legal papers on the matter.

Charles Abrahams, the legal adviser to the case, pointed out that oil companies and arms manufacturers broke UN sanctions and named IBM and ICL as providing the computers that enabled the government to create the passbook system.

Fujitsu/ICL could not make any comment due to legal reasons but was aware of the proceedings.

A statement released by the Jubilee South Africa group said that “banks and businesses have consistently ignored our attempts to engage in discussion about their role in supporting broad social programmes for the reconstruction and development of affected communities and in compensating specific individuals for the damage that the corporations made possible.”

Several firms told fDI that such initiatives would have been taken at a local level. Most point to their corporate and social responsibility policies across Africa. Barclays has a Pan-African Support Programme and DaimlerChrysler, also accused, is providing its South African workforce with free HIV treatment.