Mbeki Sued in Us for Exploitation

President Thabo Mbeki is to be sued in the United States in a class action case in which it is alleged that he continued apartheid-style economic exploitation of black South Africans.

Court documents filed at New York's district court earlier this week accused the African National Congress-led government of siding with big business against ordinary people.

Ed Fagan, a New York lawyer who made his name suing Swiss banks for Holocaust survivors, also cited eight multinationals in a lawsuit which wants the government and firms to pay $20bn into a "humanitarian fund".

South Africa's democratically elected rulers acted "in [the] same or similar fashion as they did during the apartheid era", said Mr Fagan.

He maintained that as legal successors to the white regime they had inherited responsibility for decades of oppression.

Mr Mandela's government was named in the citation, but the Nobel laureate himself was not.

It was the latest salvo in a two-year campaign by apartheid victim groups and US lawyers, which is modelled on the case which forced Swiss banks to pay $1.25bn for their role in holding Nazi era bank accounts.

However, the legal team which began the action has split into two rival camps, spawning two separate class action cases.

Lawyers who have fallen out with Mr Fagan said the decision to drag in the South African government was distracting attention from the real target - the multinationals which breached international sanctions against apartheid.

John Ngcebetsha, a Johannesburg lawyer who is heading the rival class action suit, said: "This is lunatic behaviour and I am concerned he [Mr Fagan] may damage our own cases, but we will deal with him in court."

Mr Fagan warned the South African government to brace itself. "Make no mistake about this. This is not a game, it is not a procedural play, it is not a show. If our allegations are true, you are going to pay."

He said the compensation sought was a quarter of what Germany's post-Nazi government had paid.

"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."

One of the six plaintiffs the American claimed to represent was Dorothy Molefi, the mother of 12-year-old Hector Pieterson, whose death in the 1976 Soweto uprising was immortalised in a famous photograph.

The law suit claimed Mr Mbeki had done everything in his power to take sides with big business and frustrate legal action against them.

The president has made no secret of his eagerness for foreign investment and his disdain for any legal action which could deter it.

The government will fight the case and is confident of winning, said a spokesman. Mr Mandela's office said it would follow the president's lead.

The law suits have been filed in a US court which has jurisdiction over where multinationals have representatives.

Among the corporations cited are IBM, Anglo American, Gold Fields, Union Bank of Switzerland, and Vatmetco.

A US judge is due to rule in the next few months on the firms' attempt to have the cases dismissed.

The law suits have divided South Africa.

The head of the SA Institute of Race Relations, John Kane-Berman, said allegations that the firms collaborated in forced labour, murder, torture and massacres were very grave, but that evidence was very flimsy.

He added: "We don't think there is any merit in these cases whatsoever."