Can Reparations for Apartheid Profits be Won in US Courts?
By PATRICK BOND A telling remark about US imperialism’s double standards was uttered by Clinton-era deputy treasury secretary Stuart Eizenstat, who a decade ago was the driver of reparations claims against pro-Nazi corporations, assisting plaintiffs to gain $8 billion from European banks and corporations which ripped off Holocaust victims’ funds or which were 1930s beneficiaries of slave labor (both Jewish and non-Jewish). But how about reparations for apartheid profits? As a November 2002 keynote speaker for the “USA Engage” lobby of 650 multinational corporations organised to fight the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), Eizenstat warned that South African reparations activists “can galvanise public opinion and generate political support,” and “may achieve some success despite legal infirmities.” Six months later, at a Columbia University seminar, Eizenstat noted that “Anti-apartheid victims from SA have sued scores of US companies in US courts for their alleged – and I underscore alleged
