South Africa's white business establishment was urged yesterday to seek forgiveness for "collaborating" with the apartheid authorities and to contribute to a reparation fund for the victims of the oppressive system. The exhortation came from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, on the opening day of the commission's three-day hearings on the role of business during the apartheid era.
It would be wonderful if business notables admitted their sins of omission and commission and said "here is 10 million rand for the President's fund", he said.
Prof Sampie Terblanche of the University of Stellenbosch, argued for the imposition of a wealth tax on businessmen who benefited from apartheid. Dr Terblanche, a former supporter of the National Party and member of the secret Afrikaner Broederbond or Brotherhood who underwent a political conversion in the 1980s, proposed that the tax should be imposed on anyone with assets worth more than two million rand.
In a damning indictment of the business community, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) accused business notables and corporations of willingly benefiting from apartheid. It defined apartheid as a "super exploitative cheap labour system", in which the primary beneficiaries were the white elite and the primary victims black workers.
Chastising business leaders for sending 20 billion rand out of South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s, Cosatu said: "We propose a system of redress which combines reparations and on-going social transformation."
While submissions from some business institutions acknowledged their support for the National Party - which introduced apartheid after its election victory in 1948 - the majority, including the giant Anglo American Corporation - emphasised their contribution to South Africa's economic development and their role in pressing for reform.
Denying that there was a cosy symbiosis between previous apartheid governments and business, Mr Raymond Parson, director-general of the South African Chamber of Business, argued that government policies impacted negatively on business and that his organisation sought to change them.