LONDON: Lungi Ntsebeza does not have the fondest memories of his career as a clerk at Barclays Bank.

He claims he earned no more than two-thirds of the money paid to his white peers. Nor, he says, was he given the housing subsidy they enjoyed, the medical benefits or the company car. Unlike them, he was not promoted. And finally, he says, he was forced out after offending a racist client.

These seem like ridiculous allegations to be levelling against one of Britain’s most respected banks. But Ntsebeza was not working for Barclays in Britain. He was one of many blacks employed across its 1,000-branch network in South Africa in the Seventies.

Ntsebeza is a lead plaintiff in a multibillion-pound lawsuit that will accuse Barclays of profiting from apartheid over three decades. It is to be filed in New York this month on behalf of thousands of victims and will charge the bank with propping up white minority rule with loans. Barclays will also be accused of trading in South Africa, sometimes via affiliates, allegedly in breach of international sanctions.

Potentially most damaging, however, is a third charge: that Barclays exploited the apartheid system for profit by paying black employees less than whites.

Barclays vigorously denies any wrongdoing and rejects the claim that it paid blacks less. But if New York’s federal court allows the action to go ahead, it faces a long drawn out legal dispute that promises to be a public relations nightmare. Ntsebeza’s brother, after all, is Dumisa Ntsebeza, a leading civil rights lawyer and apartheid-era activist who acted as chief investigator for South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). And his American attorney is Edward Fagan, who helped Holocaust victims to wring $1.25bn in ‘Nazi gold’ compensation from Swiss banks in 1998.

Both men were in London this weekend to unveil a list of British companies also accused of collaborating with apartheid-era South Africa: NatWest and Standard Chartered banks; oil giant BP; arms manufacturer Vickers; and ICL, the computer firm now owned by Fujitsu. Fagan will shortly file lawsuits against all of these companies under America’s Alien Tort statute, which allows victims to sue in US courts for alleged human rights violations perpetrated in other countries.

“The British companies have no excuse: doing business with and making profits from the apartheid regime was as widely condemned at the time as it is now,” Fagan said. “It’s time for them to make reparations.”

Not that British companies are the only ones under fire. International blue-chips such as Chase Manhattan, UBS, Shell and IBM are also being sued. They all deny supporting apartheid, but Fagan estimates they are collectively liable for between $50bn and $100bn. The aim is to set up a fund to compensate thousands of South African citizens — or millions, says Fagan, if the key principle of liability for alleged labour exploitation is established.

For its part, Barclays angrily denies the exploitation charge. A spokesman said that it single-handedly employed 43 per cent of all black bank workers in South Africa, recognised black trade unions, and supported its staff by funding housing and education projects. It was the only bank to open a branch in Soweto and was known as ‘the anti-apartheid bank’.

The spokesman also denied sanctions- busting and added: “Barclays withdrew from South Africa in 1986. An important factor in the decision was that political change in South Africa, which had been expected, did not materialize.”

Standard Chartered, which pulled out of the country in 1987 as international condemnation of apartheid grew louder, faces similar allegations. The other day the bank said: “This New York claim sounds purely speculative, and we are confident it will fail. We vigorously opposed apartheid and our policies strongly support diversity.”

NatWest, which is accused of lending money to the government and exploiting labour, said it preferred not to comment until after the lawsuit had been filed. But a source at the bank said he did not believe NatWest employed a sizeable workforce in apartheid-era South Africa.

It is alleged that ICL, part-owner of National Lottery operator Camelot, sold data processing equipment to the South African government that was used to track population movements and enforce segregation.

The dispute is being closely watched across a range of industries because it threatens to establish a legal precedent that could hold companies to account for a catalogue of human rights abuses.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.