Why global firms should not be granted a free moral pass.

Byline: Eusebius McKaiser

Apartheid reparations Why global firms should not be granted a free moral pass LAW and morality sometimes make strange bedfellows. So it is not surprising that the public debate about the lawsuit against companies that propped up the apartheid government has focused on legal headaches, rather than moral ones. The case brought by the Khulumani Support Group in the US against various international companies has tossed up two tricky legal questions. One is whether the US represents the right jurisdiction for hearing this case. The other is whether there is a legal basis for holding a company responsible in this way. Disagreement about the answers to these questions has resulted in an ethical dimension being silenced. Does it even make sense to regard corporations as moral agents that can be held morally accountable in the same way that you and I hold each other morally accountable? And how does this ethical stuff intersect with the legal debate? It is …