The South African government is to pay reparations to thousands of people identified as victims of apartheid by the country's truth commission.
South African President Thabo Mbeki has said his government will make a payment of 30,000 rand ($3,890) each to more than 19,000 people identified by the commission as victims of gross human rights violations.
However Mbeki said the government would not follow a recommendation by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to levy a wealth tax on South African business to help pay for reparations.
"We do not believe that it would be correct for us to impose the once-off wealth tax on corporations proposed by the TRC," Mbeki told parliament in Cape Town.
He also signalled the government's opposition to a slew of class-action lawsuits filed in US courts by lawyers acting on behalf of apartheid victims seeking billions of dollars in compensation from foreign and South African corporations accused of propping up or benefiting from nearly half a century of white-minority rule.
South African mining giant Anglo American Plc and its diamond business De Beers are facing a claim of up to $6.1 billion filed in a U.S. court this month on behalf of tens of thousands of apartheid victims. "In this regard, we wish to reiterate that the South African government is not and will not be a party to such litigation," Mbeki said.
Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu had criticised big business for ignoring its role in apartheid when he handed down the TRC's final report last month after a nearly seven-year probe into murder, torture and other rights crimes committed by all parties during the apartheid era.
The government has paid about 50 million rand ($6.45 million) in interim relief to 16,000 victims. Mbeki said final reparations of 30,000 rand each to individuals or survivors designated by the TRC would be made during the current financial year.
"Combined with community reparations and assistance through opportunities and services...we hope that these disbursements will help acknowledge the suffering that these individuals experienced, and offer some relief," Mbeki said. The payout would be total 571.5 million rand ($74 million).
The TRC was set up by former President Nelson Mandela in 1995 to look into the country's murky past and has since become a model for other countries emerging from internal strife, including Peru, Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone and Kenya.
But few of these countries have gone as far as South Africa, which gave the TRC power to grant amnesty to the perpetrators of rights crimes in exchange for telling the truth.