Editorial

On March 29, former Northwest Deputy Police Commissioner Mzondase Mpembe and three other senior police officers were acquitted of all three charges related to the Marikana massacre. This continues the trend that up to the present day none of the police officers directly involved in the massacre and the decision-makers behind the order to shoot have been convicted in politics. Nine years have passed and history continues on its course, “Business as usual”. This also applies to the living and working conditions of the mine workers and all people who live in Marikana.

Structurally nothing has changed for them, but the platinum from Marikana continues to reach the world market. Full article

Would it have made a difference? Marikana, BASF and the Supply Chain Act

From 2023, legislation will rule how BASF must meet its own human rights due diligence obligations. Would the Supply Chain Act have helped BASF respond more seriously to the apparent abuses at its then largest platinum supplier, Lonmin, after the Marikana massacre nine years ago? The answer to this question exposes the advantages, but also the shortcomings, of the bill currently being debated in German parliament.

By Tilman Massa, Ethical Shareholders Germany

German companies have had long enough to prove that they voluntarily comply with UN standards on respecting human rights in their supply chains. After it finally became clear last year that over 80 percent were not even close to doing so, the German government drew the consequences and cleared the way for a legal regulation. Full article

Untrustworthy control: Countermotion and questions to the BASF Annual Meeting 2021

Re agenda item 3: Adoption of a resolution giving formal approval to the actions of the members of the Supervisory Board

The Association of Ethical Shareholders Germany proposes that the actions of the members of the Supervisory Board for the 2020 financial year not be approved.

Rationale:

The Supervisory Board is currently unable to credibly fulfill its role as a supervisory body of the Board of Executive Directors in order to help shape BASF’s realignment in a socially and ecologically just manner. Particularly with regard to the new Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Dr. Kurt Bock, there are clear reservations in other parts of the shareholder base about being able to critically and independently monitor the realignment of the Group that has been initiated by the Board of Executive Directors. Full article

No house community with companies with a Nazi past

Hamburg’s culture of remembrance cannot be privatized – public-private partnership is not a solution!

After the ongoing scandal about the former Hamburg Gestapo headquarters in the town hall, here’s the next one: the Hamburg documentation center for the victims of deportations in ghettos, concentration and extermination camps is said to be in a building in which a Nazi perpetrator company is supposed to have its headquarters, which is majority owned by the IG Farben successor group BASF.

“Whenever there is talk of mental wounds and vulnerability, violence, injustice and helplessness are always discussed, as well as social and state responsibility.” (José Brunner, The Politics of Trauma, 2014)

For 15 years, Hamburg victims’ organizations and the Jewish communities have been accompanying the development of a memorial site for the more than 8,000 Hamburg residents who were deported from the Hanover train station to the concentration and extermination camps between 1940 and 1945. Full article

Questions on historical responsibility regarding Wintershall Dea and planned IPO

Questions about Wintershall’s involvement with National Socialism

Since January 2021, it has been known that BASF subsidiary Wintershall AG intends to become the main tenant of a building in Hamburg’s HafenCity, where the denk.mal documentation center on Hamburg’s Nazi and deportation history is to be built at the former Hanover train station. Against this background, we ask:

• From 1930 onwards, Wintershall AG supported National Socialist organizations, including the “Society for the Study of Fascism”, the Keppler Circle, the Himmler Circle of Friends, Reichsführer SS Himmler, the Hitler Youth, the NS Kraftfahrkorps, the SS, the SA, the SS Security Service (SD), NSDAP Gauleiter, among others, with financial contributions.

Full article