When South Africa Became a Democratic Country on 27 April 1994.

September 2008 Charles Abrahams has worked for plaintiffs on cases including: Anglo Platinum (displacement in South Africa); AngloGold Ashanti (silicosis in South Africa); Gencor (asbestosis in South Africa); various companies (re apartheid in South Africa). When South Africa became a democratic country on 27 April 1994, not only did it result in a fundamental change in the political landscape, but it also ushered in a new constitutional legal order unparalleled in the country's history. The adoption of a final constitution in December 1996 became the embodiment of this new legal order. For the first time in the country's history the constitution included a Bill of Rights that has attracted the greatest interest and has, and continues to have, the greatest impact on the lives of millions of people in South Africa. New legal opportunities and challenges have emerged that previously would not have been possible. One such area has been in the field of corporate legal accountability for human rights abuses in South Africa. In 2002, the Truth & Reconciliation Commission (TRC) submitted its final Report of the Reparations & Rehabilitation Committee, entitled “Reparations and the Business Sector”. This report found that major corporations in the extractive industry generally benefited financially and materially from the policies of apartheid. In this regard, the TRC singled out the Anglo American Corporation for, amongst other things, maintaining single-sex hotels that eroded the family structures of mineworkers, allowing apartheid security forces to repress strikes at its various mining operations and failing to implement the most basic standards of the International Labour Organization (ILO). By 1993, the mortality rates on gold mines as a result of accidents stood at 113 for every 100 000 miners. One of the legacies of apartheid that persists to this day is the desperate situation of ex-gold mine.