Mia Swart, South Africa

She is working at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg into the ways and legal bases used by countries when making reparation, for example after the Holocaust. She hopes to speed compensation following apartheid in South Africa. Lack of funds means that this compensation is less likely to be financial than symbolic, by renaming monuments, streets and squares.

Mia Swart told TOMORROW TODAY:

My name is Mia Swart, I am 33 years old, I am from South Africa, and I am a lawyer, I am an academic lawyer, I teach at a law school. I am working in the Max-Planck-Institute here in Freiburg, it´s the Max-Planck-Institute for International and Foreign Criminal Law. It´s a good place to be for an academic lawyer. There is a whole tradition of South African lawyers coming to Germany, because the German research in law is on such a high level. In terms of public law for example the new constitution of South Africa did some borrowing from the German constitution, from the German jurisprudence. So there are also some legal links between German and South Africa.

My project for this year is to do research on holocaust reparations and apartheid reparations and to make some sort of comparison.

My favourite place in Freiburg at this point, it is probably the Schloßpark, because one has this magnificent view of the whole of Freiburg. And it´s also a good place to go for walks and one can have some beer there and eat, so it´s very nice. What I hate about at most, I suppose, is the fact, that people are very tense and not very spontaneous always. It´s almost a little bit too regulated and too formal and stiff in a way. But yes, one can not have everything I suppose.

My greatest passion must be shoes. But that I mean that is a joke to an extend. My greatest passion is also to just fulfil my own potential and develop my writing and do my work.

I wouldn´t say I am very religious but I am religious, I am protestant. When I was younger I liked these big churches more these cathedrals. Now it sort of reminds me of the middle ages and sometimes I think so many people have died when building this beautiful churches and it also stood for a form of oppression.

So far not much money has been paid out to victims of apartheid. I am hoping that symbolic reparations can become more the sort of a debate also in South Africa, that this could the pieces that I write will be rate filly widely and this could lead to a debate, because I feel that this is still something that is not resolved at all and it could still take many years to really resolve the questions about symbolic reparations.