South African doctor Wouter Basson faces being struck off for creating deadly poisons
WOUTER BASSON, the man known as “Dr Death” for his role as head of the apartheid government’s germ warfare programme, believes that viewing his actions in the 1980s through the prism of today leaves him misunderstood.
Giving evidence to the Health Professions Council of South Africa on Monday, where he faces four charges of unprofessional and unethical conduct relating to his apartheid-era activities, Basson said much of his work was aimed at saving lives rather than taking them.
Between 1981 and 1993, Basson was head of Project Coast, the South African army’s top secret biological and chemical warfare programme, where he oversaw the development of poisons and biological weapons for use against enemies of the state.
Among numerous other things, Basson (61) has been accused of being involved in the creation of poisons that targeted black people and of administering sedatives to dozens of anti-apartheid fighters who were allegedly thrown to their deaths from a plane.
At the Pretoria hearing, which could see him stripped of his medical licence, he has admitted to creating tear gas that was used to break up anti-apartheid protests in the townships and cyanide capsules that could be used by captured operational officers to take their own lives.
In essence, Basson has defended his actions as those of an angel of mercy rather than a doctor of death.
Both the cyanide and tear gas creations were viewed as a humane way of dealing with terrible situations that arose at the time, the Cape Town-based cardiologist insisted.
He maintained that fear and innuendo in the townships meant that people were summarily executed without trial and that a method needed to be developed that could control situations in which mob rule was at play.
However, to ensure his accusers were fully aware of how and why he had consented to help create such weapons, Basson’s defence team played some explicit video footage from those volatile days so they could contextualise his decisions using 1980s’ glasses.
The two-minute film showed people in townships being burnt alive, stoned to death and kicked by mobs while on the ground.
“That was my motivation [to create the tear gas] . . . This was developed to break the cohesion of the crowd; it was aimed at functional disturbances. Two hours later they would be fine,” Basson said.
“The emotions I felt when I saw the footage and read the reports . . . when I saw them I had heart palpitations and anxiety. Those were the scenes that forced people like Archbishop Desmond Tutu to threaten to leave if they did not stop. I wanted to be a part of a solution that did not involve sharp-point ammunition.”
In relation to the cyanide capsules, Basson said the pills were an option for officers who did not want to go into captivity.
He described how one army officer had had their genitalia cut off while another had bones broken over a number of days. “To be captured in Africa is not easy,” he said.
In 1999 Basson was forced to reveal the extent of his involvement in Project Coast after 67 criminal charges were brought against him that related to 229 murders, conspiracy to commit murder, drug possession, drug trafficking, fraud and the embezzlement of €36 million.
After a 30-month trial he was acquitted of all charges and granted amnesty. In relation to 200 deaths he was linked to in Namibia, the judge ruled a South African court did not have jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed in other countries.
After his acquittal, Basson moved to Durbanville, a small town outside Cape Town, to set up a private practice. But his past came back to haunt him in 2007 when the Health Professions Council of South Africa charged him with misconduct relating to his past.
Last year the high court dismissed an application to have the inquiry halted. The hearing began soon after but was adjourned to the beginning of this week. Basson denies acting unethically as a medical practitioner, because he was not working as a doctor at the time of his involvement in Project Coast.
Yesterday Basson testified that a co-ordinating committee and the surgeon general at the time were the ones in overall charge of the programme and that he was just an ordinary solider, albeit a highly qualified one, who carried out orders. “His decision was final and I had to see to it that the work was done,” he said.
He said that although he retired from the apartheid regime’s South African Defence Force in 1992, he was called back in a civilian capacity to the post- apartheid army by President Nelson Mandela to oversee the destruction of substances and weapons used in Project Coast.
However the tear gas he created was saved and several tonnes of it was given to the police for future use. The case continues.
