cape town

South African researchers were involved in a sinister but bizarre effort to develop biological and chemical weapons under the previous government, according to evidence presented during the past two weeks at hearings of the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The research effort was carried out by the South African Defence Force. Some of its goals remain obscure. Johan Koekemoer, for example, former professor of organic chemistry at the Rand Afrikaans University in Johannesburg, said he was bewildered about plans to use a quantity of the drug Ecstasy worth one billion rand (US$185 million).

The drug was manufactured in 1992, two years after the release of President Nelson Mandela and the lifting of the ban on the African National Congress (ANC). Some of it, along with Mandrax tablets, was used in experiments to create drug-laced tear gas. But the intended effect on rioters is unclear.

Uncertainty remains about what happened to the vast quantities of stockpiled drugs. Former surgeon-general of the South African Defence Force, Niel Knobel, giving evidence before the commission last week, said that hundreds of kilograms of chemical agents, including Mandrax, were dumped off the southern Cape coast by the South African Air Force in early 1993. But Zenzile Khoisan, an investigator for the commission, suggested they might have been supplied, through gangster connections, to communities that were active in the struggle against apartheid.

The former head and chief architect of the weapons programme, Wouter Basson, faces multiple criminal charges, including instigating murder and the possession of drugs. Basson was due to appear before the commission last week, but has applied to the High Court to have his subpoena deferred on the grounds that it would prejudice his criminal trial.

Basson was retired early from the South African Defence Force by President F. W. de Klerk in 1992, after an investigation into alleged illegal activities of the defence establishment — only to be re-employed by the Minister of Defence, Joe Modise, after Mandela's government was elected in 1994.

Basson liaised with researchers through a front company, Roodeplaat Research Laboratories, headed by former University of Pretoria veterinarian Daan Goosen, who became involved in the programme after being asked to supply snake venom intended to kill ANC members. Goosen was briefed to develop research projects including the selective poisoning of people on the basis of their skin pigmentation, producing a vaccine to reduce black fertility, and cultivating cholera and anthrax organisms.

It is unclear which of the programme's products were effective and which remained in the realms of morbid fantasy. Poison manufactured at Roodeplaat was used in an unsuccessful assassination attempt on the Minister of Justice, Dullah Omar. But anthrax spores were planted in the food of three Russian advisers to the ANC, one of whom subsequently died.