'Dr. Death' hearing stirs up painful apartheid memories in South Africa

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The man known as "Dr. Death" says he was just following orders. But as he fights to keep his medical license, the case of Wouter Basson is stirring up memories of apartheid-era atrocities, including a germ-warfare program that targeted black opponents of the white-minority regime.

Dr. Basson, the former commander of South Africa's notorious 7th Medical Battalion and head of its secret biological and chemical weapons program, is now a successful cardiologist in an affluent suburb of Cape Town with 9,000 heart patients.

A decade ago, he was acquitted of murder and fraud charges in one of the most controversial court decisions of its time. But now the Health Professions Council of South Africa is holding a disciplinary hearing to decide whether to revoke his medical license, on the grounds that his apartheid-era activities were unprofessional and unethical.

From 1981 to 1993, Dr. Basson was head of Project Coast, a unit of South Africa's military security service, which used secret laboratories and front companies to develop a terrifying arsenal of chemical and biological agents, including sarin, salmonella, mustard gas, and 45 types of anthrax.

Even more frightening, the program developed ways of attacking anti-apartheid activists with these secret weapons, leaving no trace of the attack. Among the methods were anthrax-tainted cigarettes and chocolate, screwdrivers tipped with poison, pesticide-tainted beer, vials of cholera, and bleach contaminated with salmonella.

Many of these items were documented in a list that was discovered in a padlocked steel trunk, seized from Dr. Basson's home in 1997. Today the South African media routinely refer to him as "Dr. Death."

According to testimony at his criminal trial, Dr. Basson provided tranquilizing drugs to help the apartheid police in the kidnapping of anti-apartheid activists outside South Africa. He also developed mandrax tablets, forms of tear gas to be weaponized in mortar shells, and cyanide tablets to allow soldiers to commit suicide if they were captured.

One scientist testified at the criminal trial that Dr. Basson urged the unit to develop biological ways to suppress population growth among blacks, and to search for a possible "black bomb" – a biological weapon that would select targets based on race.

Even more worrying, Dr. Basson made multiple trips abroad to Libya and other Middle Eastern countries, leading to suspicions that South Africa's biological and chemical warfare technology may have been shared or discussed with other repressive regimes.

A spokesman for the African National Congress, the governing party in South Africa, has said that Dr. Basson "certainly represents the worst of our history and has dishonored the medical profession."

But at the disciplinary hearing this week, Dr. Basson argued that he was merely a soldier who followed orders from his superiors when they asked him to supply certain drugs.

"There's a certain police general who makes an official request," he told the hearing. "I'm there as a citizen of the country. He comes with the sanction of the government. As far as we were concerned as soldiers it was perfectly legitimate…. I was a 33-year-old Lieutenant Colonel in the defence force. I accepted it was bone fide and correct."

The hearing will continue in September. Oddly enough, the ANC government is paying thousands of dollars for Dr. Basson's legal costs because he was a government employee at the time of the alleged offences.