It is one of the creepiest sets of photographs to come across my desk in decades.
At first glance it appears to show nothing untoward, merely the rooms of a vacant facility. In one, there is a corridor pleasantly lit by amber light coming through circular windows of the kind you’d see in a restaurant kitchen door.
But the round portholes look into “primate observation rooms”, in which, for years, numberless ranks of vervet monkeys and baboons were subjected to ghoulish experiments that lay at the dark heart of apartheid’s notorious yet little-understood chemical and biological weapons effort, Project Coast.
This is Roodeplaat Research Laboratories (RRL), the biowar half of the project, situated on a converted 350ha farm to the east of Pretoria and north of the Roodeplaat Dam Nature Reserve. While white South Africans fished, sailed and swam in the racially exclusive reserve, from 1983 a group of scientists under RRL chief Dr Daan Goosen conducted experiments in weaponising viruses and bacteria.
Veterinarian Dr André Immelman headed RRL’s chemical and pharmacological departments. Dr James Davies, a veterinarian and a Recce member of the South African Defence Force (SADF) special forces, ran toxicology. Veterinarian Dr Schalk van Rensburg oversaw the chilling animal research laboratory, located at some distance from the main labs. In 1986, a microbiological department was added under veterinarian Dr Mike Odendaal. The total professional staff complement was 31.
The year before RRL was begun, Delta G Scientific (DGS) had been established as the offensive chemical warfare half of Project Coast, led by University of Pretoria chemistry department head Dr Willie Basson, apparently no relation to the Project Coast director, then-commandant Wouter Basson. The latter’s rise through the SADF ranks had been meteoric, from lieutenant to captain after qualifying as a medical doctor, and then to major, all in 1981.
When Project Coast was initiated in August that year, Basson was appointed its director, with yet another swift promotion, to commandant (equivalent to lieutenant-colonel). Having somehow become prime minister PW Botha’s cardiologist in this period seems to have put a rocket behind his career.
On Basson’s recommendations to maintain secrecy, the front companies DGS and RRL were set up, as was Infladel, the administrative branch under auditor Pierre Theron, personally appointed by Botha.
After several false starts and a few worrying lab accidents at various locations, a large purpose-built DGS plant was finally established in Midrand. With four laboratories and three production warehouses, it began operating in August 1985. Its main product was CR teargas, nicknamed “firegas” because it was up to 10 times more potent than the traditional CS teargas used by the police. DGS had 165 staff by 1987, including about 20 scientists.
By then, Basson had been promoted to colonel, as he had been made officer commanding of the new 7 Medical Battalion, which would provide medical services to the specialist units of the SADF and South African Police.
By 1985, all the RRL labs were functional, and a highly restricted, hermetically sealed biosafety level 3 containment laboratory was built. Here scientists in biohazard suits, fed by their own independent air supplies, worked on lethal substances including the nerve gases sarin, tabun, and the exceptionally toxic VX. A nurse was on standby at all times in case of an accident.
By 1986, Delta G was presided over by defence minister Magnus Malan’s nephew Dr Philip Mijburgh, and Roodeplaat by Recce dentist Dr Wynand Swanepoel.
The next year Swanepoel started planning a dramatic expansion of RRL, including a biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory. BSL-4 is the highest danger level for working, in totally isolated facilities, with exotic and highly lethal viruses such as Ebola and Marburg.
Floorplans show the Roodeplaat plant also included labs for electron microscopy, bacterial diseases, plant propagation virology (viruses that infect plants) and associated facilities. A “fumigation chamber”, incinerators and a “medical support services” clinic were indicative of the lurking dangers.
Meanwhile, Van Rensburg’s animal facility had labs for molecular biology, toxicology/pharmacology, bacteriology, fermentation/mycology (fungal studies), and a “virulent strain centre”, plus three “animal houses” with outdoor cages and a large “animal centre” with rooms full of cramped steel animal cages and experimentation rooms.
According to Chandré Gould and Peter Folb’s 2002 report for the UN, the animal facility boasted “a Perspex restraining chair for primates, a gas chamber which could accommodate the restraint chair; a filtration system; and a primate semen extractor to be used in virility tests”. Van Rensburg’s subordinate, Dr Riana Bornman, was in charge of reproductive physiology.
According to both Goosen and Van Rensburg, fertility research at RRL was aimed at producing an anti-fertility vaccine that could be administered to black women without their knowledge, though the doctors were told it was to be a contraceptive for Unita women soldiers. Bornman denied any knowledge of this and claimed she was not even aware RRL was a military front company.
Rats, mice, fish, baboons, vervet monkeys, pigs, beagles and even horses were subjected to awful and usually fatal experiments, with little care for the animals’ welfare, Gould and Folb state in their UN report.
In the amber gloom of the animal centre, for example, “tests were conducted on three baboons with phenylsilatrane”, a convulsant rodenticide. “The RRL report notes that all the baboons suffered muscle spasms and disorientation after five minutes. After 12 minutes they still showed signs of muscle spasms with difficulty breathing. All died from suffocation within 15 minutes.”
Yet the top scientists knew the intended ultimate targets would be human: leaders of the ANC and SACP, such as the imprisoned Nelson Mandela and the exiled Joe Slovo, were named as potential targets in informal discussions at RRL. Goosen admitted this later, testifying at the marathon trial from 1999 to 2002 of Basson for mass murder, R30m fraud, and other charges that caused Basson to be dubbed “Dr Death” in the media.
Roodeplaat and Delta G cost taxpayers a total of R226m by the time they were privatised in 1990/1991. Roodeplaat’s total output is unknown, but a 1989 list alone includes 32 bottles of cholera, and small quantities of poisoned sugar, cigarettes, whisky, beer, chocolates, deodorant, 10 doses of a lethal pesticide, and a dose of mamba venom — together sufficient to kill scores of people.
The poisoning of those attending an ANC meeting in Soweto with salmonella-infected sugar failed to kill, however. At least one attempt at a large-scale poisoning through cholera and yellow fever by the shadowy CCB in Swapo returnee camps in Namibia in 1989 also failed. But numerous poisoned items were used by police and Recces in assassination attempts, with an unknown death toll. The attempted poisoning of the Rev Frank Chikane in 1989 was a near-miss, but several poisoning deaths are linked to Project Coast.
Delta G’s output of chemical warfare agents was about 20t of CR firegas and its immediate precursor, 1t of CS teargas, 1t of the hypnotic sedative mandrax, and just under a ton of the party drug ecstasy. Basson also purchased 4t of the incapacitant BZ.
About half the firegas was extensively used in “riot control” during the 1985-1990 states of emergency. Many firegas mortars were reportedly fired during the SADF’s withdrawal from Angola in 1988. A mysterious incident on January 16 1992 that left four Mozambican troops dead and 28 hospitalised is rumoured to have been an SADF BZ drone strike.
Frighteningly, while the remnants of Delta G’s chemical warfare products, estimated by Basson to be worth R21.7m, were said to have been dumped in the ocean off Cape Agulhas by the South African Air Force in January 1993, Roodeplaat’s entire culture collection of deadly biohazards vanished without a trace.
Though some weaponisation was attempted, the street drugs were apparently manufactured on the sly to provide extra income for RRL’s scientists. But it was Basson, still working as a renowned cardiac surgeon, who was arrested in 1997 for trafficking in ecstasy.
That bust, and the 203 Project Coast files found in his car, led to his trial. But though he was acquitted of all charges in 2002, the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) found him guilty in 2013 of four counts of unprofessional conduct in relation to Project Coast.
Many other Project Coast doctors testified at the Basson trial and were given indemnity from prosecution for doing so. The HPCSA has apparently chosen not to pursue them on unprofessional conduct grounds, as they did with Basson.
Hoping that the dark deeds of Project Coast have been forgotten, Basson is now seeking to have the HPCSA ruling against him overturned in court.
Michael Schmidt is an investigative journalist and the author of Drinking with Ghosts: The Aftermath of Apartheid’s Dirty War (2014), Death Flight: Apartheid’s Secret Doctrine of Disappearance (2020), and Ziggurat: Magnus’ Military State (forthcoming, 2026).