In the last decade of apartheid, behind a screen of front companies and military secrecy, the South African state ran a programme to turn medicine and chemistry into instruments of murder. It was called Project Coast, it was established in 1981, and it was directed by a brilliant young cardiologist named Wouter Basson, whom the press would later christen 'Dr Death.' Under his direction, government scientists in laboratories outside Pretoria cultured anthrax, cholera, and botulinum; manufactured poisons designed to kill quietly and untraceably; produced tons of Ecstasy and Mandrax; and pursued a research goal that sounds like the plot of a horror film but appears in the sworn record of South Africa's own Truth and Reconciliation Commission: a vaccine that would make Black South Africans infertile without their knowledge, to be administered covertly to suppress the Black birth rate. Apartheid opponents were poisoned, their clothing impregnated with toxins; according to testimony, captured guerrillas were sedated and dropped from aircraft into the sea. Much of this came to light only after apartheid ended, when Basson was arrested, his steel trunks of documents were opened, and the TRC convened special hearings on chemical and biological warfare. And then, in one of the most contested verdicts in South African legal history, Basson was tried on dozens of charges and acquitted of every one. This article sets out what Project Coast was, what it did, what it aspired to and never achieved, and why so much of it ended not in a reckoning but in an acquittal.
State & Intelligence Operations
1981
