Andy Duffy
A top scientist in apartheid’s chemical and biological warfare programme, now employed by the international body committed to banning such weapons, should be called to testify at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, researchers into his activities believe.
Dr Brian Davey worked alongside Wouter Basson, apartheid’s notorious specialist in biological warfare, for years in the South African Defence Force’s Project Coast programme, and was involved in at least two of the project’s front companies.
Davey has now resurfaced as a department chief at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons – a Netherlands-based group set up six months ago to enforce a global ban on chemical weapons.
It is not clear whether Davey fully informed the organisation of his activities for the previous South African government before taking the job.
But the truth commission has received an independent report detailing his employment, and his alleged involvement in ensuring that Basson’s work remained secret.
The truth commission is keeping the report under wraps until its own researchers have corroborated the allegations. The research was done on its instruction.
But the report’s author, the Netherlands Institute for Southern Africa, says the commission’s attempts to investigate the apartheid government’s chemical and biological war machine could flounder unless it calls Davey to testify.
Among the report’s allegations is a claim that Davey posed as an independent investigator in an international probe five years ago into reports that chemical weapons were used against Frelimo troops in Mozambique.
Davey found no evidence of a chemical weapon attack. But at the time he was also quietly working for Basson’s team – which was later accused of providing chemical weapons used against Frelimo. The incident is among hundreds Davey’s new employer has on its data base.
The organisation is the key mechanism used to enforce the ban agreed to by the Committee on Chemical Weapons. Nearly 170 countries have signed the agreement, including South Africa.
Davey, who runs the organisation’s health and safety inspectorate, declined to comment this week.
But his testimony could go some way to removing the shroud of secrecy the previous and present government have thrown over Project Coast.
The programme was set up in 1983, and run by Basson, the then chief of the army’s 7th Medical Division.
It operated through a string of front companies, including the Midrand factory and research facility Delta G, Roodeplat Research Laboratories and Protechnik, a defensive research laboratory near Hartebeespoort Dam (for which Davey worked).
The Steyn commission, set up in 1992 to investigate “third force” activities, found all three front companies were involved in developing chemical and biological weapons.
The commission also found evidence to suggest that Basson’s team had armed Renamo with chemical weapons.
Project Coast was closed down at the end of 1992, and Basson left the army months later.
Basson has since been arrested on charges of possessing the designer drug Ecstasy, and, last month, of 10 counts of fraud totalling R30-million from Project Coast transactions.
The government, which re-appointed Basson into the army in late 1995, has insisted, so far successfully, that his court case be heard behind closed doors.