STEFAANS BRMMER, Pretoria | Friday 3.30pm.
THE state oversaw the manufacture of large quantities of illicit drugs during the time apartheid’s Dr Death, Wouter Basson, headed the former government’s top secret chemical and biological warfare programme.
Basson, who ran it during the 1980 and early 1990s, was arrested in 1997 allegedly for dealing in the rave drug ecstasy and is standing trial on 61 charges, including murder, conspiracy, fraud and drug offence.
Pharmacist Stephen Beukes, who did his compulsory military service in the special forces medical unit headed by Basson, testified that the doctor asked him in 1985 to set up a facility at special forces headquarters in Pretoria to manufacture Mandrax tablets.
Basson provided funds and supplied the active ingredients and 100 000 tablets were manufactured.
Chemical scientist Johannes Kookemoer — who worked for Delta G, a front company set up by the Basson’s programme – told the Pretoria High Court that he started developing and manufacturing ecstasy in 1990 after an order from Neil Knobel, then head of the SA Defence Force medical division and Basson’s immediate superior.
Kokemoer said he man at least 844kg of pure ecstasy which he had to deliver to a basement of a building in Pretoria.
He was informed the ecstasy was to be used in grades to ”incapacitate” enemy personell. But he was concerned: ”I did not think it would influence the thought process and judgments of the enemy to such an extent that it could be regarded as an incapacitent I was unhappy to manufacturer it. It was a product we manufactured on large scale and could be potentially abused”
In cross examination by Basson’s defence counsel Jaap Cillier, he acknowledged having learned that the US also experimented that the US also experimented with ecstasy as a chemical weapon.