Wouter Basson — apartheid South Africa’s alleged germ-warfare expert — faces losing his private medical practice as a panel of peers prepares to judge a complaint of unethical conduct arising from events in his past.
Charges against the cardiologist are due to be considered by the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) in June, about seven years after first being lodged by 41 medical doctors.
The process had been delayed by a 31-month criminal trial and subsequent appeals.
”The complaint centres around the contravention of medical ethics,” Leslie London, one of the complainants, said on Monday.
These relate to alleged violations committed in the 1970s and 1980s when Basson, a medical doctor, headed the apartheid government’s chemical and biological warfare programme, Project Coast.
The top-secret programme included attempts to develop bacteria to kill Africans or make them sterile.
Basson was acquitted in 2002 of murder, drug trafficking, fraud and theft.
He never sought amnesty from prosecution from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which probed apartheid-era human rights violations.
Among other things, Basson was charged with conspiring to murder opponents of the then government by poisoning them and dropping their corpses into the sea from a plane.
He is alleged to have manufactured cholera bacteria with which to infect water supplies.
London said the complaint flowed from research done by the University of Cape Town’s Health and Human Rights Project, which he heads, for the TRC hearings.
”It is about the ethical behaviour of a medical professional. He has been accused of manufacturing psychoactive substances for crowd control, and of involvement in assassinations, things that are not
acceptable for a medical doctor.”
HPCSA spokesperson Greer van Zyl said the Basson hearing will be held in Pretoria from June 18 to 29. If found guilty, he could be scrapped from the professional roll.
The South African National Defence Force last year confirmed Basson was still getting a monthly salary despite not having been allowed to work for any military hospital since 1999 when he was charged with 67 criminal counts and suspended.
He currently runs a private cardiology practice in Durbanville near Cape Town.
Basson could not be reached on Monday but told a daily newspaper he would stand firm.
”I have been informed about the complaints and will obviously defend myself,” he told the Cape Times. ”Medicine is my life and I intend to keep practising.” – Sapa-AFP