Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

The SA National Defence Force was unable to comment immediately on Monday on a media report that Dr Wouter Basson, the apartheid-era chemical weapons expert, was still earning about R50,000 a month despite being suspended from his defence force job.

Major Vivian Petrus said the SANDF could not comment on the matter immediately as the report would have to be reviewed and the appropriate person would then comment.

News24 reported on Monday that Basson, the former head of the defence force's chemical and biological war programme, was still earning a salary of about R50,000 per month gross without doing any work as a heart surgeon.

The report also stated that while Basson's court case, in which he faced about 67 charges of apartheid-era crimes, was finalised more than 22 months ago, the defence force still had not taken any decision about his suspension or his career.

His salary amounted to about R1.1 million over the 22 month period.

If this salary was calculated over the full term of his suspension since 1999, it amounted to R4.35 million.

He was still officially in the position of chief surgeon at 1 Military Hospital in Thaba Tshwane without military patients benefiting from it.

Doctors and specialists in the SA Military Health Service were of the opinion that it was unacceptable that "nobody" was actually the chief cardiologist and that somebody like Basson was being paid without the defence force benefiting. The situation also prevented somebody else from being appointed in the position.

Basson has also been working as cardiologist at three hospitals in Cape Town for some time.

He was previously a brigadier-general and founder member of 7 Medical Battalion, but was appointed as a civilian doctor with the same income plus benefits and allowances after 1994.

In 1999, before his trial, the defence force suspended him because of the embarrassment the charges had created.

The allegations varied from theft to the murder of several Swapo and Renamo soldiers. His suspension was ordered by General Siphiwe Nyanda, former chief of the defence force, pending the court ruling.

Basson at that stage obtained permission to run a private practice.

He was acquitted by the Pretoria High Court in 2005. In October of that year the National Prosecuting Authority indicated that he would not be tried for conspiring to commit crimes outside South Africa.

Despite several requests for comment during the past two months, the defence ministry has failed to react, News24 reported.

According to Basson there was no bad blood between him and the defence force and that he was not in dispute with it about his suspension.

"They have spent millions on my legal fees. They have a big problem (about his future) which they have to solve and I realise that it takes time."