Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

The case against Wouter Basson is not just about his suitability to be on the country’s medical register, it has much greater implications for SA. Chandré Gould and Louise Flanagan report

Can there be any doubt that a medical doctor has overstepped ethical boundaries if he heads a chemical and biological weapons programme?

If that programme also makes assassination weapons and incapacitating agents intended to bolster a regime whose policies were described by the United Nations as a “crime against humanity”, would the case against the doctor not be conclusive?

Apparently not.

If the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) case against cardiologist Dr Wouter Basson ends in his acquittal, as seemed quite possible last week, the country’s medical profession will be telling the world there is no ethical conflict between being a medical professional and heading just such a programme.

Last week the HPCSA started hearing six charges of unprofessional conduct against Basson, notorious for his role in the apartheid-era military’s covert chemical and biological warfare (CBW) programme between 1981 and 1993. If the HPCSA finds against Basson, he could be struck from the roll of registered doctors.

Basson is a practising cardiologist in Cape Town.

This week the hearing rapidly turned into a circus, with the prosecution’s star – and only – expert witness crumbling under cross-examination to the point where he could no longer make any coherent criticism of Basson’s ethics.

Medical ethics expert Professor Solomon Benatar of the University of Cape Town told the hearing that Basson should never have involved himself in the CBW programme.

But when forced under cross-examination to comment on specific actions by Basson, frequently in terms of “yes” or “no” answers, Benatar fell apart, made admissions damaging to the prosecution and finally refused to answer.

Legal hearings usually aren’t the place for philosophical academic debates, as Benatar found. Instead they deal with very specific allegations against a very specific person.

Despite the huge publicity around Basson’s lengthy criminal trial on his CBW activities and his acquittal in 2002, Benatar clearly knew very little about the case.

Basson’s advocate, Jaap Cilliers SC, seized the opportunity provided by his opposition’s ignorance to contradict arguments he had made in Basson’s defence during the criminal trial a few years ago.

The 2002 Pretoria High Court ruling in the case against Basson stated quite clearly that while holding the rank of brigadier, Basson was head of an offensive and defensive CBW programme. Yet in the HPCSA hearing Cilliers made the case that not only was Basson merely a junior officer following orders, but that Project Coast – his CBW programme – was only ever intended to be to develop defences against chemical and biological weapons.

The claim that Coast was purely defensive is easily dismissed by documents Basson himself wrote. These are in the public domain and would have been available to Benatar, had he looked for them.

In a 1989 document setting out Coast’s objectives, Basson wrote that these included supporting the offensive and defensive chemical and biological operations of the security forces (overt and covert), and carrying out the military’s own CBW operations.

It will be interesting to see whether former SA Defence Force Surgeon General Niel Knobel, due to give evidence on Basson’s behalf at the HPCSA, recalls his testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission when he described Basson as having the support of the Cabinet and SADF as head of the programme and that, as surgeon general, it was “quite impossible to begin to question the way he (Basson) carries out his dealings. His word was accepted”.

In a characteristic twisting of the truth, Basson claimed in his plea explanation to the HPCSA that he had been put on early retirement in 1993 by then president FW de Klerk, then in 1995 appointed in the SANDF on the instructions of then president Nelson Mandela, creating the impression that his credentials were acceptable to Mandela.

The fact is that, according to former United States Ambassador Princeton Lyman, who was part of a joint delegation from the US and Britain to the SA government, the US and Britain urged the government to re-employ Basson because they were concerned that he was sharing information about chemical and biological weapons with Libya in the early 1990s.

In Lyman’s words: “The South Africans agreed to rehire him as a way to stop his foreign travels and keep him under wraps. As he was a cardiac surgeon, he was hired back into the military in that capacity, a decision that would later cause Mandela some embarrassment, but that was the only recourse that appeared practical at the time.”

As head of Project Coast, Basson created the conditions under which the scientists working in Coast’s front companies would believe that developing assassination weapons, and providing security-force operators with poisons, would meet with his approval.

Basson has freely admitted to the HPCSA that he provided cyanide capsules for SADF operators to commit suicide if caught behind enemy lines.

That is inconsistent with ethical medical practice but Benatar struggled to criticise Basson for this.

Basson also confirmed providing drugs to subdue victims of international abductions – a matter which the inept Benatar seemed unable to denounce as unequivocally unethical.

How difficult could it be for him to criticise a doctor who, using his medical skills, helps in an illegal raid into another country?

The hearing collapsed after a day, with prosecution leader advocate Marius Helberg SC begging for a postponement to look for a more useful expert, admitting that all the defence would have to do was say it agreed with Benatar and leave it at that to ensure Basson’s acquittal.

How did the inquiry reach such a point?

Simple: one team has been incompetent, the other not.

As a morning’s entertainment, it may have been amusing. As a precedent-setting case for the medical profession, it was appalling.

The hearing is not just about whether Basson is fit to be retained on the medical register of doctors.

An HPCSA decision on Basson’s ethics will set a precedent on the participation of medical professionals in a range of dubious activities including CBW programmes, covert military operations, the manufacture of illicit drugs like mandrax, and help for security forces who use drugs to subdue opponents.

In short, about using medical knowledge for malicious intent.

These are issues which demand well-informed debate.

The hearing is now due to resume in September 2008. When that happens, the council should expect to hear evidence from teams that have done their homework.

The prosecution team has a lot of catching up to do.

nDr Chandré Gould is a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies.