PROJECT COAST: How Mbeki’s NPA failed to hold Wouter Basson accountable

South Africa signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the first multilateral treaty to ban an entire class of weapons, on 10 April, 1972, and ratified it in November 1975.

Fifty-plus years later, and as concerns mount about the use of chemical and possible use of biological weapons in what has become known as grey warfare in Ukraine and elsewhere, it is an appropriate time to reflect on the rise and decline of South Africa’s biological weapons programme, the only country in Africa to develop both biological and nuclear capabilities.

There are profound lessons to be learnt about how to – and how not to – govern the dismantling of high-consequence programmes such as these. In this six-part series, we focus on the biological programmes that went by the benign name of Project Coast, a covert endeavour that collectively represents some of the worst practices when it comes to building and dismantling a biological weapons programme responsibly.

Read parts one, two and three of the series.  

Nelson Mandela stepped down as president of South Africa on 13 June 1999. He wanted to set an example on the African continent and disrupt its tradition of having lifetime heads of state. His desire was to have Cyril Ramaphosa succeed him, to break Xhosa and Zulu dominance in ANC leadership, but the exile wing of the ANC prevailed with their choice of Thabo Mbeki. 

Mandela’s minister of justice, Dullah Omar, one of Project Coast’s primary assassination targets who survived multiple attempts on his life, was replaced by Mbeki’s choice of Penuell Maduna under whom the nominally independent National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) fell. It was on Mbeki’s watch that the trial against Wouter Basson began on 4 October 1999. 

Basson faced 67 criminal counts, including murder, attempted murder , drug offenses and fraud. At the start, Judge Willie Hartzenberg dismissed several key charges – specifically the conspiracy-to-murder charges relating to cross-border operations in Namibia, Mozambique, and London on the grounds that South African domestic law did not possess extraterritorial jurisdiction over those acts at the time.

It became clear that the recently established NPA lacked the legal expertise backed up by a big enough staff to go after the apartheid-era military establishment. Basson’s trial lasted 30 months, involved more than 150 witnesses and produced thousands of documents that had to be scrutinised. Mbeki’s administration could have resourced the NPA better and allowed it to hire a team of lawyers appropriate to the task, but he demurred.

Most countries’ justice systems are not readily equipped to deal with secretive operations such as these. It is exceptionally difficult, even under the best of circumstances, to convert a large body of evidence about clandestine programmes operating across multiple borders into admissible evidence to prove criminal liability in a national court – and do so beyond reasonable doubt.

Then there was Basson. There was evidence that chemical and biological agents were manufactured under Project Coast’s aegis, proving that Basson personally ordered, supplied or participated in specific murders was a great deal more difficult. Accused of misappropriating funds, Basson’s defence was able to line up witnesses who testified that the money had been spent acquiring programme equipment rather than ending up in his pocket.

Ulterior motives

The prosecution often relied on witnesses who themselves were involved in the security apparatuses. Many of the witnesses were participants in apartheid-era counter-insurgency operations and had received or expected immunity in exchange for truthful testimony. This gave the defence grounds to argue that they had ulterior motives to cast the blame on Basson.

A further significant setback was the judge’s ruling that a dossier of a four-day intelligence debriefing of Basson could not be used as evidence for the prosecution. The prosecution also challenged the exclusion of evidence from Basson’s bail proceedings. These evidentiary rulings substantially narrowed what the State could put before the court. 

The prosecution accused Judge Hartzenberg of bias and asked him to recuse himself. He refused. The State subsequently argued on appeal that his treatment of its evidence and witnesses was unfair. Reporting at the time described the judge as openly sceptical of some important prosecution witnesses. He accepted Basson’s explanations more readily than prosecutors thought justified.

Judge Hartzenberg ultimately characterised the State’s case as inadequate and that guilt beyond reasonable doubt was not established. His view was that the court did not need to decide whether Project Coast was morally reprehensible or not. It had to determine whether the State had proved each criminal charge against Basson to the required legal standard. He concluded that it had not.

The state appealed to the Supreme Court of Appeal and subsequently the Constitutional Court. The court examined whether international customary law or extraterritorial provisions applied, and while it clarified important constitutional principles regarding trial fairness and double jeopardy, it ultimately declined to overturn the acquittal. 

The NPA, in its wisdom, later declared that fresh criminal prosecution was legally impermissible.

Unprofessional conduct

In December 2013, a Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) committee found Basson guilty of unprofessional conduct. He was cited for unethical actions, including the large-scale production of illicit drugs such as Mandrax and cocaine, weaponising teargas, supplying substances for cross-border abductions, and providing cyanide suicide capsules to military operatives. 

Basson challenged the committee’s composition. In 2019, the Gauteng High Court set aside the guilty findings and ordered the recusal of tribunal members, with Judge Sulet Potterill sharply criticising the procedural handling of the case as biased and flawed. The HPCSA attempted to restart disciplinary proceedings. Basson applied for a permanent stay of proceedings, arguing an inordinate 40-year delay and trial prejudice.

In Basson v HPCSA, the Gauteng High Court dismissed Basson’s application for a permanent stay, ruling that the gravity of charges involving mass toxin weaponisation warranted accountability, and that trial prejudice did not meet the legal threshold of being irreparable. Basson walked free, kept his medical practice and licence.

The truth is that after 30 long years no one that matters has been held accountable and brought to book for the hundreds of deaths perpetrated by a carefully selected small group of pathological zealots practising irresponsible (in the view of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s late chief scientist and highly respected clinical pharmacologist Peter Folb) “pedestrian” science. After all, they were nothing more than sophisticated poisoners.  

Were it not for the TRC and figures like Peter Folb, Chandré Gould, Wendy Orr and Janet Cherry, we would not have heard of Project Coast and learnt about its nefarious activities. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), bolstered by some excellent investigative journalism, were the agents of transparency. It lanced a boil and held up for South Africans and the world to see what desperate human beings, yet again, are capable of.

It must finally also be said that Mbeki, fearing apartheid’s military machine, handled the defence forces with understandable but far too much care. He was deeply mindful of the fact that the ANC was not angelic in exile, and shielded his support base of comrades in the ANC from scrutiny. He bristled at the moral equivalence the TRC drew between the ANC’s and apartheid state's violation of human rights. DM 

Wilmot James, a former South African MP, is a professor at the School of Public Health, senior adviser to the Pandemic Center and director of the Africa Initiative at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. He is also a member of the advisory panel to the Signature Initiative to Mitigate Biothreats in Africa (Simba), a collaboration between the G7-led Global Partnership Against Materials and Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Africa CDC. Brendan Beng was a 2025 and 2026 summer intern, and Andrea Uhlig a research associate at the Pandemic Center.