1915
South African leaders become aware of the tangible threat posed to their own troops by CW after battlefield use of chemical agents by the Germans on the Western Front.
—Ian van der Waag, review of The Rollback of South Africa's Chemical and [sic] Biological Warfare Program, Journal of Military History (January 2002), p. 272.

1930s on
The South African mining industry develops explosives "linked with" chemical agents. The Anglo-American Corporation, Anglo-Vaal, and other companies are involved. [Note: the precise meaning of this phrase is unclear.]
—Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), p. 2.

1936
Jan Smuts predicts the broad [future] use of CBW after he and other air theorists take note of the Italian use of [mustard] in Ethiopia.
—Ian van der Waag, review of The Rollback of South Africa's Chemical and [sic] Biological Warfare Program, Journal of Military History (January 2002), p. 272.

1939-1945
The Director General of War, H. J. van der Bijl, oversees the production of CW weapons and the taking of defensive measures to protect South African troops against chemical and biological attack. [Note: there is a slight temporal and factual discrepancy between this entry and the entry immediately below.]
—Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), pp. 2-3.

1941-1945
CW agents are manufactured by South Africa at the Klipfontein and Firgrove factories in response to a request by the British Ministry of Supply. The two factories have 1,697 employees and are capable of producing 250 tons of different chemical warfare agents each month. The Klipfontein Organic Products plant produces phosgene and mustard. The production of chemical agents and associated weapons is supervised by Brigadier General Van der Bijl, Director General War Supplies, and Brigadier General Van der Spuy, Director General Technical Services. After the war, the production focus is shifted to DDT and other insecticides.
—Ian van der Waag, review of The Rollback of South Africa's Chemical and [sic] Biological Warfare Program, Journal of Military History (January 2002), p. 272; G. C. Gerrans, "Historical Overview of the South African Chemical Industry, 1896-1998," Chemistry International 21:3 (May 1999), p. 76.

1946
South Africa dumps large quantities of munitions containing mustard agent into the sea, but does not roll back its CBW program entirely. The literature from its World War II CBW program is retained, and the South African Defense Force (SADF) maintains a small military program related to CBW R&D. The government continues to outsource a number of basic research projects to Afrikaans-speaking universities and other government-supported institutions. These projects are usually carried out under the umbrella of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
—Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), pp. 3-4.

1960
South Africa uses tear gas extensively to suppress the Pongoland uprising in Transkei.
—Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), p. 4.

1960
After taking an NBC warfare course in the UK, Dr. Vernon Joynt of Mechem and the CSIR helps initiate a new phase of the South African CW program by correcting a problem with the tear gas used to control riots and hunt militants hiding in the bush.
—Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), p. 4.

March 1960
The police fire into a crowd of 5,000 anti-apartheid activists who had gathered around the police station in Sharpeville to protest the discriminatory Pass Laws, killing 67 and wounding 186. Many are shot in the back as they flee. The scale of this "Sharpeville Massacre" has a profound effect on South African blacks, and precipitates a series of mass protests and boycotts. The government declares a state of emergency, arrests African leaders, and bans the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). Soon after, these two organizations form clandestine armed wings – respectively, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) and Poqo ("Pure") – in order to continue waging their struggle.
—James Barber, South Africa in the Twentieth Century: A Political History – In Search of a Nation State (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), pp. 165-6.

1960s
CSIR continues to work on tear gas and CX [phosgene oxime] powder used for tracking, and Dr. Joynt outfits SADF Cessna aircraft to spread CX powder. [Note: since CX's effects are immediate and painful, it is unclear exactly how the South Africans used it for "tracking."]
—Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), p. 4.

Early 1960s
SADF personnel sent to gain counterinsurgency experience in Angola observe firsthand how the Portuguese military employs CBW to make defoliants and napalm, mine trails, and poison wells and waterholes to counter guerrilla actions. Portuguese forces also drug prisoners and throw them out of airplanes. [Note: in this and several subsequent entries, there are references to unspecified poisons or toxic materials. These substances are most likely chemical agents, but it is possible that some actually refer to biological toxins, chemical substances produced from living organisms, or biological agents.]
—Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), p. 7.

1961
The U.S. transfers 6 tear gas rifle shells and 4 tear gas grenades to the South African government between 1 January 1961 and 31 December 1961. Munitions exports still pending as of 15 July 1961 include 150 tear gas grenades (CF [?]) and 150 "3-way" tear gas grenades (CN [chloroacetophenone, commercially known as Mace]). [Note: the reference to "CF" is almost certainly a reference to CS. Also, it is unclear what "3-way" tear gas grenades are.]
—U.S., Department of State, "United States-South African Commercial Relations and Arms Traffic," 21 July 1963 "Confidential" airgram #CA-915 to "USUN New York", pp. 6, 8.

1963
South Africa becomes a party to the 1925 Geneva Gas Protocol banning the use of chemical and biological weapons in warfare.
—Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), p. 4.

Mid-1960s
Due to Egyptian use of chemical weapons in Yemen (1962-67) and concerns that Jamal `Abd al-Nasir may have provided some of these to the ANC, South Africa realizes the importance of updating its CBW program. CSIR "works on" mustard and protective masks to replace the WWII-era masks still used by the SADF.
—Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), p. 4.

1960s-1970s
The Elektroniks, Meganies, Landbou en Chemies (EMAC: Electrical, Mechanical, Agricultural and Chemical) lab facility at Special Forces (SF) headquarters works on and "innovate[s]" weapons, including chemical and biological agents. [Note: other sources provide no indications that EMLC actually worked on biological agents. See, e.g., Chandré Gould and Peter Folb, Project Coast: Apartheid's Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme (Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 2002), pp. 35-6; and the EMLC description in the CW Facilities section.]
—Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), p. 4.

Late 1960s and Early 1970s
Israel and South Africa increasingly cooperate with each other in the development of armaments during this period. This cooperation is focused mainly on nuclear weapons and missile programs, but may also have included collaborative efforts in CBW R&D. [Note: the study cited below provides no corroborating evidence concerning cooperation between the two countries in the CBW field, although there are clear indications of growing Israeli-South African cooperation in other weapons fields.]
—Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), pp. 5-6.

Early 1970s
Certain SADF generals ask the CSIR for "aggressive" CBW agents and express a growing interest in starting a new CBW industry, but the head of CSIR's Chemical Defence Unit (CDU), J. P. de Villiers, initially responds that such a program is unsuitable for Africa and too complex and expensive to develop. [Note: Burgess and Purkitt list De Villiers' first name as Wim, but in other sources he is identified as J. P.]
—Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), p. 5.

1970s and 1980s
South African [special operations] units fighting against guerrillas in Namibia and Angola, such as the 5th Reconnaissance commandos, the Koevoet ("Crowbar") unit, and the SADF SF's D[elta]40 unit [composed largely of Rhodesians], employ unconventional counterinsurgency tactics, including the use of chemical and biological agents. [Note: see several entries below for details concerning the CW and BW agents employed.]
—Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), p. 9.

Early 1973 on
The recently-formed Rhodesian Selous Scouts adopt and adapt British counterinsurgency techniques used in Kenya and Malaya by experimenting with new types of weapons, including CW and BW. They seek to develop poisons to impregnate toxins into blue jeans used by guerrillas as well as poison pens to assassinate guerrilla leaders, and make efforts to contaminate rivers and water supplies with chemical and biological agents. [Note: see 1975-1 October 1978 and 1976 entries below for more details.] Rhodesia has one "rudimentary" CBW plant that receives outside aid from South Africa. [Note: the "rudimentary" CBW plant mentioned here may be an allusion to the lab later set up in the Selous Scouts barracks, on which see the 1975-1 September 1978 entry below, but it could also indicate that another, unnamed facility existed.]
—Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), pp. 8-9.

1974-1977
In 1974 De Villiers prepares a 10-page report, which estimates that building a CBW program would cost 5 million rand and concludes that the Soviet Union is too well armed with CBW and would thus retaliate against any CBW attack. The SADF postpones its plans to develop an offensive CBW program, but supports a minimal CBW R&D program which is not well-developed. By 1977, De Villiers changes his tune and displays far more interest in the possibility of offensive CW use, but says little about using BW.
—Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), p. 5; and Chandré Gould and Peter Folb, Project Coast: Apartheid's Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme (Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 2002), pp. 32-4.

Mid-1970s
The Rhodesian Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) asks doctors and chemists from the University of Rhodesia to identify and test a range of chemical and biological agents that can be used as a "fear factor" in the war against nationalist guerrillas. Anatomy [Department] professor Dr. Robert Symington, head of the clinical program, recruits several colleagues and students to carry out the research. SADF Forensic Department experts and intelligence personnel have access to the most secret Rhodesian camps and likely play some part in the development of CBW agents, which include organophosphate poisons, thallium, warfarin [an anticoagulant rodenticide], unspecified bacteriological agents, and anthrax. Symington later moves to South Africa and reportedly collaborates in the development of a top secret South African CBW program (codenamed "Red Mountain") prior to his death. [Note: this codename is not mentioned in any other source. Also, Brickhill was an ANC activist who was targeted for assassination and was severely injured in a bombing attempt.]
—Jeremy Brickhill, "Zimbabwe's Poisoned Legacy: Secret War in Southern Africa," Covert Action Quarterly 43 (Winter 1992-93), pp, 7-10.

1975-1 September 1978
The Selous Scouts set up a secret laboratory at the André Rabie barracks, to which three medical doctors from the regular Rhodesian Army are seconded. Large consignments of the denim clothing favored by guerrillas are purchased from middlemen and soaked in "steel vats containing a solution of odourless and colourless poisons" [probably organophosphates]. Several prisoners are forcibly brought to the Mount Darwin Fort and apparently used as "human guinea pigs" to test the effects of the poison. The contaminated clothes are then supplied to guerrillas with the help of Reverend Arthur Kanodareki, a paid CIO agent, and somewhere between 67 and "many hundreds" of guerrillas then die after absorbing the poison through their skin. The program is terminated after the Special Branch commander learns of the deaths of innocent rural villagers to whom some the poisoned clothes had been sold by unscrupulous local agents, agents who had been recruited by the Scouts and the Special Branch and had been paid a Z1000 dollar bonus for each confirmed "guerrilla" death. Symptoms of intoxication are that after seven days, the victims develop a fever and start to bleed from the nose and mouth. [Note: these symptoms are not consistent with most toxic organophosphate compounds, but could be due to warfarin. Fever is also sometimes present in thallium poisoning.]
—Henrik Ellert, The Rhodesian Front War: Counter-Insurgency and Guerrilla War in Rhodesia, 1962-1980 (Gweru, Zimbabwe: Mambo Press, 1989), pp. 109-12; see also Jeremy Brickhill, "Zimbabwe's Poisoned Legacy: Secret War in Southern Africa," Covert Action Quarterly 43 (Winter 1992-93), p. 8; Ken Flower, Serving Secretly: An Intelligence Chief on Record. Rhodesia into Zimbabwe, 1964 to 1981 (London: John Murray, 1987), p. 137.

1975-1980
The Rhodesian CIO and Selous Scouts use Bacillus anthracis, Vibrio cholerae, and thallium-contaminated foodstuffs, as well as organophosphate-impregnated clothing [see entry immediately above], according to former Rhodesian army contractors. [Note: several of the claims regarding anthrax bacteria use remain unverified.]
—Jeremy Brickhill, "Doctors of Death," Horizon [Harare] (March 1992), pp. 14-17, cited by Meryl Nass, "Anthrax Epizootic in Zimbabwe, 1978-1980: Due to Deliberate Spread?," The PSR Quarterly 24:2 (December 1992), pp. 206 and 209, note 73.

1975-1980
The SADF confiscates Cuban vehicles in Angola outfitted with air filters and medical bags containing nerve agent antidotes and protective masks, leading SADF officials to believe that Cuban troops intend to employ chemical agents. These officials conclude that everything possible should be done to protect SADF personnel, including buying items on the international black market or stealing technology.
—Chandré Gould and Peter I. Folb, "The South African Chemical and Biological Warfare Program: An Overview," The Nonproliferation Review (Fall/Winter 2000), p. 11.

15 October 1975
United African National Council activist Dr. Edson Sithole and his secretary Miriam Mhlanga are kidnapped outside the Ambassador Hotel in Salisbury by Rhodesian Special Branch operatives acting under the orders of the force's Head of Operations Winston Hart. They are brought to the Selous Scout base at the Mount Darwin fort, where they are given lethal injections of sodium pentathol. Their corpses are dumped in a mine shaft on a nearby farm. Disinformation is generated to cover up the truth.
—David Martin, The Use of Poison and Biological Weapons in the Rhodesian War: Lecture for University of Zimbabwe War and Strategic Studies Seminar Series on 7 July 1993 (Harare: Southern African Research and Documentation Centre, 1993), p. 5.

Mid-Late 1970s
Various "dirty tricks" poisoning operations are allegedly carried out in Rhodesia under the rubric of "Operation Alcora," a joint Portuguese, Rhodesian, and South African effort. Some "very sophisticated" CW weapons are employed after they are developed at the South African Police (SAP) Forensic Sciences Laboratory in Visagie Street, at this time under the control of Major General Lothar Neethling (nicknamed "Mengele"). [Note: Klaas de Jonge, author of an interesting series of reports on South African covert operations – including the one cited below – was a high profile Dutch anti-apartheid activist who was later apparently attacked and injured by means of poisoned clothing. See the 1980s-Mid 1990s? entry below.]
—Klaas de Jonge, "The Chemical Warfare Case," The (Secret) Truth Commission Files, November 1997, p. 4, <http://www.contrast.org/truth/html/chemical__biological_weapons.html>, citing an 11 November 1997 letter from former SADF officer and ANC agent Dieter Felix Gerhardt.

1976
During a reconnaissance mission against guerrillas operating near the Cochemane administrative center in the Tete province, Selous Scouts see that the town draws its water from a single reservoir and pour a "lethal dose of poison" into the tanks. Rhodesian CIO intercepts confirm that 200 people suddenly die. [Note: the "poison" in question may be a reference to Vibrio cholerae, not a chemical agent. See 1975-1980 entry above.]
—Henrik Ellert, The Rhodesian Front War: Counter-Insurgency and Guerrilla War in Rhodesia, 1962-1980 (Gweru, Zimbabwe: Mambo Press, 1989), pp. 112-113.

1976
The SAP's use of firearms against Soweto protesters, and the resulting diplomatic setbacks, cause SADF head General Constand Viljoen to recommend the development of "alternative crowd control methods."
—Chandré Gould and Peter I. Folb, "The South African Chemical and Biological Warfare Program: An Overview," The Nonproliferation Review (Fall/Winter 2000), p. 11.

1977
In a Defense White Paper, Defense Minister P. W. Botha argues that a "total strategy" is required to resist the enemy's "total onslaught" on South Africa. This must involve "all the means available to the state..."
—Chandré Gould and Peter I. Folb, "The South African Chemical and Biological Warfare Program: An Overview," The Nonproliferation Review (Fall/Winter 2000), p. 11.

1977
500 ANC fighters are fed poisoned food in the Catengue camp in Angola, but are saved from harm due to timely treatment by a doctor. In 1981 the ANC claims to have uncovered the perpetrators, including Kenneth Mahamba, the commander of the ANC's Pango camp who had supposedly been recruited by the Security Branch of the SAP.
—Chandré Gould and Peter Folb, Project Coast: Apartheid's Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme (Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 2002), p. 159, citing the ANC's submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

12 September 1977
African anti-apartheid leader Steve Biko dies in prison after being cruelly abused by his jailers. In the official government investigation that follows, no one is found to be responsible for his death. This callous series of events has a traumatic impact on both black South Africans and the international community. [Note: according to Dr. Schalk van Rensburg, Laboratory Services Director of Roodeplaat Research Labs, Dr. Wouter Basson later claimed that Biko had been poisoned with thallium, which precipitated the activist's outburst of irrational behavior while in police custody. See Dr. Schalk van Rensburg, testimony at TRC hearings, 9 June 1998, <http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/special/cbw/cbw4/html>.]
—James Barber, South Africa in the Twentieth Century: A Political History – In Search of a Nation State (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), p. 196.

1978
A member of the Rhodesian Selous Scouts admits that "they" had tried both chemical and biological warfare techniques to kill terrorists. [Note: the Defense Intelligence Agency report listed as a source for this claim is incorrectly cited, according to Burgess and Purkitt.]
—Tom Mangold and Jeff Goldberg, Plague Wars: The Terrifying Reality of Biological Warfare (New York: St. Martin's, 1999), pp. 218 and 442, note 8; compare Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), p. 99, note 27.

1978
Dr. Paul Epstein, an American physician practicing in Mozambique for the Ministry of Health, with support from the [Quaker] American Friends Service Committee, treats large numbers of Zimbabweans from Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) training camps for a bleeding disorder. At first a viral hemorrhagic fever is suspected, but a fat biopsy sent for toxin analysis reveals the presence of warfarin. This suggests that warfarin poisoning is another type of CBW used in Rhodesia. [Note: among the toxins mentioned in the Basson indictment was brodifacum, a type of "superwarfarin." See Hooggeregshof, Die Staat teen Wouter Basson, Akte van Beskuldiging [Indictment], English translators' intro, p. xiii]
—Paul Epstein, "In southern Africa, brutality and death," Boston Globe (26 December 1987), p. 23, cited by Meryl Nass, "Anthrax Epizootic in Zimbabwe, 1978-1980: Due to Deliberate Spread?," The PSR Quarterly 24:2 (December 1992), pp. 206 and 209, note 71.

1978
An acid-impregnated t-shirt is mailed to the daughter of Donald Woods, the editor of the Daily Dispatch who was at this time trying to bring the men responsible for Steve Biko's death to justice. Woods blames the Security Police for this attack. The chemical used is Ninhydrin [2.2-dihydroxy-1.3-indandione], an irritating powder used by the world's police forces to trace fingerprints on paper that stings on contact. [Note: Gould and Folb date this incident in 1977 rather than in 1978.]
—Klaas de Jonge, "The Chemical Warfare Case," The (Secret) Truth Commission Files, November 1997, p. 4, <http://www.contrast.org/truth/html/chemical__biological_weapons.html>, citing Patrick Laurence, "'Death Squads' venomous trail," The [Johannesburg] Star (30 January, 1991); Chandré Gould and Peter Folb, Project Coast: Apartheid's Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme (Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 2002), p. 159.

4 May 1978
SADF soldiers and paratroopers are accused of using gaseous CW agents during the Cassinga raid, in which 800 people are killed. The evidence is contradictory.
—Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), p. 11 and pp. 99-100, note 30.

September 1978
P. W. Botha replaces B. J. Vorster as Prime Minister. He quickly creates a new National Security Management System (NSMS) to coordinate all the activities of state departments related to the new "total strategy." Security forces are instructed to deal with [future] conflicts in a more efficient manner.
—Chandré Gould and Peter I. Folb, "The South African Chemical and Biological Warfare Program: An Overview," The Nonproliferation Review (Fall/Winter 2000), p. 11.

1979
The Rhodesian CIO reportedly activates a plan to assassinate either Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) leader Robert Mugabe or Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (ZAPU) leader Joshua Nkomo in London. An expatriate former British Special Air Service (SAS) member, "Taffy", is recruited by the CIO. After performing successful tests on dogs, he opts to use a rifle to shoot Mugabe with a dum dum bullet into which ricin is inserted, but the operation is aborted at the last minute. The ricin had been prepared as an assassination weapon, along with thallium and parathion, by Professor Symington of the University of Rhodesia.
—Tom Mangold and Jeff Goldberg, Plague Wars: The Terrifying Reality of Biological Warfare (New York: St. Martin's, 1999), pp. 224-7.

1979
At a meeting between senior South African security force commanders and "securocrats" at Fort Klapperdorf, it is decided to enhance the effectiveness of the security forces by reorganizing them into units that are more capable of disrupting ANC bases in neighboring countries. In a document entitled "Institutions and Functions of the Special Forces," the State Security Council (SSC) concludes that SADF and SAP special operations units should be established that would "not need to answer to Parliament, but only to the SSC." These were to be financed by secret funds, develop autonomous intelligence-gathering capabilities, and recruit their operatives from all ranks of the government. These decisions result in the establishment of the SAP's Koevoet unit and the reorganization of the Bureau of State Security's (BOSS) covert Z-Squads into the Delta 40 unit, which is tasked with "monitoring certain external opponents of the regime with a view to their possible extinction." [Note: The SADF's D40 unit soon after evolved into the Barnacle unit and eventually into the Civil Co-operation Bureau, whereas personnel from the SAP's Koevoet unit were later incorporated into the C(ounterinsurgency)1 section at the Vlakplaas base.]
—Stephen Ellis, "The Historical Significance of South Africa's Third Force," Journal of Southern African Studies 24:2 (June 1998), p. 271; Kevin A. O'Brien, "Counter-Intelligence for Counter-Revolutionary Warfare: The South African Police Security Branch, 1979-1990," Terrorism and Political Violence 16:3 (Autumn 2001), p. 34.

1979-1987
At or near the SF's Pretoria HQ Brigadier Wouter Basson, a young SF military doctor, allegedly provides several operatives, above all Johan Theron, with Tubarine and Scoline [curare-like agents]; later, he gives them Ketamine [2-(2chlorophenyl1)-(methylamino)-(cyclohexanone hydrochloride), a veterinary anesthetic known in SA as Ketalaar]. Theron and others inject these drugs into troublesome Southwest African Peoples Organisation (SWAPO) POWs in order to suffocate them, after which their corpses are dropped into the sea from SADF aircraft. Theron kills at least 200 SWAPO members in this fashion, including five who are first put to sleep with Vesparax [secobarbital+brollobarbital+hydoxyzine] pills. With Basson's help, Theron also uses his own colleagues as test subjects by giving them cans of soft drinks and beer into which "sleeping agents" have been injected with a thin needle.
—Hooggeregshof, Die Staat teen Wouter Basson, Akte van Beskulding [Indictment] (1999), pp. 184, 218-20; Centre for Conflict Resolution, Basson Trial: Weekly Summaries of Court Proceedings, October 1999-April 2002, week 20, Theron testimony.

July 1979
The South African Medical Service (SAMS) is established as a fourth arm of the SADF, alongside the South African Army, the South African Navy, and the South African Air Force. Seven separate medical battalion groups are eventually established. Previously, SADF medical units were subordinated to the command hierarchies of the three armed services to which they were attached.
—21 August 2002 email from Chandré Gould; Klaas de Jonge, "The Chemical Warfare Case," The (Secret) Truth Commission Files, November 1997, p. 5, <http://www.contrast.org/truth/html/chemical__biological_weapons.html>.

Early 1980s
The SADF allegedly develops a 155mm artillery shell with "two compartments containing clear liquid chemicals...[that] mix when the shell is in flight and when it explodes the effect is deadly." The research on this ordinance is being carried out by the Institute of Aviation Medicine, previously known as the Military Medical Institute, in Pretoria. This shell appears to be some sort of binary projectile for nerve agents, most likely sarin, one of the more potent chemical weapons available at this time. [Note: the source for this claim is reportedly an SADF informant who was involved in setting up a "Chemical and Biological Unit". Other potential nerve agents from this period are cyclosarin (GF) and soman (GD).]
—Klaas de Jonge, "The Chemical Warfare Case," The (Secret) Truth Commission Files, November 1997, p. 8, <http://www.contrast.org/truth/html/chemical__biological_weapons.html>, citing "Chemical War Threat," Resister: Bulletin of the Committee on South African War Resistance 23 (December 1982-January 1983), a London-based publication.

1980s?
Offers are made, via contacts at WASAG Chemie in Germany, for undertaking "turn-key" projects to erect insecticide plants that can be converted to large-scale nerve agent production. These top secret programs are very contentious, and one of the primary opponents of the plan is Dr. Jean [P.] de Villiers, head of the Chemical Defence Unit and an expert responsible for defensive CW measures.
—Klaas de Jonge, "The Chemical Warfare Case," The (Secret) Truth Commission Files, November 1997, p. 4, <http://www.contrast.org/truth/html/chemical__biological_weapons.html>, citing an 11 November 1997 letter from former SADF officer and ANC agent Dieter Felix Gerhardt.

1980s-Mid 1990s?
Klaas de Jonge, a leading Dutch anti-apartheid activist, ANC operative, and friend of Conny Braam, is allegedly poisoned using clothes impregnated with organophosphates. As a result, he loses an eyeball. [Note: no time frame is mentioned by Mangold; compare also the September 1987 entry below concerning Braam's own apparent poisoning. De Jonge personally participated in several underground ANC operations, including some inside South Africa itself. Later, he was entrusted with transferring information from Dutch anti-apartheid sources to the TRC, and also provided the Commission with his own research reports on covert South African operations in Europe. See Truth and Reconciliation Commission, "Statement Re: Klaas de Jonge," <http://www.polity.org.za/govdocs/pr/1996/pr0926f.html>. For his own reports, see Klaas de Jonge, "The (Secret) Truth Commission Files," <http://www.contrast.org/truth>.]
—Tom Mangold and Jeff Goldberg, Plague Wars: The Terrifying Reality of Biological Warfare (New York: St. Martin's, 1999), p. 263.

1980
In "Operation Winter," with the collusion of British government monitors in Rhodesia, Rhodesian special operations assets are reportedly transferred covertly to South Africa. These assets supposedly include the Rhodesian SAS, the CIO and its agents, and the Selous Scouts, as well as black "mercenaries" and "the poisoners and their poisons," all of which are incorporated into the appropriate South African departments. British and American planes may have taken part in the transfer of men and equipment.
—Jeremy Brickhill, "Zimbabwe's Poisoned Legacy: Secret War in Southern Africa," Covert Action Quarterly 43 (Winter 1992-93), pp. 58-60.

1980
At this time the SADF's CBW R&D program supposedly consists of only one individual who works at the SF complex in Pretoria.
—Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), p. 5.

1981
Dirk Coetzee, commander of the SAP Security Branch base at Vlakplaas, from which the C[ounterinsurgency]1 "hit teams" operate, asks one of his operatives to poison Joe Slovo, head of the South African Communist Party, who is then residing in London. The plan is for this individual to smuggle an unidentified poison into Britain, arrange to meet with Slovo, and then slip the substance into his drink. [Note: no further information is provided about whether this plan was later aborted or otherwise foiled.]
—Jacques Pauw, In the Heart of the Whore: The Story of Apartheid's Death Squads (Johannesburg: Halfway House, 1991), p. 187.

1981
ANC-aligned teacher Joe Pillay is abducted in Swaziland and brought to an observatory in the Klapperkop fort near Pretoria, where there is an underground bunker, four VIP houses, and a luxurious conference room. Major Kallie Steyn of the Division of Military Intelligence (DMI) and Colonel Andy Tailor of the Natal Security Branch interrogate Pillay. Steyn then summons an Army doctor, who administers a "truth serum" to Pillay. The teacher is kept in a state of unconsciousness, and is unable to gain control of his thoughts. After his captors learn that Pillay is not a senior ANC official in Natal, he is smuggled back to Swaziland.
—Klaas de Jonge, "The Chemical Warfare Case," The (Secret) Truth Commission Files, November 1997, p. 18, <http://www.contrast.org/truth/html/chemical__biological_weapons.html>.

January 1981
After SADF chief and Defence Council members meet with the Defense Minister to discuss security problems, the Defence Council orders Basson to travel abroad and secretly collect information about Western CBW programs that could be used as possible models for a South African CBW program. He is also instructed to make contacts with organizations that might provide information about the CBW capabilities of East Bloc countries. Upon his return, Basson reports that CBW programs in other countries are structured in such a way that "offensive" R&D is conducted by civilian fronts up to the point of weaponization, after which actual weaponization takes place in top secret military laboratories. [Note: Basson's description of the structure of foreign CBW programs is not entirely correct.]
—Chandré Gould and Peter I. Folb, "The South African Chemical and Biological Warfare Program: An Overview," The Nonproliferation Review (Fall/Winter 2000), pp. 11-12.

April 1981
I. C. J. Kriel, commander of the Barnacle unit, orders Trevor Floyd to kill four SWAPO detainees being held at the 5th Reconnaissance Regiment's base. After C. Pretorius hands over the prisoners to him near Warmbad, Floyd gives them soft drinks containing sedatives that Theron had previously provided him with. Floyd places the men in his car, drives to Lanseria Airport, and loads them into a plane. They are flown to Namibia, where Theron injects them with Ketamine, Tubarine, and Scoline that Basson had allegedly given him. The four die, and are dumped into the ocean from an airplane.
—Hooggeregshof, Die Staat teen Wouter Basson, Akte van Beskulding [Indictment] (1999), pp. 191, 230-1.

August 1981
During the course of "Operation Protea" in Angola, the SADF claims to discover evidence that the Cubans may be preparing to use chemical weapons. Although these claims cannot be confirmed by outside investigators, Defence Minister Magnus Malan uses the resulting concern as a pretext to take SADF generals to Angola to examine CBW protective suits and demonstrate the problematic effects that wearing them will have on combat operations. Malan insists that the SADF take measures to force the Cubans to don protective suits [in order to inhibit their operational effectiveness], causing the SADF to adopt the deceptive tactic of using smoke [projectiles] to achieve this result. The SADF also claims to have evidence that some members of the ANC's military wing received training in CBW techniques in the Soviet Union.
—Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), pp. 20 and 102, note 48, citing an interview with Malan.

August 1981
SADF chief Viljoen allocates funds for a feasibility study concerning the establishment of a South African CBW program. [Note: this is very likely a response to the "discovery" mentioned in the previous entry.]
—Chandré Gould and Peter I. Folb, "The South African Chemical and Biological Warfare Program: An Overview," The Nonproliferation Review (Fall/Winter 2000), p. 12.

September 1981
In a speech before parliament, Defence Minister Malan warns of the danger posed by the red-black "onslaught" and proclaims that "[t]he security of the Republic of South Africa must be maintained by every means at our disposal." [Note: see also Malan's earlier 1980 article, "Die aanslag teen Suid-Afrika," ISSUP Strategic Review.]
—Tom Mangold and Jeff Goldberg, Plague Wars: The Terrifying Reality of Biological Warfare (New York: St. Martin's, 1999), p. 247.

11 October 1981
Brigadier Willem Schoon orders Vlakplaas-based Security Police operative Dirk Coetzee to get rid of recently released ANC guerrilla Vuyani Mavuso and incompetent South African askari Nkosinathi Peter Dhlamini. Coetzee kidnaps them and takes them to a Security Police post on a farm at Kopfontein near the Botswana border. He obtains poison from General Neethling, head of the SAP Forensic Sciences Laboratory, and administers it in cans of cold beverages to the victims; Mavuso acts incoherently overnight but doesn't die. Two more attempts to administer poison to the two men are made at Groblersdal and Komatipoort, again without success. Finally, the men are sedated with soporifics administered in cold drinks, executed with a pistol by Captain Koos Vermeulen, and cremated.
—Jacques Pauw, Into the Heart of Darkness: Confessions of Apartheid's Assassins (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1997), pp. 153-4; South Africa, Commission of Inquiry into Certain Alleged Murders, Report [of the Honourable Mr. Justice L.T.C. Harms] (Pretoria: Government Printer, 1990), pp. 112-15; Klaas de Jonge, "The Chemical Warfare Case," The (Secret) Truth Commission Files, November 1997, p. 19, <http://www.contrast.org/truth/html/chemical__biological_weapons.html>.

20 October 1981
Student ANC activist Sipiwo Mtimkulu is arrested by the Security Police on 31 May 1981, tortured in prison, and released from detention at Port Elizabeth after five months. One day after his release he is found crawling on the floor with swollen, cold feet and severe stomach cramps, apparently because he was administered poison (that may have been brought to the prison by Brigadier [Johannes?] van der Hoven) the day he was released. After being admitted to a hospital, he is diagnosed with thallium poisoning. His hair falls out and he is confined to a wheelchair. Several months later he files two civil suits against the police, one for the torture and one for the poisoning, but on 14 April 1982 the Security Police reportedly kidnap and murder him and dispose of his remains.
—Jacques Pauw, Into the Heart of Darkness: Confessions of Apartheid's Assassins (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1997), pp. 229-30; South Africa, Commission of Inquiry into Certain Alleged Murders, Report [of the Honourable Mr. Justice L.T.C. Harms] (Pretoria: Government Printer, 1990), pp. 111, 120-4; compare also Klaas de Jonge, "The Chemical Warfare Case," The (Secret) Truth Commission Files, November 1997, p. 18, <http://www.contrast.org/truth/html/chemical__biological_weapons.html>.

End of 1981
Defence Minister Malan officially approves the establishment of a CBW program, codenamed Project Coast, and makes funds available for that purpose. It is originally envisaged that the state-owned arms manufacturer ARMSCOR [Armaments Development and Production Corporation] will assist in the development of the program, but ARMSCOR officials advise Army Surgeon-General Nico J. Nieuwoudt that this task is "too sensitive" for the company. It is then decided that the SADF will be solely responsible for the project, after which Malan and a "kitchen cabinet" consisting of SADF chief Viljoen, SF head General A. J. "Kat" Liebenberg, SAP commissioner Van der Merwe, and the head of the National Intelligence Service (NIS) approve the appointment of Basson as Project Officer. They also authorize the creation of a supervisory body, the Coordinating Management Committee (CMC), which consists of the SADF chief, the Surgeon-General, the Chief of Staff for Finance, the Chief of Staff for Intelligence, ARMSCOR officials, and at times representatives of the Auditor-General. Basson acts as CMC secretary, and in that capacity is "responsible for all the documentation" dealt with by the CMC. [Note: according to Knobel, this authorization occurred in April 1982, not at the end of 1981. See TRC document 8, Knobel's 11 January 1993 response to an 8 December 1992 OSEO questionnaire, pp. 2-3.]
—Chandré Gould and Peter I. Folb, "The South African Chemical and Biological Warfare Program: An Overview," The Nonproliferation Review (Fall/Winter 2000), pp. 12, 15; Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), p. 20.

1982
ANC member Mandla Msibi dies in Swaziland, reportedly after being poisoned.
—Chandré Gould and Peter Folb, Project Coast: Apartheid's Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme (Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 2002), p. 159, citing the ANC's submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

April 1982
Delta G Scientific, a chemical research, development and production facility and Project Coast front company, is established. Its purpose is to develop and produce irritating, incapacitating, and lethal CW weapons for further testing.
—Chandré Gould and Peter I. Folb, "The South African Chemical and Biological Warfare Program: An Overview," The Nonproliferation Review (Fall/Winter 2000), p. 14; Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), p. 22.

1983
Roodeplaat Research Laboratories (RRL), a biological research, development and production facility and Project Coast front company, is established on a farm north of Pretoria near the Roodeplaat dam. In addition to testing BW weapons, it also tests the biological effects of CW weapons [produced at Delta G and other facilities].
—Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), p. 22.

1983
Basson allegedly provides D. J. Phaal with a small bottle filled with a toxic substance at Waterkloof Air Base, and shows him how to administer it. Phaal then flies to Southwest Africa, adds the substance to a soft drink, and gives it to a SWAPO prisoner in a cell in Ondangwa. The following day, the man becomes extremely sick, and is flown to 1 Military Hospital in Pretoria. Basson later tells Phaal that the man died, perhaps as a result of the administration of toxic substances by Basson himself.
—Hooggeregshof, Die Staat teen Wouter Basson, Akte van Beskulding [Indictment] (1999), pp. 190, 228-9.

18 April-8 May 1983
Basson and three other physicians comprising the "interrogation wing" of the SF allegedly make use of chemical substances to question five Resistência Nacional Moçambicana (RENAMO: Mozambican National Resistance) suspects after the assassination of RENAMO leader Orlando Christina. One of the five receives an overdose and becomes psychotic, forcing Basson to treat him in the intensive care ward at 1 Military Hospital. Later, Basson, Theron, and P. Heyns transport him to Swartkop Air Force Base. He is then flown to Bloemfontein, taken to Caprivi, and executed and thrown into the Atlantic Ocean. [Note: other sources suggest that the DMI orchestrated the Christina murder. Basson, Mijburgh, and Dr. Wynand Swanepoel, along with members of the SAP's East Rand Murder and Robbery Unit, may have murdered Christina themselves because he was becoming too independent-minded. The government then attempted to cover up the truth. See Klaas de Jonge, "The Chemical Warfare Case," The (Secret) Truth Commission Files, November 1997, pp. 18-19, <http://www.contrast.org/truth/html/
chemical__biological_weapons.html>; compare Alex Vines, Renamo: From Terrorism to Democracy in Mozambique? (London: James Curry, 1996), pp. 21 and 166, note 42.]
—Hooggeregshof, Die Staat teen Wouter Basson, Akte van Beskulding [Indictment] (1999), pp. 188, 225.

August 1983-January 1984
At a meeting to discuss the development of better crowd control methods, General Neethling, head of the SAP Forensic Sciences Laboratory, is asked to provide Basson with quantities of confiscated illicit drugs stored at SAP HQ. Also present are Surgeon-General Nieuwoudt, Minister of Public Order Louis La Grange, and SAP Commissioner Jan Coetzee. Neethling subsequently provides Basson with 100,000-200,000 250mg tablets of methaqualone, 25-50kg in all; 5,000 30microgram LSD tablets; and 3kg of active ingredients extracted from five 50kg bags of marijuana by Dr. Sotas, a conscript with scientific training.
—Dr. Lothar Neethling, testimony at TRC hearings, 11 June 1998, <http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/special/cbw/cbw9.html>.

2-4 November 1983
Theron and Dr. J. S. ("Kobus") Bothma allegedly test a toxic jelly-like salve given to them by Basson on three black people in an area near the 5th [Reconnaissance] Regiment's military base in Dukuduku. Beforehand, Bothma gives the prisoners Midazolam [a benzodiazepine sedative, one of whose trade names is Dormicum] mixed in with cold sodas. The victims are then tied to a tree and smeared with the jellied substance. When it fails to kill them, Bothma provides Ketamine to Theron to give to the prisoners, then injects all three with Tubarine and Scoline.
—Hooggeregshof, Die Staat teen Wouter Basson, Akte van Beskulding [Indictment] (1999), pp. 189, 227-8; Centre for Conflict Resolution, Basson Trial: Weekly Summaries of Court Proceedings, October 1999-April 2002, week 25, testimony of Kobus Bothma.

1984
In the Transvaal, SF operatives allegedly murder four black people. One, a member of the Barnacle unit who is considered a security risk, is given a contaminated beer, put to sleep, and injected by Phaal with Tubarine and Scoline provided by Basson to Theron. Theron injects the other three with the same two drugs in Zeerust. All four are then flown out to sea and dropped overboard.
—Hooggeregshof, Die Staat teen Wouter Basson, Akte van Beskulding [Indictment] (1999), pp. 185, 220-1.

June 1984
Infladel, an administrative and financial management front company for Project Coast, is established. Its task is to channel funds from secret [Defence Ministry] accounts to the chemical and biological front companies.
—Chandré Gould and Peter I. Folb, "The South African Chemical and Biological Warfare Program: An Overview," The Nonproliferation Review (Fall/Winter 2000), p. 14.

September 1984
P. W. Botha is unanimously elected as President of South Africa.
—James Barber, South Africa in the Twentieth Century: A Political History – In Search of a Nation State (Oxford: Blackwell. 1999), p. 243.

1985
General Liebenberg, commander of the SF, decides that Peter Tanyengenge Kalangula, a high-ranking official in the Namibian Ovamboland administration, should be killed. Trevor Floyd, the operative selected to carry out the task, receives a toxic substance, black rubber gloves, surgical gloves, and an antidote from Basson in Sunnyside, Pretoria. The plan is to smear the substance on the door handle of Kalangula's car, which would lead to his death but not leave typical forensic signs. Floyd travels to Oshakati with the materials, but is unable to carry out the plan.
—Hooggeregshof, Die Staat teen Wouter Basson, Akte van Beskulding [Indictment] (1999), pp. 190, 229-30.

Mid-1980s
A new and extremely secretive committee, the Teen-Rewolusionêre Inligting Taakspan (TREWITS: Counterrevolutionary Intelligence Task Force), is created in part to "identify human targets for removal." Representatives from the SAP's Security Branch, the DMI, the SF, and the NIS meet once a month to discuss possible targets. Reports from these meetings are then sent to the [cabinet-level] State Security Council (SSC), which provides the highest level approval for certain suggested assassinations. TREWITS is known to have authorized 82 extrajudicial killings and 7 attempted killings. [Note: The precise date of TREWITS' establishment is unclear. O'Brien says that it was founded in 1986, whereas Gottschalk claims that it wasn't established until 1987.]
—Jacques Pauw, Into the Heart of Darkness: Confessions of Apartheid's Assassins (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1997), p. 195; Marléne Burger and Chandré Gould, Secrets and Lies: Wouter Basson and South Africa's Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme (Cape Town: Zebra, 2002), pp. 74-5; Keith Gottschalk, "The Rise and Fall of Apartheid's Death Squads," in Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability, ed. by Bruce B. Campbell and Arthur D. Brenner (New York: St. Martin's, 2000), pp. 241-2; Kevin A. O'Brien, "Counter-Intelligence for Counter-Revolutionary Warfare: The South African Police Security Branch, 1979-1990," Terrorism and Political Violence 16:3 (Autumn 2001), p. 36.

Mid-1980s
Dr. Larry Ford, an American infectious disease specialist and CBW expert who had worked for the US government after graduating from high school, makes several trips to South Africa. In some cases he accompanies his American surgeon friend, Dr. Jerry Nilsson, an avowed white supremacist who had previously fought with the SAS during the Rhodesian civil war. Other trips are undertaken at the invitation of South African Army Surgeon-General Niel Knobel, who had befriended Ford due to their mutual interests in fertility drugs, AIDS prevention, and CBW warfare. Ford later boasted on several occasions that he helped wiped out an entire village in Angola [presumably with BW or CW agents]. He also claims that he parachuted into southern Africa to take blood samples from dead guerrilla fighters in order to help the US government determine which BW agents the Soviets had vaccinated them against. [Note: it remains to be determined whether these last two claims are true.]
—Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program (USAF Academy, Colorado: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001), pp. 35-6; Edward Humes, "The Medicine Man," Los Angeles Magazine (July 2001), p. 167.

Mid-Late 1980s
At Basson's request, Dr. André Immelman of RRL provides [various CCB and Security Branch personnel] with thallium, paraoxon [a poisonous organophosphate insecticide], and other toxic substances on several occasions. [Note: a list of operatives/targets and the notorious 1989 verkope lys ("sales list") are both incorporated into the text cited below in order to illustrate these accusations. Among the many deadly agents on this "sales list", aside from those mentioned above, are chemicals such as Aldicarb, [sodium] azide, Brodifacum, cantharidin, cyanide, paraquat, phosphide, and biological pathogens such as anthrax, brucella, and salmonella bacteria, as well as botulinum and mamba toxins.]
—Hooggeregshof, Die Staat teen Wouter Basson, Akte van Beskulding [Indictment] (1999), pp. 200-2, 249-51; Centre for Conflict Resolution, Basson Trial: Weekly Summaries of Court Proceedings, October 1999-April 2002, week 23, Immelman testimony.

1986
A recovered bomb fragment used in an attack on União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA) forces allied to South Africa is tested in South African laboratories and allegedly found to have traces of DM [adamsite], a chemical "vomiting agent" that causes eye and throat irritation, disorientation, nausea, vomiting, and depression.
—Gen. Niel Knobel, testimony at TRC hearings, 18 June 1998, <http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/special/cbw/cbw15.html>.

March-10 April 1986
Basson, Theron, and Phaal allegedly conspire to murder Victor M. de Fonseca, a SF member who develops brain cancer and begins to babble about clandestine SF special operations. A week later Phaal gives De Fonseca a lift from SF headquarters to Pretoria, and injects a toxic substance into some lemonade when the latter exits the car to buy a license. Upon his return, De Fonseca drinks the lemonade Phaal offers him. He gets sick a few days later, and dies in 1 Military Hospital on 10 April.
—Hooggeregshof, Die Staat teen Wouter Basson, Akte van Beskulding [Indictment] (1999), pp. 192, 232-3.

April 1986
SF commanders decide to create a "civilian" special operations unit to carry out covert external (and later internal) operations. The unit is activated in 1988, organized into eight geographical regions and two organizational sections, and referred to by senior staff as the Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB). It is made up of an "inner core" or "aware strata" of 100 recently "resigned" personnel from the SF, SADF, and SAP, including a second Wouter Basson (alias "Christo Britz") not to be confused with Dr. Basson, as well as 150 "unaware" persons plus ad hoc criminal elements recruited by the core members. The CCB is able to tap the resources of EMLC for specialized weapons, SAMS [Project Coast] for CBW agents, and intelligence gathered by DMI's Directorate of Covert Collection (DCC).
—South Africa, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Report (London: MacMillan, 1999), vol. 2, pp. 134-44; Jacques Pauw, Into the Heart of Darkness: Confessions of Apartheid's Assassins (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1997), pp. 223-5; Eugene de Kock (with Jeremy Gordin), A Long Night's Damage: Working for the Apartheid State (Saxonwold, RSA: Contra Press, 1998), p. 93.

August 1986
Theron allegedly orders Phaal to get rid of a black member of the 5th Reconnaissance Regiment, and for this purpose provides him with chemical substances he had previously obtained from Basson. Phaal takes custody of the man in Phalaborwa, gives him a soft drink with a sedative, drives him to the Barberton Airport, and injects him with the chemicals. After moving his body to a secluded airfield in Mtubatuba, Phaal, Theron, and M. van der Linde drop it into the ocean from an airplane.
—Hooggeregshof, Die Staat teen Wouter Basson, Akte van Beskulding [Indictment] (1999), pp. 192, 233.

12 June 1986
The South African government passes legislation authorizing the imposition of an annually renewable "state of emergency." This legislation provides the security forces with extraordinary powers of investigation, arrest, interrogation, detention, and censorship.
—Leonard Thompson, A History of South Africa (New Haven: Yale University, 2000), p. 235.

1987
SF commander General Liebenberg orders Phil Morgan, an employee of EMLC, to take a leave of absence to produce a "clandestine, umbrella-type weapon/delivery device" that could shoot "micro-size balls" treated with poison under the skin of targeted individuals. Basson provides the specifications of the weapon to Morgan and periodically assesses his progress. [Note: in 1978 Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated in London by the Bulgarian secret service with a similar device.]
—Hooggeregshof, Die Staat teen Wouter Basson, Akte van Beskulding [Indictment] (1999), p. 234; see also Dr. Jan Lourens, testimony at TRC hearings, 8 June 1998, <http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/special/cbw/cbw2/html>.

1987
Basson and Dr. J[an] Lourens agree that a front company should be created with facilities capable of manufacturing special "delivery-devices/weapons" that can be used by SF and especially CCB operatives to secretly administer poison to targets. With funding provided by Basson, such a lab is made available to the front company Systems Research and Development (SRD) and its QB Laboratories component. Morgan identifies the type of equipment he needs to make the weapons. Among the injection devices he manufactures under Lourens' supervision are walking-sticks and umbrellas with a micro-ball missile for chemicals, screwdrivers with a hidden poison injector, rings with a hidden poison compartment, briefcase-bomb mechanisms, and walking-sticks and umbrellas with a needle-type mechanism. Sometimes the weapons are tested at RRL. In exchange for a bonus, Morgan and/or Lourens transfer them directly to Basson.
—Hooggeregshof, Die Staat teen Wouter Basson, Akte van Beskulding [Indictment] (1999), pp. 193, 234-5; Dr. Jan Lourens, testimony at TRC hearings, 8 June 1998, <http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/special/cbw/cbw2/html>.

April 1987
Petrus Jacobus Botes, CCB representative for Region 2 (Mozambique and Swaziland), learns that ANC leader Gibson Mondlane will be staying in Maputo, Mozambique, and conducts further reconnaissance. He proposes the assassination of Mondlane by means of poison (a plan codenamed "Alfred") in a letter to [CCB deputy chief] Joe Verster and General Joubert. Basson asks RRL scientists to supply him with poison, and then provides it to the CCB. The medical coordinator of the CCB, Dr. R. J. Botha, provides ampoules of this poison to Botes, who in turn gives them to his agent Baloyi. Baloyi administers the poison to Mondlane, who falls ill and dies in a Maputo hospital.
—Hooggeregshof, Die Staat teen Wouter Basson, Akte van Beskulding [Indictment] (1999), pp. 194, 236-7.

April 1987?
Major H. van der Westhuizen of the DMI, who works on ANC projects with the SF, identifies an ANC residence in Mozambique, and passes the information on to CCB regional representative Botes. Botes proposes the poisoning of the ANC members in this house, a plan that is approved. He receives an unidentified poison from Dr. Botha in a brown eyedrop/eardrop bottle, then delivers containers of beer, brandy, and soft drinks contaminated with the poison to CCB operative Gary Green for placement in the house. The media later reports that certain attendees die.
—Hooggeregshof, Die Staat teen Wouter Basson, Akte van Beskulding [Indictment] (1999), pp. 194, 238.

April 1987?
CCB representative Botes learns from a chef at the Polana Hotel in Maputo that members of the ANC's "top structure" will be holding a meeting there with other African leaders. He proposes the poisoning of these people, but a plan is only approved for the poisoning of one person. Botes receives three clear glass ampoules of poison, which is enough to kill 20 or so people. It proves impossible to arrange for the poisoning of only one attendee, so the operation is cancelled. Botes later quits the CCB and leaves the unused poison with other CCB members.
—Hooggeregshof, Die Staat teen Wouter Basson, Akte van Beskulding [Indictment] (1999), pp. 194, 238-9.

5 April 1987
Gibson Ncube, an ANC activist in Mozambique, dies a horrible, painful death by paralysis after drinking a can of South African beer spiked with poison. The beer had been delivered to a senior ANC official named Sipho by Leslie Lesia, a would-be music school director in Botshabelo township near Bloemfontein. Lesia had been recruited without his knowledge and then compromised by Ernie Becker, a former SADF Reconnaissance regiment member who later became the CCB coordinator for Region 2. He was then provided with explosive devices, a ring with a poison compartment, a pistol, bottles of both a clear poison and an untraceable yellowish poison, syringes, and a case of brandy, a case of vodka, and three cases of Castle beer spiked with poison. The poison had been inserted under the tabs of the beers with a syringe [at the SAP forensic laboratory in Silverton?], and it was General Neethling who allegedly provided all this "stuff" to the CCB. The Zimbabwean CIO later arrests, tortures, and imprisons the hapless Lesia.
—Jacques Pauw, Into the Heart of Darkness: Confessions of Apartheid's Assassins (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1997), pp. 239-51; Klaas de Jonge, "The Chemical Warfare Case," The (Secret) Truth Commission Files, November 1997, pp. 19-20, <http://www.contrast.org/truth/html/chemical__biological_weapons.html>.

September 1987
South African operatives apparently try to assassinate Conny Braam, a Dutch anti-apartheid activist and covert ANC operative. First, someone places a bottle marked "All Vitamin Pills" in her locked hotel room in Lusaka, but it contains an oily liquid so she throws it in the trash. A few days later, during a Children's Conference in Harare, clothes that had perhaps been impregnated with parathion [a toxic organophosphate insecticide] are conveniently "left" in her hotel closet. After putting on one of two beautiful jackets she finds there, she wakes up four hours later screaming and in incredible pain. A strange man claiming to be a doctor arrives at once and offers her "ulcer" pills, which she doesn't take. She appears to recover. Three months later, in Holland, she wakes up to find a huge swelling on the bridge between her anus and vagina. She is operated on to remove the swelling, but the wound does not heal until six months later. Soon after, she gets cancer, though this may not be linked to her poisoning. [Note: Mangold renders Braam's first name as Connie, not Conny, but the latter is the way it is listed in other sources and in library catalogs. For Braam's own account of her covert anti-apartheid activities, see Operatie Vula: Zuidafrikanen en Nederlanders in de strijd tegen apartheid (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1992).]
—Tom Mangold and Jeff Goldberg, Plague Wars: The Terrifying Reality of Biological Warfare (New York: St. Martin's, 1999), pp. 227-30; South Africa, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Report (London: MacMillan, 1999), vol. 2, pp. 116-17; Klaas de Jonge, "The Chemical Warfare Case," The (Secret) Truth Commission Files, November 1997, pp. 21-27, <http://www.contrast.org/truth/html/chemical__biological_weapons.html>.

11 December 1987
Theron receives an order passed down from General A. J. M. Joubert through H. A. P. Potgieter that a Mozambican operative of the 5th Reconnaissance Regiment, Mack (a.k.a. Fernando) Anderson, poses a security risk and must be eliminated. He goes to Phalaborwa, where Anderson is brought, drugged and handcuffed, by D. Drew to the back of a rifle range. Theron injects Anderson with a combination of Scoline, Tubarine, and Ketamine, substances which Basson had earlier provided him with. Anderson dies, and his body is dumped in a field in Mozambique.
—Hooggeregshof, Die Staat tegen Wouter Basson, Akte van Beskulding [Indictment] (1999), pp. 194, 239.

1987-1988
At Basson's request, Dr. Jan Lourens allegedly goes to London to hand over an umbrella with a needle-type mechanism and two ampoules of silatrane [an acutely toxic rodenticide] to CCB, Region 5 (Europe) operative Trevor [Floyd]. The silatrane had been manufactured at Delta G by Dr. Gert Lourens, and RRL had done further research into its solubility and toxicity; the final product does not leave behind characteristic forensic signs. After J. Lourens shows Floyd how to use the device, Floyd provides it to a two-man Portuguese-speaking CCB operational wing. The plan is to inject ANC leaders Pallo Jordan or Ronnie Kasrils with poison while they travel on public transportation to the ANC's offices in London. It proves impossible to carry out the plan, so Floyd throws the device into the Thames. [Note: Mangold and Goldberg date Lourens' trip to England much later, in 1992. For Kasrils' own account of his anti-apartheid activities, see Armed and Dangerous: From Undercover Struggle to Freedom (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1998).]
—Hooggeregshof, Die Staat teen Wouter Basson, Akte van Beskulding [Indictment] (1999), pp. 193, 235-6; Tom Mangold and Jeff Goldberg, Plague Wars: The Terrifying Reality of Biological Warfare (New York: St. Martin's, 1999), pp. 262-3.

March-April 1988
Evidence of Cuban use of a lethal mixture of mustard agent and nerve agents against South Africa's UNITA allies is allegedly found in soil, leaf, and water samples taken from a battle zone in Angola. The finding is announced by University of Ghent toxicologist Aubin Heyndrickx. [Note: in 1995 Heyndrickx was convicted both of falsifying laboratory results and of swindling the Belgian National Health Service, and was therefore expelled from his university post. Since the Belgian professor also had documented links to Basson, it may be that he was disseminating South African disinformation in order to provide a pretext for the SADF's future usage of CW or to blame the Cubans for CW attacks that the SADF had itself already carried out. See Klaas de Jonge, "The Chemical Warfare Case," The (Secret) Truth Commission Files, November 1997, p. 5, <http://www.contrast.org/truth/html/
chemical__biological_weapons.html>.]
—Jonathan Braude, "CW to be 'standard military practice'," Jane's Defence Weekly 10:8 (27 August 1988).

April 1988
5.5 million rand are apparently transferred by Project Coast to the Lausanne account of ABC Import/Export. The transfer is supposedly made so that Heyndrickx can purchase 25 Chemical Agent Monitors (CAMs) and 150 portable field detectors from Contemporary Systems Design, a British company owned by Roger Buffham, a Basson collaborator and former British Army, SAS, and Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) operative.
—Centre for Conflict Resolution, Basson Trial: Weekly Summaries of Court Proceedings, October 1999-April 2002, week 9, testimony of forensic auditor Hennie Bruwer.

1989
Infladel is dissolved and divided into two separate companies. Sefmed Information Services will henceforth be responsible for the administration of Project Coast, and D. John Truter Financial Consultants will handle the project's financial management.
—Chandré Gould and Peter I. Folb, "The South African Chemical and Biological Warfare Program: An Overview," The Nonproliferation Review (Fall/Winter 2000), p. 14.

March-October 1989
Various chemical agents or items contaminated with such agents are provided by RRL's R&D Director André Immelman to SAP Security Branch officers, members of the CCB, Johnny Koortzen of Systems Research and Development, or Basson himself, according to the notorious RRL "sales list." Among these items are sodium azide and paraquat in whiskey, Aldicarb in orange juice, thallium in beer, Brodifacum and cantharidin in peppermint chocolates, digoxin, methanol, phencyclidine, and Vitamin D3.
—The "sales list" is reproduced in full by Marléne Burger and Chandré Gould, Secrets and Lies: Wouter Basson and South Africa's Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme (Cape Town: Zebra, 2002), pp. 34-5.

13 March 1989
CCB plans to murder lawyer and senior ANC member Kwenza Mlaba with poisoned razor blades. A CCB operative is to pose as a client and leave behind a bag with a new razor and poisoned blades when he exits the lawyer's office. The hope is that Mlaba will then use the razors to shave and poison himself in the process. The plan is later abandoned. [Note: the victim's last name is spelled Mhlaba in the Harms Commission Report, which is probably correct.]
—Jacques Pauw, Into the Heart of Darkness: Confessions of Apartheid's Assassins (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1997), pp. 228-9; South Africa, Commission of Inquiry into Certain Alleged Murders, Report [of the Honourable Mr. Justice L.T.C. Harms] (Pretoria: Government Printer, 1990), pp. 45-6.

April-May 1989
SAP operatives Colonel Chris Smit, Gert Otto, and Manie van Staden try to poison Reverend Frank Chikane, an ANC activist, with paraoxon provided by RRL's Immelman. In April, while driving north to Namibia from South Africa, Chikane becomes sweaty and fatigued and has to vomit. He is taken to a nearby hospital and treated for six days, but is eventually diagnosed as suffering only from fatigue. In May he travels to the U.S. to meet with congressmen and President George Bush, but is repeatedly stricken in Madison, Wisconsin with symptoms such as nausea, salivating, vomiting, shaking, twitching, blurry vision, and hyperventilation. After three visits to the hospital, an American doctor discovers that his symptoms are characteristic of organophosphate poisoning, and the tested samples turn out positive. CCB leader Verster is furious that the operation failed.
—Hooggeregshof, Die Staat teen Wouter Basson, Akte van Beskulding [Indictment] (1999), pp. 195, 239-41; Tom Mangold and Jeff Goldberg, Plague Wars: The Terrifying Reality of Biological Warfare (New York: St. Martin's, 1999), pp. 230-2; Dr. Schalk van Rensburg, testimony at TRC hearings, 9 June 1998, <http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/special/cbw/cbw4/html>; Centre for Conflict Resolution, Basson Trial: Weekly Summaries of Court Proceedings, October 1999-April 2002, week 33, testimony of Chikane, Dr. Daniel Smith, Dr. Thomas Lynch, Charles Zeelie, Nanny Beyers, and Boela Burger.

May-June 1989
After a source in the Security Branch is shot dead at a restaurant in Swaziland, General A. J. Nel, head of the DMI's Directorate of Covert Intelligence, orders his subordinate Lieutenant Colonel J. A. Nieuwoudt to kill ANC Swaziland operative Knox (a.k.a. "Enoch") Dhlamini with poison. Nieuwoudt obtains six cans of Dhlamini's preferred beer, and hands them over to an SF operative for treating. Dr. J. H. Davies of RRL bores tiny holes in the cans and inserts botulinum toxin in them. Immelman provides four of these cans to Basson, along with five other cans contaminated with thallium. Nieuwoudt receives six toxic cans and gives them to a Swaziland operative close to Dhlamini. Dhlamini drinks the beer, gets sick, visits a doctor, is admitted to a hospital, and dies. Nieuwoudt then delivers secret information about the workings of the poison to D. Booysen, and the remaining cans are put in a filing cabinet and later destroyed as per Nel's orders.
—Hooggeregshof, Die Staat teen Wouter Basson, Akte van Beskulding [Indictment] (1999), pp. 196, 241-3.

July 1989
Frederik Willem de Klerk succeeds P. W. Botha as President of South Africa after a "revolt" against Botha by members of his own cabinet. Although he is a conservative who initially hopes to reform but preserve apartheid, De Klerk nonetheless begins initiating serious negotiations with the political opposition.
—Leonard Thompson, A History of South Africa (New Haven: Yale University, 2000), p. 246.

August-September 1989
CCB member Abram van Zyl plans to murder United Democratic Front (UDF) regional secretary Abdullah Mohamed Omar (Project "Goldie"). After an initial plan to shoot him with a Makarov pistol is aborted, Van Zyl acquires two white heart medicine tablets of the sort used by Omar, who suffers from heart disease. RRL is unable to manufacture the pills, but Immelman issues a small quantity of Digoxin [a digitalis glycoside drug] to Dr. R. J. Botha of the CCB. Digoxin can be fatal to those with heart disease if administered in the proper dosage. Van Zyl provides this powder to E. J. Smit, who is ordered to sprinkle it on Omar's food. After a week goes by, Van Zyl orders Cape Town gangster Edward "Peaches" Gordon to destroy the powder and the pistol. [Note: according to Pauw's account, Gordon himself was to administer the poison, but he threw it out of a car window in transit because he admired Omar.]
—Hooggeregshof, Die Staat teen Wouter Basson, Akte van Beskulding [Indictment] (1999), pp. 198, 245-7; Jacques Pauw, Into the Heart of Darkness: Confessions of Apartheid's Assassins (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1997), p. 225; Centre for Conflict Resolution, Basson Trial: Weekly Summaries of Court Proceedings, October 1999-April 2002, week 22, testimony of Van Zyl.