PROJECT COAST: De Klerk shocked when Project Coast revealed as apartheid biological weapons programme

South Africa signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), 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 and two of the series here.

To consolidate his recently acquired power and lead South Africa from its pariah status to global acceptance, the new president FW de Klerk understood that he had to bring the defence, intelligence and law enforcement agencies under civilian control.

After he lifted the ban on the ANC and freed Mandela, he met the leadership of the South African Defence Force (SADF) and the police and declared that the ANC was now a political party and no longer an enemy.

The generals did not like the message. Pierre Steyn, the Secretary of Defence, warned that the new government faced a situation of insubordination. There was evidence of so-called third-force activities at play.

To get to the bottom of the troubles, De Klerk appointed Judge Richard Goldstone to investigate. In his report, Goldstone confirmed rumours that there were secret units – hit squads – in the military and police operating outside South Africa’s (already draconian) laws, but he did not finger Project Coast by name.

Daniel Knobel, surgeon-general and the senior lead of Project Coast, briefed De Klerk after he became president, telling him that the operation was purely defensive in scope. De Klerk asked Secretary Steyn to investigate. In studying Steyn’s report, he was shocked to learn “that we might have been involved in assassinations ... and heinous crimes and gross violations of human rights”.

Wouter Basson fingered

De Klerk acted immediately and asked for the suspension of individuals involved, among whom some had to be fired. The generals and Steyn came up with 23 names and fingered Wouter Basson (as the operational officer for Project Coast) as the leader of the rogue aspects, and fired him.

No doubt the fall guy in a mismanaged operation, Basson designed and executed the offensive components and did so with aggressive relish. Aggrieved and bitter, buying himself insurance and leverage, and ensuring that he and his cronies got mightily rich along the way, Basson undermined at every turn what was a shoddy effort at dismantling a biochemical weapons programme.

Basson was ordered to transfer Project Coast documents on to CD-ROM and have the paperwork shredded. The former was; the latter was not. Years later, the South African Police (SAP) found three padlocked steel trunks containing the documentary history of Project Coast at Basson’s home.

The CD-ROM disks were placed in a safe to which the president of South Africa had one of two keys. Special hearings on Project Coast convened by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) were a direct result of this discovery, as were most of the criminal charges eventually brought against Basson.

There also was no evidence that the poisons, drugs and biochemical materials of mass destruction – among which were 600 cultures – were properly destroyed.

In the meantime, Basson was hired to work for the national railways, now known as Transnet. From that redoubt, he reached out to many of his global contacts, specifically those interested in his extensive knowledge about the supply chains of biological and chemical materials, to offer his consultancy services.

Trips to Libya

The one country to which he made frequent trips was Libya, to the alarm of the UK and US governments. Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi’s interest in developing biological and chemical weapons was well known. Basson claimed that he went to help al-Qaddafi produce medical countermeasures against chemical weapons used by others.

US ambassador Princeton Lyman and UK high commissioner Anthony Reeve delivered a démarche (an official diplomatic warning) to De Klerk. They were unhappy about the incomplete and deceptive Confidence Building Measures (CBM) the country filed in 1993, as signatories to the BTWC are obliged to do.

They insisted that their country experts be briefed, all CBM systems and records, including the CD-ROM disks destroyed, abuses of the programme be thoroughly investigated and reported, and Nelson Mandela be informed. Mandela was indeed briefed. He was horrified.

The democratic government’s new Office of the Secretary of Defence, led by Pierre Steyn, committed to civilian oversight, established accounting procedures to prevent a repetition of the fraud associated with Project Coast.

The Office of Serious Economic Offences determined that state assets worth more than R50-million ($17-million in 1990 US dollars) ended up in private hands for an investment of as little as R350,000 ($120,000 in 1990 dollars). Philip Mijburgh, nephew of apartheid-era Defence Minister Magnus Malan, was the chief beneficiary. Roodeplaat’s 10 shareholders became overnight rand millionaires.

In 1995, Basson’s trips to Libya continued. Tipped off by MI5, the CIA informed US President Bill Clinton, who authorised the sending of a US delegation to meet Mandela. In May 1995, Mandela’s Minister of Defence, Joe Modise, rehired Basson.

Under supervised management

The concept was to stop him in “the national interest” – as Mandela’s chief of staff Jakes Gerwel put it in a public statement – from giving dangerous secrets about chemical and biological warfare to other countries by bringing him under supervised military management. Basson was to be based at the main military hospital in Pretoria as chief cardiologist and head its heart transplant programme.

Basson appeared before the TRC on 31 July 1998. He did not apply for amnesty. He said he was a soldier and believed he did nothing wrong. The TRC determined that he should be tried.

At hearings at the Pretoria high court, he was charged with 67 counts of murder, conspiracy to murder, drug offences and fraud. Charges for the murder of Swapo guerrillas were dropped on the grounds that the offences had occurred in Namibia, a foreign country.

After a trial lasting 30 months, Basson was acquitted of all charges. Ten years later, on 18 December 2013, the Health Professions Council of South Africa found Basson guilty of unethical conduct, but on 27 March 2019, the Gauteng high court set it aside, finding that the committee was biased. 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.