Traditional Britain Group

Interesting chap

Art: The former head of the apartheid regime’s germ warfare programme has resurfaced as a cardiologist at one of South Africa’s top private clinics.

Wouter Basson, whose activities drew comparisons with Josef Mengele of Auschwitz and earned him the nickname “Dr Death”, remains free to practise after criminal and professional cases against him failed.

Images of the balding 70-year-old physician smiling out from the website for Mediclinic has re-heated debate in South Africa about how effectively justice has been served for crimes committed during apartheid.

Dr Basson declined to give evidence in return for amnesty at the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but testimony was given that Project Coast, which he led, was part of a thwarted plot to poison Nelson Mandela while he was a prisoner.

More details of his alleged crimes in the 1980s and 1990s emerged in shocking detail after Dr Basson was arrested on charges of selling ecstasy to a police informant. His original charge sheet included the murders of at least 229 people; medical experiments on prisoners; the theft of millions of pounds from the state; and drug dealing.

In a trial that began in 1999 and lasted two-and-a-half years, Pretoria’s High Court was told that Dr Basson’s project had attempted to create contagions fatal only to black Africans. Witnesses testified to an assortment of extraordinary methods to kill enemies of the South African regime, including the hoarding of anthrax to start epidemics.

One of those targeted was Ronnie Kasrils, then a prominent African National Congress (ANC) dissident living in London. Dr Basson’s trial heard from Trevor Floyd, an apartheid-era assassin given immunity from prosecution for his evidence, who described the umbrella he had fashioned to fire poisoned spikes and kill Mr Kasrils. Mr Floyd said that after almost stabbing himself with the umbrella he lost his nerve. Mr Kasrils served as a cabinet minister under Mandela.

Hearing that Dr Basson was treating patients at two of the 50 hospitals run by Mediclinic in southern Africa, Mr Kasrils, 82, told The Times: “I find this latest news almost as bizarre as the idea of being poisoned by an umbrella.”

In his defence Dr Basson told the court he had simply followed orders. He portrayed himself as a scientist who had sought ways to combat a hepatitis A epidemic. In 2002 he was acquitted of all charges by a judge who had been accused of bias by prosecutors.

Dr Basson spent the next decade building his private cardiology practice until 2013 when a ruling by the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) for breaching medical ethics in service to the apartheid government threatened to end his career. That ruling was later set aside, and although the council said that it would appeal against the judgment, until the matter is resolved Dr Basson is free to practise.

Mediclinic said it “cannot prohibit HPCSA registered doctors, including Dr Basson, from practising”.

Kim Heller, a political commentator, said the case was “symbolic of the lack of transformation in South Africa”.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/josef-mengele-of-apartheid-is-a-practising-cardiologist-5jbvflpc5

www.thetimes.co.uk

‘Josef Mengele of apartheid’ is a practising cardiologist

The former head of the apartheid regime’s germ warfare programme has resurfaced as a cardiologist at one of South Africa’s top private clinics.Wouter Basson, whose activities drew comparisons with

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