Special Hearings — Chemical And Biological Warfare Hearings — 1998-06-08

DR VAN RENSBURG: There was another incident of a black dissident, and I don't know whether he was in the defence force or in the police, whose shirt was laced, probably with paraoxon or one of the nerve poisons.  This was their standard way to get rid of these fellows.  He lent his shirt to his friend and his friend died.  This was talked about quite a lot.  That is the one case.
 There is another case where I overheard talk about anthrax spores were put into the food of three Russian advisors in Lusaka, advisors to the ANC that is, and one of them died. 
 There was another case that I overheard, or rather that in a conversation with Andre Immelman shortly after Nelson Mandela's release, he was very confident that Nelson Mandela's brain function would be impaired, progressively, for some time.  This seems to link up with this newspaper report, I think I have it here, rather a remarkable one by reporter Chris Steyn on - titled "Basson's human guinea pigs horror".  This was published February 7 1997.  In this he talks, this reporter apparently had access to Doctors that worked with Basson and they list a lot of remarkable things he was meant to do, but here it's also mentioned there were also plans to contaminate medication used by President Nelson Mandela at Pollsmoor with an untraceable heavy metal poison thallium.  That's of course not true, you can trace it.  Claimed the source, as only one capsule of thallium in a pot of food, for instance, is needed to kill between twenty to thirty people.
 Dr Basson mentioned, after he had told us a lot about the effects of thallium, if you give just the right dose, you mustn't give too much, but just the right amount, then you can cause what appears to be an outbreak meningitis or encephalitis.  You get similar symptoms.  And in so doing he mentioned in passing that he had given some thallium, or he said "we" had given some thallium to Steve Biko.  
 Now it might be disinformation, and idle boast, I don't think so, there was no reason to, it was only a few of us technical people involved.  To me at the time it would account, if it were true, possibly for Steve Biko's very irrational unexpected behaviour under questioning.  He was a highly intelligent man.  He was a fourth year medical student.  I know people who know him and it's not the sort of way he would have behaved so that to give normal policemen excuses to bash his head against the wall or whatever they did.  So I assumed at the time, I believed what he said, I wasn't the only one there.  I almost think Dr Immelman, Dr Swanepoel and possibly Dr Goosen was there as well, I am not sure, when he mentioned this.  
 For the moment it's only those few incidents that I actually know of.

MR CHASKALSON: Was any work done on the Aids virus at RRL?

DR VAN RENSBURG: We had one small contract with the army where they brought us a lot of serum samples.  This was in the early days of Aids, and these were tested.  We bought the testing kits and tested a lot.  I think they had some story about screening chaps on the border.  But we did routine tests for Aids on some serum samples, a few hundred, and that's all the work we ever did.

MR CHASKALSON: Do you have any knowledge of whether the Aids virus was used in any manner other than legitimate research?

DR VAN RENSBURG: No I have none at all.  It did worry me at the time.  Our samples were serum samples and you really need to infect another human being, my understanding is you need to transfer whole white cells, so if your serum is well prepared there shouldn't be many white cells in it.  It should not be infective.  If they kept back reference samples of whole blood I don't know.

MR CHASKALSON: Did you ever hear of talk of the introduction of substances such as cholera, anthrax or other such substances into communities?

DR VAN RENSBURG: One small remark by Dr Basson was that - at the time there was a lot of political problems in the Eastern Cape and he remarked that possibly they should sort out that crowd with cholera or something.

MR CHASKALSON: My final question Dr van Rensburg.  When you started off earlier on today you mentioned that in order to do chemical and biological research you needed to know what could be done so you could protect against it.  In your opinion is the nature of the work that was done at the facility work of a protective nature or work of rather looking for weapons as opposing to protection from them?

DR VAN RENSBURG: Less than five percent of the work done was of a protective nature if one analyses these projects.  That protective nature was more really, as far as I could see, to handle situations such as an exposure of Dr Jan Lourens.  If you accidentally get some of this, these very toxic substances on your finger you want a neutralising agent.  No, I'd say 95% was offensive, covert work.

MR CHASKALSON: Sorry, in true tradition I have one more final question for you.  Did you ever have any contact with a Professor Hofmeyr?

DR VAN RENSBURG: Professor Hofmeyr was an advisor to the Surgeon-General.  I did have some contact with him, casually, in relation to setting up the Roodeplaat breeding enterprises, in the dog project.  The Roodeplaat breeding enterprises was established on the same farm where the parent company was.  It was a subsidiary.  It was a good concept insofar as it would consolidate a lot of fragmented efforts to breed security dogs - all paid for by the taxpayer.  Eskom had huge units, the military had several units, the police had several units  and none of them had a gene pool big enough to really produce top class security dogs.  So yes, Professor Hofmeyr was involved from the military side as far as the dogs were to a small extent, not a large extent.

MR CHASKALSON: Thank you I have no further questions.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you Mr Chaskalson.  Mr Arendse do you have any questions?

NORMAN ARENDSE: I have got no questions.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.  There was Dion Visagie there.

UNKNOWN: Marlene Potgieter for Brian Currin, standing in for Brian Currin.  I have no questions.

CHAIRPERSON: I know we are talking science here but the metamorphosis from Dion Visagie to Marlene was remarkable, thank you.
 Mr van Zyl.

MR VAN ZYL: Thank you Mr Chairman.  My position is the same as for the previous witness, just a bit different.  I can anticipate that we will cross-examine in this case.  I will make my best attempt that in view of the fact that the witness is here that if there should be cross-examination that it would be done tomorrow.  So I will ask you to let me stand down until tomorrow and I will let you know what my position is.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Polsen.

MR POLSEN: After cross-examination - I am sorry, sorry Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: No just on the question of tomorrow of the availability of Dr van Rensburg.

MR POLSEN: I have no problem with that, that's fine.

DR VAN RENSBURG: Yes I am due to be back in the Free State tonight.  Do you specifically want me to stay over?

MR POLSEN: Well I think the only thing in the interests of the witness that I should point out is that it was well known that this witness would give evidence today and I am sure Mr van Zyl's client was aware of that so he could have attended to judge whether it would be necessary to cross-examine this witness.  The problem however is it is four o'clock already and the cross-examination will, in any event, have stood over, I presume or carried on until six o'clock or seven o'clock tonight.  For those reasons I have no problems if the matter stands down until tomorrow.  It's very inconvenient to the witness but it is, I suppose, it cannot be helped.
 Thank you Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: Do you have a sense of how long you would be taking on cross-examination Mr van Zyl?