Special Hearings — Chemical And Biological Warfare Hearings — 1998-06-11

ADRIAAN JACOBUS GOOSEN: Chairperson yes, it's an interesting situation, I'll try and be brief.  I was removed from a management position.  We had at that stage when I left, we had RBE, Roodeplaat Breeding Enterprises.
 We had a plan to add another Directorate to RRL and this Directorate would be just a Directorate of RRL and it would have been run by Mr John Greyvenstein who was coming from ESCOM and he was an expert in the security dog business.  And we already approached him and recruited him to be Director of this Directorate.  
 Then I was removed as Managing Director and they sat with me for four months.  Dr Swanepoel in his own words told me later on that the whole thing around me was like a storm in a tea cup, there's really nothing to it but anyway he trained me well in four months because in those four months I really had no area to operate in.   I was not allowed to do anything at RRL.  I was not allowed to do anything, Greyvenstein arrived, he reported to Swanepoel and then they decided no, the Directorate must become a new company, a subsidiary company for RRL and I should be the Managing Director of the subsidiary company, so then it would create a legitimate thing for me, not to be so embarrassed by my situation sitting in the cupboard because everyone in the company knew I was sitting in the cupboard. 
 So I became Managing Director of RBE.  Being Managing Director of RBE in the presence and with the Director John Greyvenstein who was of course also an expert in the field, you had two cocks on one heap.  And of course, I mean this is management wise I think, a stupid move, to do that, have two cooks running the same thing and it led to conflict.  
 The conflict was resolved by dismissing my friend John Greyvenstein, you can speak to him, and I was - stayed on, remained as Managing Director of RTO.  That was in '86.  By '86, RTO was thought to be a very good idea, there was very legitimate talks at the time of privatising a lot of State functions and the one was a very good one of consolidating and privatising the security dog business, the police, the army and Eskom, the railway and also the prisons.  We worked out new and improved techniques of breeding, training and raising dogs and we've charged the clients for that R10 000 for a trained dog.  
 Now the estimates by the government, the government Auditor-General estimated the cost of a dog to the army at that stage to be R27 000 and we succeeded in producing successfully these dogs and producing them to the army at R10 000, saving R17 000. 
 I was visited at one stage by the management of RRL including Dr Andre Immelman, Spalmer, everyone and they've looked at the operations of RBO and Andre Immelman himself wrote me a letter which is also available, congratulating me on the excellent operation we were running.  That was in '87 and in '87 I was definitely approached and appointed again as the "Bestuurder, Hoof van die Proefdier Eenheid, die Proefdier Sentrum".  (Head of the Experimental Animal Centre).
 Now the lab animal unit was physically the largest and the heart of the RRL facility.  That was where all the research was being done.  That came about because when I was with RBO international scientists came, also contacts of mine still from previous years, came to do projects on baboons at RRL.  
 And there wasn't a backup amongst the people to supply and assist in these projects and I had to go back and do the project.  And in doing the project I was shocked that the standard of the management of the research facility, it was not up to international standards, it was below standard.  In fact, the rats and the mice were running freely around in the corridors, the baboons were dying without water over weekends and I was shocked.  So Dr Swanepoel asked me to come back and please help him because he couldn't rectify the situation under his management, and there was written proof of that, that I was asked to come back.
 So then we asked Tjaard Viljoen to also be involved in the management and that was in the time period referred to by Dr Swanepoel, that I couldn't be got hold of because: "he was not here and there and everywhere".  He realised that it was a bit much asking one person to be Managing Director of one company and also having a vital role to play in the other company.  
 We got the assistance of Mr Tjaard Viljoen to assist with the management in the RBE company.

MR CHASKALSON: Sorry, what recommendations did you make to Dr Swanepoel as to how RRL could be brought back to its standards?

ADRIAAN JACOBUS GOOSEN: Mr Chairman, it was clear to me that the main function of a Managing Director is to give decisions.  That is what it means, if matters come up.  And he was Managing Director and he was the authority in the company and notwithstanding what he was saying he knew very well what was going on.
 He was informed on all the projects and what they meant and what they could do but he didn't have the basic knowledge to base decisions between scientists and give right decisions on these matters.  This created a lot of conflict in the company, as was discussed already.
 And one of these aspect was of getting the control and standards back in the laboratory animal facility.  The control there was gone because every scientist tried then and has been in control of his own little experiments and that of course can't work, that's unscientifically.
 Nevertheless what happened is that we still needed to say we had a contract research facility and we had to conform to the legal requirements of having been inspected and tested by outside independent inspectors.  And one such inspection was done by the Medical Research Council on the quality of our laboratory animals.  Their finding was that there was sub-clinical and clinical disease prevalent amongst our rat colonies and our laboratory animals.  
 Now of course, it doesn't need much explanation to see that when your animals you're using in doing all these things are sub-clinically sick, they will not react normally and you will get false results.  This is known phenomena in the laboratory animal world, that you do these tests regularly prescribed and when you get a breakdown in this disease situation there are certain steps you need to follow to rectify it.  You need to close down the facility, you need to clean out all the animals, you need to import new stocks, genetic microbiologically defined stock from wherever in the world they are available.
 So I confronted him with this scenario and said: "We have to close down, we have to this, this is what is expected of us now to do", and he said: "No man, let's cover it up and carry on".  He wasn't interested in closing it down and I said: "Look but it can't work this way and you cannot manage the ...[indistinct] the way you are approaching it".  
 Basically his approach was, he is a Manager and his business was to manage scientists but he knew nothing about scientists and science which was just the proof it didn't work.  It is another point which I feel, you cannot have any control on these projects if the person in charge doesn't know what to control.
 I felt I cannot work with this.  Morally then it was for me the biggest problem to be faced with what we were doing and then to be knowing we were doing it with tools which is not kept intact, so that nullified our science, which for me then was morally, at that stage, in that milieux, completely unacceptable.
 So I requested him that we solve this problem, he said: "No", I said: "I've requested to see the superiors" ...[intervention]

MR CHASKALSON: Who were the superiors?

ADRIAAN JACOBUS GOOSEN: The superiors we considered to be Dr Wouter Basson and the Surgeon-General.

MR CHASKALSON: Did you have any meetings with either of those two people?