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

DR VAN RENSBURG: He was not a scientist at all, he was in the Special Forces in the Military Battalion, the Medical Military Battalion.   I understood he played primarily an administrative role there but he was very active.  Even after he came to Roodeplaat in weekend operations with the police and known CCB agents.

MR CHASKALSON: There are a number of things that I want to lead off from this.  The first one is, did it not strike you as surprising that somebody with no scientific background would be placed in charge of a facility such as RRL?

DR VAN RENSBURG: The only time Doctor Basson ever actually came to my home was in 1985.  He turned up there and he had a proposition to put to me and that was, he outlined why he thought he should replace Doctor Goosen with Doctor Wynand Swanepoel.
 I discussed this with him at length.  I said I thought it was a very bad idea.  I said Doctor Goosen was an excellent leader, he was brilliant at structuring and keeping the show going, he had a highly efficient small organisation then, he was a credible scientist.  I said to him: "If you put an ex-Special Forces officer there, forget your cover".  I said: "These people are not suitable for administering a group of scientists.  Military people come with their mythical super leadership style.  This style is necessary if you want to convince a lot of otherwise sensible youngsters to become cannon fodder, they have to have it but it's not suitable in a scientific milieu".  Anyway they did appoint him.

MR CHASKALSON: In your opinion, did the appointment of Doctor Swanepoel as the MD of RRL hinder or help the future of that company?

DR VAN RENSBURG: It was the end of the future.  The dream that Doctor Goosen had that I supported fully was a model contract research company.  We all knew then that this need the Army had was going to expire very soon, thinking people knew that the days of the apartheid regime was almost over.
 And it was our dream to create a top class research facility, the logistics were right.  We had fantastic scientists and a very high percentage of good trained people in this country.  We had the most modern animal research technology.  We had the reputations, everything was going and we thought we could create a fine facility that the country really, it could be an asset to the country from an industrial point of view, it could earn a lot of foreign exchange and create a lot of jobs.
 This against the background of failing funds for basic research work, remember we were research workers, we also had to create a future for ourselves.  It was not only the social priorities that reduced our funds in this country, it was actually a world-wide trend, that government funds for basic research particularly my field which was the causes of cancer, these were being cut all over the world.

DR VAN RENSBURG: I just want to go back a little bit and talk about the reporting structures that there were in the organisation as well as how the company was financed.  Can you give us an indication of how accounting in the company was done?

DR VAN RENSBURG: The finance was 100% through secret military funds which were channelled through the Surgeon-General except as I say for the 5 or at best 10% that we ever made from contract research.
 The administrative company or rather, we had a company that were internal auditors called Infadel.  Exactly how the flow of military funds, if they came direct through the Surgeon-General through Infadel, I never knew.  It wasn't my job to know and I didn't ask. 
 Infadel were internal auditors headed by Tjaard Viljoen and there was a man, van der Berg there.  Van der Berg was a good, very strict auditor.  He told us that Prime Minister P W Botha had appointed his personal friend, a man by the name of Pierre Theron, to audit all the front companies.  And he'd done this to keep a special eye on us so that we would not abuse funds and that he would not be subjected to a second Info scandal.  So Pierre Theron of the then, the firm was at that stage known as Theron, du Toit and Company or Coopers, Theron and du Toit.  
 This one firm audited all the front companies and they still have all the records. They are now known as Coopers and Lybrand.  The records are all there if you want the financial dealings of the front companies.

MR CHASKALSON: We will return to that point and your point about not having another financial scandal but I'd like to do that in a more chronological order.  Can you tell us something about the reporting structures within the organisation?

DR VAN RENSBURG: The research reporting structures?

MR CHASKALSON: Well, either both the research reporting structures and also how reporting was done to Doctor Basson and how reporting was done to the Surgeon-General if it indeed was done.

DR VAN RENSBURG: Initially General Nieuwoudt, the first Surgeon-General, there were occasional meetings with him where both administration and technical reports were fed back.  But to start at the in-feeding stage, the instructions for work to be done at the institute came from the Managing Director, Wynand Swanepoel, it came from Doctor Wouter Basson and quite often Doctor Andre Immelmann would initiate projects as well.
 These projects would, these instructions to do work, and I'm talking about the military work, the covert work, was always verbal, never ever written.  The researcher would be approached about the problem outlines, it was then his job to come back with protocols which he would present to Doctor Immelmann.  Doctor Immelmann would approve them or adapt them as he wanted them and then the research work would go ahead.   As far as the military projects were concerned, when they were completed the reporting was to Doctor Immelmann.  He would then occasionally write information pieces, these would go back to either the operatives, Doctor Basson or, I don't know whether Doctor would take them but at times Doctor Swanepoel required overviews of certain possibilities for future research work or areas of progress.
 The administrative reporting was always to the Surgeon-General, of course within the company there was a hierarchy.  All money expenditure had to be approved by the Surgeon General.  He had budgets and individual items that cost, say more than R25 000 or whatever, he would have to approve.

MR CHASKALSON: How do you know that?

DR VAN RENSBURG: It was in the regulations of the company.  We had administrative guidelines and levels of authorisation and above a certain level I can't remember, I think it varied, it was about R20 000 then R25 000 and it might gone up to R50 000.  Above a certain level individual items had to be authorised by the Surgeon-General.

MR CHASKALSON: You've spoken quite a bit about Doctor Immelmann.   He seems to be a very important person in regard to the covert projects.

DR VAN RENSBURG: That's right, that was his responsibility.

MR CHASKALSON: And could you give us some form of indication as what you understood to be covert projects?

DR VAN RENSBURG: Covert projects were really requirements being fulfilled or requirements set out by the Special Forces, by the police and by the CCB.  These were classified officially as "H" projects initially.  Later on the "H" was too obvious.  "H" stood for hard work as opposed to "C" which was commercial work.  We can analyse the projects or have a look at the type of projects.
 Within the document I've been given there are numerous projects, individual examples and also lists of projects ...[intervention]

MR CHASKALSON: Why don't we have a look at one of the lists of the projects?

DR VAN RENSBURG: Right.  Possibly we should go on a more chronological order.  There are also lists of products issued.  The ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Chaskalson, - I'm sorry Doctor van Rensburg, can you direct us where?