Special Hearings — Chemical And Biological Warfare Hearings — 1998-06-09

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: No, all I know about are the, that it has or my own experience of it is that it is quite a potentially strong sensory irritant, very much worse than CS, it has a long lasting effect, it is being contaminated with difficulty and if you try and wash yourself once you have been contaminated and I have worked for over a year on this and I was contaminated with this each and every day of my life, it's not a nice substance to work with, but on the other hand, the toxicity levels of these CR is much less than of the known CS.

CHAIRPERSON: I see.

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Personally, since I have been contaminated by both CS and CR, I would prefer CR being contaminated with CR than CS because CS made me sick, I felt as if I had flu afterwards whereas CR doesn't have that effect on me.

CHAIRPERSON: And did it ever occur to you that these substances, whether CS or CR, were, could have been used internally to deal with crowd control?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: I knew that CS was the established one of the day to use in crowd control and I couldn't see any advantage of using CR for that purpose except that you would have to use less in that case and nobody ever told me that this would be used for crowd control.  I was told that this was supposed to be a harassing agent which will be used in CBW context.

CHAIRPERSON: Now when you say harassing, harassing in what sort of ways?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: ... would make the equipment of any guy you are making war against inaccessible or it would force him to wear protective clothing, it would make life very difficult for him when his equipment was contaminated with this material because it would keep him in protective suits the whole time.

CHAIRPERSON: And if the person didn't have any protection suits, like for instance in the townships where people were, where this thing was administered to people in township situations where suddenly they wouldn't have any protective equipment.  What effect would it have?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: It would have approximately the same effect as CS except that it would probably be, the discomfort you would feel would be a bit more than CS.

CHAIRPERSON: In what way?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: CS you can, once you've been contaminated with it you can go to a water source and wash yourself thoroughly and get it off you, whereas actually with CR you enhance the effect by washing yourself.

CHAIRPERSON: Now how long does the effect of CR last?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: It can last two to three hours.

CHAIRPERSON: And if you inhaled it, would it have any effects on your internal organs?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Well according to a work, studies done by a guy called Ballantyne, I think he published it in Journal Pharmacology, these sort of effects were much less of a toxic nature that in the case of CS.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.  Now you mentioned something about thallium, I didn't quite get your evidence in respect thereto?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: I analysed blood and urine samples which was brought to us from 1 Military Hospital by an officer there, Commandant Ian Joubert, who said that this was a group of Koevoet people that had been poisoned by a toxic substance and we should analyse for it and then we found thallium in the blood and urine samples and then we followed this up during the course of their treatment.

CHAIRPERSON: Now do you know if any thallium was ever produced at Delta G?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: No.

CHAIRPERSON: When you say no, do you say you don't know if it was ever produced or it was never produced?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Thallium is a metal which is difficult to come by so you must buy it from somewhere, you can't simply produce thallium from anything else, it's one of the elements.

CHAIRPERSON: And is it poisonous?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Some thallium compounds are extremely poisonous, yes.  Thallium acetate, thallium nitrate, it all depends on what sort of chemical composition you have in terms of these metals you get different thallium salts and some of them are less poisonous than others depending on their solubility.

CHAIRPERSON: I don't whether you are aware of the case of Sipiwe Mthimkulu, he is a young activist from the Western Cape who is thought to have been poisoned with thallium and who, and the allegation was that this substance is odourless, colourless and tasteless.  Would you agree with that?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: I haven't studied thallium to that extent but assume that it could be, ja.

CHAIRPERSON: Now something was mentioned of the lifestyle yesterday by Mr Lourens, that obtained at Delta G and you seemed to take a different view of life at that place.  Dr Lourens gave us an impression that there was opulence and a lifestyle of people going all over the show?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Well that didn't exist at Delta G.  I went overseas once in my life and that was to attend a computer conference in Hammersmith in England.  That's the only time that I ever went overseas ... (intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: Are you saying ... (intervention)

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: I believe that Dr Mijburgh and so on frequently flew overseas and he was probably part of that group, but not the ordinary working scientists at Delta G.

CHAIRPERSON: So there was tridation of rank within the scientists?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Yes, ja.  I think that we were the ordinary working class.

CHAIRPERSON: Indeed.  Now lastly - I am sure there would have been many in Cosatu who would have liked to have been your brand of working class people.  You know Dr Koekemoer you see I am as worried as my colleagues are about your visit to General Lothar Neethling.  Did you think that a crime was being committed at that place when you went to see him?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: No, I went to him simply for advice on whether they considered this to be a kosher, in his view  he considered this to be a kosher project in terms of the law and that's what I went out to find out.  He was non-committal about this, that he created the impression by talking to me about the chemistry that apparently he knew about this project, but he didn't want to discuss it openly with and that's the impression I went away with.

CHAIRPERSON: Didn't you think of consulting a lawyer?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: No I didn't.

CHAIRPERSON: And there were no lawyers, I suppose Mr Polsen was not there at the time?  There were no lawyers who you thought you could confide in like you know, yesterday we were told by Mr Lourens that a certain stage he began ... (intervention)

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: We always had this cloud of having signed the official Secrets Act hanging over our heads and I wasn't sure to what extent I could open my mouth with anybody outside official capacity and not land into trouble.

CHAIRPERSON: Did you think that the Attorney General for instance would not be one such person who was covered by the official Secrets Act?  There were State law advisers.

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: No we never, I never considered that Mr Ntsebeza.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.  Mr Vally?  Mr Vally?

MR VALLY: Just some minor matters please Dr Koekemoer.  Did you know Mr Corrie Botha?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Did I know Corrie Botha?

MR VALLY: That's right.

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: He was production manager, yes at Delta G.

MR VALLY: Do you know Mr Johan Botha?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: I knew Johan Botha for a short while when he worked at Delta G, Dr Johan Botha?

MR VALLY: That's right.

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: He went over to Sasol.

MR VALLY: What was his role there?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: He was originally in charge of, during the erection of Delta G and then he was Corrie Botha's superior at a stage before he left in the production department.