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

DR GOOSEN: Mr Chairman, this is a general thing in '89, end of '89 when the first newspaper reports on the BSB activities were reported on, the then President de Klerk promised the nation on television that he would be transparent, investigate all these activities and report it fully before the end of January.  That is basically a bit of - the politicians I think always make these types of promises and they seldom materialise.
 I don't think he fully realised what he promised to do to investigate it.  We are still busy trying to uncover the truth about this whole complication, the cover operation situation.  
 There have been several Commissions appointed to investigate covert activities etc., etc.  It is a maize of BSB activities, covert companies etc., etc., so my point was that only this was very, very, complicated to uncover the truth which is proven here, what is the truth?

YASMINE SOOKA: Thank you.  My second question really relates to the question of funds and I just want to make sure that I understand it correctly.  That there was approximately a hundred million that was used to set this particular company, it was then sold to the shareholders for approximately a hundred thousand and it was then resold back to the government at a profit, is that correct?

DR GOOSEN: The bottom lines of the figures, to say it was resold at a profit is speculative but as Doctor Swanepoel testified yesterday in his own testimony, for an investment of R50 000 you had a very good return of 4.5 million in two years time.  That was his own testimony and that was the bottom line.  The facts of it was, yes, as you said, it was established with government funds, it was not really operated as a private company making profits per se, so I think that's right.

YASMINE SOOKA: Thank you.  My last question, I think somewhere in your evidence you mentioned that, when you talked about the disparities between your rule of the company and I think Mr Swanepoel's, you said that there would be some records and you made a reference I think to Coopers and Lybrandt, were they the auditors at the time?

DR GOOSEN: Yes, Coopers and Lybrandt were not per se the auditors, Pierre Theron, Theron, du Toit and van der Poel were initially the auditors.  Pierre Theron being appointed by the State President at the time of the company's establishment, P W Botha.  Afterwards these auditing companies amalgamated and took over du Toit, and something was in-between, and then Coopers and Lybrandt in the end took over everything.  The complete records in the end and the auditors involved in the final sequestration and liquidated should be then be with Coopers and Lybrandt.

YASMINE SOOKA: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Are you then saying that if for instance the Commission felt that it is in the interest of getting a complete picture and were that it's mandate to establish a complete a picture as possible around these issues including the funding of these front companies, where it goes to the question of looking at auditing records, Coopers and Lybrandt would be the auditing firm to go to?

DR GOOSEN: I would imagine.  They were officially the auditors so they should have it.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.
 Doctor Randera?

DR RANDERA: Doctor Goosen, I just want to take you back to the pre-1983 period, before you started setting up this new establishment and you talked about your own role within the university and your links with the military establishment.
 Now of course Pretoria University seems to feature quite largely in different ways in terms of this relationship, so my question really is, given you standing within the scientific community in South Africa at the time, this relationship you talked of between the Pretoria University and the military establishment, were there similar relationships with other university departments in South Africa, Cape Town, Wits, Free State, Stellenbosch, in terms of work that was being done for the military in the pre-1983 period?  I'm not talking about post.

DR GOOSEN: Mr Chairman, as far as I know, and I believe Doctor Knobel would be in a better position to answer the questions, as far as I know the arrangements with the Pretoria University departments, faculties was not exclusive, it could have been in other universities also.

DR RANDERA: I just want to come back to your point about when you provided toxins and snake venoms to, I think you said Doctor Basson, and you mentioned first of all Doctor James Davies who was a conscript at that time and who was finishing his period, who had been sent to your department and I understood you to say he was with you one morning when you collected the venom from a snake, so he was party to the handing over of these toxic substances to Doctor Basson?

DR GOOSEN: Yes, Mr Chairman.

DR RANDERA: Now you mentioned the one occasion, were there other occasions where similar exchanges took place between yourself and Doctor Basson or anybody else for that matter?

DR GOOSEN: Mr Chairman, yes there was another substance which we developed which was the Endotoxin which was also conveyed to him.  Doctor Odendal was involved in that as well, as I've mentioned.  I cannot exactly - as I've explained this morning, the snake venom I can remember because it broke.  The incident is clearly in my mind.
 The transfer of the Endotoxin might have been through Doctor Davies or it could have been picked up by Doctor Basson himself.  We had numerous contacts in those days.

DR RANDERA: Thank you.  My third questions goes to the project on the fertility/infertility.  The first thing that I want to understand is, how does this fall - we've heard so much about the establishment of these units and why they were established, I just want you to explain to us how that fell because as I understood from Doctor van Rensburg yesterday, almost 18% of the projects that were being done for the military at that time that he was actually mentioning, I think it was the year 1988/89, was to do with fertility/infertility.  How does that fall within the whole realm of chemical and biological warfare?   That is the first question.
 The second one is, we've heard of this vaccine that may have been developed or was being worked on, but 18% is not only vaccines I assumes, there must have been other areas of work that was being done, perhaps you can tell us something about that.
 And the third question related to this is, are we talking fertility control here or are we talking sterility control when you were considering the various research that was being done?  Were we looking at a temporary thing, the pill or the injection that I know very commonly or were we talking about sterilising people on a long-term basis, permanently?

DR GOOSEN: Mr Chairman, one thing which I can remember which we spoke about was the effectivity then of the product which needed to be developed, whether it is a 100% permanent sterilisation or whether it is a temporary or whether it is 80% effective, you know how these things work.
 We in fact discussed involving staticians from the university and we discussed getting them secret clearance so that they can work on the project for us, to work out models, what will be the influence on the population growth rate if the product was 50% effective for one year, 60, 70, whatever.  I think this answers your question.  So we realised that you cannot really, you might not achieve a 100% effective sterilisation and it was not thought to be necessary.  
 And then to come back to the first part of your question, because it wasn't really thought to get rid of all the black people in a 100% sterilisation programme, it was just thought to curb the birth rate.