The poisoners on South Africa's toxic past 1973-2020
By: Imraan Coovadia
Publisher: Umuzi, an imprint of Penguin Random House South Africa
Published: 2021
Place of publication: Century City, Cape Town
Language: eng
Number of pages: 261
ISBN-13: 9781415210727; 9781415210734
Copyright date: 2021
Subjects: Chemical warfare; History; Biological warfare; Politics and government; Project Coast (South Africa)
Description: "The Poisoners is a history of four devastating chapters in the making of the region, seen through the disturbing use of toxins and accusations of poisoning circulated by soldiers, spies, and politicians in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Imraan Coovadia's fascinating new book exposes the secret use of poisons and diseases in the Rhodesian bush war and independent Zimbabwe, and the apparent connection to the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States; the enquiry into the chemical and biological warfare programme in South Africa known as Project Coast, discovered through the arrest and failed prosecution of Dr Wouter Basson; the use of toxic compounds such as Virodene to treat patients at the height of the Aids epidemic in South Africa, and the insistence of the government that proven therapies like Nevirapine, which could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, were in fact poisons; and the history of poisoning and accusations of poisoning in the modern history of the African National Congress, from its guerrilla camps in Angola to Jacob Zuma's suggestion that his fourth wife collaborated with a foreign intelligence agency to have him murdered. But The Poisoners is not merely a book of history. It is also a meditation, by a most perceptive commentator, on the meaning of race, on the unhappy history of black and white in southern Africa, and on the nature of good and evil."--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: Rhodesian poison; title: The principals; title: Lothar's potions; title: Africa's solutions; title: Radio potato.