The South African Biological Weapons Program - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 192

therefore, be buried in documents that analyze the internal and external
threats to South Africa. The secretive nature of the program and its use of
“front” companies as a disguise may mean that official minuted discus-
sions of senior government ministers do not exist. The minister of defense
knew about the BW work, but we can find no official record of the extent
to which he may have discussed its activities with others of high rank.
Most South Africans first learned about the existence of a chemical and
biological warfare program in 1992 through press reports. Not front-page
news, these reports simply described hearings on the privatization of the
front companies. It was only in 1996, when South Africa's Joint Commit-
tee on Public Accounts began to probe allegations of fraud associated
with the closure of the top-secret project, that further details of the pro-
gram, codenamed Project Coast, emerged.
In 1998, on receipt of an application for amnesty by one of the program
scientists, the TRC held a public hearing on the apartheid-era chemical
and biological warfare program. The scientists and military personnel in-
volved appeared before the commission to answer questions about both
the nature and extent of Project Coast. Much of what is now known
about Project Coast came through the TRC hearing. What has been re-
vealed suggests a small-scale chemical and biological warfare program
that sought to develop, produce, and weaponize novel and questionable
crowd-control agents and assassination weapons. The program had a de-
fensive element that sought to develop protective clothing and detec-
tion equipment. These defensive objectives are beyond the scope of this
chapter.
Starting Up
There is no evidence to suggest that South Africa was involved with BW
before Project Coast. During World War II two facilities (at Chloorkop,
near Johannesburg, and at Firgrove, in the Cape) were built to produce
mustard gas. They were closed down in 1945. 3
More than 35 years elapsed before the minister of defense, General
Magnus Malan, authorized, in 1981, the establishment of a secret CBW
program for the South African Defence Force. 4 Unlike the nuclear pro-
gram, established some eight years earlier and run under the auspices of
Armscor, the parastatal arms procurement company, the CBW program