Project Coast - Employment

Employment

Project Coast claimed its first victims at the end of 1982,when “Operation Duel” was launched, which aimed to eliminate hundreds of SWAPO prisoners and SADF informants.64 Col. Johan Theron, Counterintelligence Officer in the Special Forces, testified at the Basson trial that he received muscle relaxant pills from Basson in December 1982 and killed approximately 200 SWAPO prisoners, then dumped their bodies from airplanes out to sea.

In November 1983, Basson was allegedly involved in the use of CBW against regime opponents in Dukuduku in KwaZulu-Natal. There he instructed South African agents to tie their intended victims to trees and smear a jell-like ointment on their bodies. When that failed to kill them, they were allegedly injected with an anaesthetic drug and then a muscle relaxant. After they had died, their bodies were thrown into the sea.

In 1985, four SWAPO detainees held at Reconnaissance Regiment headquarters were allegedly given a sleeping drug in soft drinks, taken to Lanseria airport outside Johannesburg and injected with three toxic substances supplied by Basson. Their bodies were thrown into the Atlantic Ocean.

In April 1989, the Civil Cooperation Bureau attempted to assassinate the Reverend Frank Chikane with poison during a trip he was making to Namibia.14 The Civil Cooperation Bureau made another attempt to poison Chikane during a trip to the United States, where one doctor finally diagnosed his malady as organophosphate poisoning. According to the testimony of Roodeplaat Research Laboratories scientist Schalk van Rensburg to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the men who tried to kill Chikane with Parathion poison had poor intelligence. He stated, They were counting on little forensic capability in Namibia. Additionally, too little was smeared over his underwear to kill him when he went to the US.

Civil Cooperation Bureau operative Petrus Jacobus Botes (who claimed to have also directed bureau operations in Mozambique and Swaziland) asserted that he was ordered in May 1989 to contaminate the water supply at Dobra, a refugee camp located in Namibia, with cholera and yellow fever organisms. A South African army doctor provided them to him. In late August 1989, he led an attempt to contaminate the water supply. However, the attempt failed because of the high chlorine content in the treated water at the camp.