TRC Final Report

Volume 4

Chapter 5

Subsection 7

Experiences of a doctor conscripted to the SADF²¹

Before beginning his two years of National Service in the mid-1980s, a young conscript had qualified as a medical doctor. On entering the military, he applied to work in the department of psychiatry at a military hospital because he believed that he could use his time most productively there. He worked in psychiatry for six months and was subsequently sent to Oshakati for three months.

While in South West Africa, he observed many irregularities in the provision of medical care. When he arrived at Oshakati, he was treated differently to the other doctors and was accused of having been placed there as a ‘government spy for the Surgeon-General’. Later, he discovered that the other three doctors had been ‘handpicked’ by the commandant, who said that “he did not want me in the camp and that if I ever breathed a word about anything I saw or caused any ‘trouble’, I would ‘disappear without trace’”.

He said that some of the obstacles and breaches in medical ethics he experienced included:

• a psychologist prescribing a schedule five anti-psychotic drug that only a medical doctor is permitted to prescribe;
• the commandant and his deputy changing scripts for medication and discharging patients without consulting the attending doctor;
• the commandant’s refusal to supply the necessary medication to a patient;
• being prevented from treating patients who were members of the local community;
• disregard of his recommendations for treatment of a patient who had injuries that were thought to have been inflicted by security police. The patient subsequently disappeared;
• when diagnosing post-traumatic stress disorder, he was told that no such condition existed.

He wrote a report to the Surgeon-General describing these situations. The head of the Department of Psychiatry promised to give his report to the Surgeon-General but never did so.

42 The SAMS was directly and indirectly responsible for putting health workers in positions in which it was almost impossible to uphold international ethical and professional standards, as strategic needs were given priority over the health of the patients treated by military medical personnel. In addition, the SAMS did not acknowledge that the experience of combat situations could result in significant mental distress and did not provide adequate debriefing and counselling services for those of its members (either permanent force or conscripted) who were suffering in this way.

43 The panel to which the SAMS made its presentation felt strongly that its submission was evasive, that it failed to consider the very real ethical challenges faced by health professionals in the military and that it made no attempt to consider the possible involvement of health professionals in human rights abuses, either through acts of omission or commission. The quality of the SAMS responses to the very extensive and probing list of questions posed at the hearing merely entrenched this perception.

44 The Commission made special attempts to determine the involvement of the SAMS (and particularly health professionals employed by the SAMS) in the development of and research into weapons for use in biological and chemical warfare. The matter proved extremely difficult to investigate and was not covered in the SAMS submission. However, in an interview with The Argus newspaper dated 2 March 1995, General Knobel was quoted as saying that Project B, a research project on chemical warfare, began in the late 1970s under the leadership of Dr Wouter Basson (a medical doctor) of Seventh Medical Battalion. This project was allegedly closed down in 1993. The special hearing on chemical and biological warfare in June and July 1998 (referred to above) uncovered some of the activities of this project. At the time of the hearing, Dr Basson was facing charges of (amongst other things) conspiracy to commit murder, fraud involving millions of rands and dealing in the drug, ‘ecstasy’. He was also still registered with the SAMDC as a cardiologist and a practitioner ‘in good standing’.

45 The Commission traced the following allegations about the use of biological and chemical weapons by the SADF. It was assumed that these were developed under the auspices of Project B:

a A paralysing gas was allegedly used in May 1978 in the massacre at Kassinga, Angola.22

b The SADF allegedly used chemicals, napalm and defoliants in the Rustenburg area in August 1978 in an attempt to flush out a detachment of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) guerrilla fighters.23

c In an attack on Frelimo troops near the South African border on 16 January 1992, a gas similar to teargas (causing pain and irritation) was allegedly sprayed from reconnaissance aeroplanes.24