The Health Professions Council, South Africa's statutory registration body for health professionals, has finally instituted preliminary proceedings into the behaviour of cardiologist Wouter Basson, who led South Africa's secret chemical warfare programme in the apartheid era.
Dr Basson is on trial for murder and fraud, and South Africans have been horrified by the daily accounts of the bizarre and cruel behaviour meted out to apartheid's opponents, including the administration of a poison allegedly devised and supplied by Dr Basson.
Dr Basson remains registered as a doctor with the Health Professions Council, and when he is not in court he continues to practise as a cardiologist, employed by the state in a public hospital in Pretoria.
He was suspended earlier from his post as a South African National Defence Force cardiologist. His patients are reported to like his good bedside manner.
But fellow health professionals are questioning his continued employment. Requests to the council last year to establish why he continued to be registered drew the response that the council could act only when the trial ended.
The accounts of his behaviour have been given by state witnesses, who have been given indemnity from prosecution. The council has now begun the task of inquiring into his behaviour at the same time as the public is beginning to question why these self confessed murderers and torturers are being granted indemnification from prosecution.
They did not apply for amnesty during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's hearings into human rights abuses in the apartheid era and face no trial for their actions, it would seem.
Among the details has been evidence of the disposal of bodies of members of Swapo (South West African People's Organisation) off the Namibian coast—dumped from helicopters during South Africa's war in Namibia while it occupied the territory.
Apparently too squeamish to continue to kill the members by strangling them or hitting them, members of the security forces injected into their spines a substance (believed to be a muscle relaxant that led to suffocation) to kill them before pushing them from the helicopters. The substance and syringes were allegedly supplied by Dr Basson.
Mr Johan Theron, a former soldier, told the court: “On our first flight the dart thing did not work and a prisoner started struggling with me. Realising that it was a situation of life or death, I put a plastic cuff around his neck and strangled him.
“This was after I thought he would die quickly, but it took a full 15 minutes of kicking and wetting himself before he died. I had to cut the cuff from his neck.”
Further allegations against Dr Basson include the devising of a toxin to spike beer, which was supplied to Eastern Cape taxi drivers, and the production of a substance to lace tea, which was given to a policeman's colleague who was deemed to be a problem.
Dr Basson was also alleged to have devised poisons to place on the tip of an umbrella.