Wouter Basson should come clean about Project Coast

Nearly 20 years after South Africa's illegal chemical and germ warfare programme was dissolved, Dr Wouter Basson, who controlled the secret project, still denies he acted unethically or unprofessionally.

Really? The man known as "Dr Death" admits to dispensing cyanide capsules to SA Defence Force soldiers, and his former colleagues testified in Basson's criminal trial that he assisted with the drugging, abduction and killing of anti-apartheid activists.

Surely this toxic track record is grounds to revoke the licence of any medical practitioner who has sworn under the Hippocratic Oath not "to give deadly medicines to anyone"?

Instead of facing censure or isolation, Basson has a prospering cardiology practice in Cape Town.

But on Friday the move to get him struck off the roll gained momentum when the professional conduct committee of the Health Professions Council of SA refused to dismiss four of six disciplinary charges against him.

The committee did discharge two counts and part of a third after admitting it had inadequate evidence.

Council CEO Kgosi Letlape said the council was elated that the inquiry into Basson's conduct would continue.

Basson's "utter disregard for human life" confounded a doctor's ethics, said the pro forma prosecutor Salie Joubert, calling on the committee to reject Basson's application to dismiss all the charges.

Of course Basson did not act alone but as the boss of a lab which brewed poisons, manipulated bacteria and cultured lethal viruses. But it is time he was held accountable for the harm done by Project Coast - once condemned by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as the "most diabolical aspect of apartheid".

In 1997, when two padlocked steel trunks were seized from Basson's home, they revealed shocking details about the project.

According to a list found in one of the trunks, items made in Basson's lab included anthrax-contaminated cigarettes and chocolate, vials of cholera, beer spiked with toxins and bleach contaminated with salmonella.

Joubert said Basson implicated himself in unethical conduct in the plea explanation he submitted to the committee in 2007 as well as in his criminal trial which ran from 1999 to 2002.

"We have sufficient evidence to justify a prima facie case. If Basson is so convinced there is no case against him, let him present his case for the application to be dismissed."

On their side, Basson's legal team argued on Thursday that he had been doing research for a defensive chemical and biological warfare project and could not reasonably be convicted of the counts against him.

"It is 100 times better for a court to acquit a guilty person than to convict an innocent person," said his first counsel, Jaap Cilliers.

Cilliers didn't hesitate to cite the constitution to uphold the rights of the one-time "poison keeper", as New Yorker magazine dubbed Basson.

In contrast, remember how poisoned student leader Siphiwo Maxwell Mthimkhulu had no rights under apartheid.

He was released from detention in 1981 in such agony he could no longer walk and was found to have been poisoned in prison with thallium.

Paralysed and confined to a wheelchair, Mthimkhulu, 22, and his friend Topsy Madaka were drugged, murdered and their bodies burnt by security police roughly a year later.

Fast forward two decades to 2012, when Basson's rights are protected - and his legal fees funded - by a government whose leaders he would have counted as enemies under apartheid. Who knows, he may still regard them as such now.

The state's deep pockets have enabled Basson to remain defiant in the face of volumes of evidence and, it seems, to challenge legal proceedings at every turn.

If Basson is found guilty by the health council committee, it would come as no surprise if he appealed against the outcome. What would be surprising - and cathartic for South Africa - would be a change of heart by Basson.

Imagine if he decided to come clean and report on what went on behind the locked doors of Roodeplaat Research Laboratories; if he took responsibility as the doctor who held the keys and the purse strings of Project Coast; and admitted that he violated the ethics code of the World Medical Association.

But the Rainbow Nation miracles seem to have run out and it's more likely that an unrepentant Basson will simply stall further when his disciplinary hearing resumes in March.