![\"basson\"](\"http:\/\/thegremlin.co.za\/oudtshoorn-news\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/basson-440x252.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWe had to get chemical weapons because those evildoers had them first, Wouter Basson tells a rapt audience.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
You can learn a lot of things from Wouter Basson in 80 minutes, as he stands with a microphone in his right hand and gestures expansively with his left. Arabs are incapable of dealing with democracy. Heart attacks are caused by cash flow. Afrikaners are politically immature. You need something stronger than tear gas to manage a crowd of 5000 people or more. Gasses that screw with blood pressure are a great way to win a war.<\/p>\n
Mostly, though, you will learn that none of it was his fault and that \u00adeverything his detractors believe him to be (to wit, an inherently evil facilitator of international terror) is a result of his superior morals. Or due to the conspiracy against him, the one that saw him dubbed Dr Death.<\/p>\n
To the extent that anybody is to blame at all, it was, in fact, the Russians. See, the Russians used Afghanistan as a proving ground for chemical weapons. They would spray a big, isolated area, note the effects of their various poisons on the population, conduct autopsies, then napalm all evidence of their evildoing off the face of the planet.<\/p>\n
Then, they turned their attention to Angola, with its mineral wealth on their minds. Once there, though, they realised the terrain was similarly suitable for using the nastiest weapons in their arsenal. With that threat right across the border, what was an apartheid government to do? One must fight fire with fire.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is what the TRC [Truth and Reconciliation Commission] didn\u2019t understand,\u201d he told a rapt audience of about 200 in a school hall in Oudtshoorn last Friday. \u201cThe way to protect your troops is to put them in protective gear \u2026 In those suits, your guys are blind and deaf and they can fight for a maximum of 30 minutes before they die of heat exhaustion. So what do you do? You throw [chemical weapons] at the other guys to make them get into their suits.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thus the chemical and biological weapons he played a leading role in creating for the South African state were a form of defence, and he did nothing wrong in creating such an arsenal. And, by extension, he did nothing wrong in the process, even if it entailed creating a smuggling operation with global reach, running money for Muammar Gaddafi, or administering drugs to unwilling patients while in possession of a medical degree.<\/p>\n
Notorious terrorists<\/p>\n
\u201cI would do it again tomorrow,\u201d he said. \u201cIf I knew it would save lives, I would do it again.\u201d This in reference to providing the drugs that apartheid security forces used to \u201cmake sleep\u201d notorious terrorists of the ANC in cross-border raids.<\/p>\n
On the testing of various compounds, from the incapacitating to the deadly, he stayed mum. That is not what the good people of Oudtshoorn paid R100 a head (dinner included) to hear about. They had ventured to the chilly hall to hear how to manage stress and to raise money to distribute Bibles.<\/p>\n
The admission of effectively treating \u201cpatients\u201d against their will is one that Basson still faces in ongoing hearings before the Health Professions Council of South Africa, through which fellow doctors would like to see him stripped of permission to practise. But Basson is confident enough about the outcome of that tribunal and that he will not again be tried for crimes against humanity after walking free following a 30-month trial, in reference to which he brags publicly about the tricks he used while under cross-examination. Rude hand gestures at prosecutors while the judge isn\u2019t looking, he says, work nicely.<\/p>\n
Basson, now a cardiologist, was not the first choice for the event, organiser Jurgens Burger confided earlier in the day. Gary Player had been too busy, but the morning after he had prayed about the matter he opened the website of Die Burger to read about a motivational talk Basson had given in Cape Town. The signs don\u2019t get much clearer and paying Basson a meagre R1 500 (plus his petrol and putting him and his wife up for the night) makes for a lot of Bibles that can be bought at R15 a piece.<\/p>\n
Right bastard<\/p>\n
There was one complaint after the event was first advertised in local newspapers that a man who stood accused of various crimes \u2013 even though the courts declined to find against him \u2013 should not be speaking at a school in aid of religion. To that, Burger cited scripture: Remove the log from your own eye before calling another on the splinter in his. \u201cWho are they to judge?\u201d he asked, strictly rhetorically.<\/p>\n
Not those in attendance in the sold-out crowd, certainly, nor the businesses that donated the salads and mince. With jokes about a blue-light brigade escorting him in and being a draft dodger, Basson owned the candlelit room. With slick Afrikaans, a jovial honesty and casual hints about James Bond-style operations, he kept the crowd enthralled for well over an hour. And afterwards, though the applause was politely muted, the comments were glowing.<\/p>\n
\u201cBrilliant. An honour to hear him speak. Wish we had more time with him. Can we get a photo? That De Klerk, he really was a right bastard, wasn\u2019t he?\u201d<\/p>\n
Though Basson spent half an hour on very specific tips to deal with stress, drawn from his various job and legal troubles, that is not what dominated the post-speech discussion among diners. Rather, talk revolved around the relative merits of Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk (the former always \u201cMr Mandela\u201d in Basson\u2019s mouth, while his voice dripped with disdain when he spoke of the latter) and his exhortation to Afrikaners to look after themselves rather than rely on the state or any political party.<\/p>\n
Source: Mail & Guardian<\/a><\/p>\n
![\"Share](\"http:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share.png\")
<\/a>