Other Names: Roodeplaat Navorsings Laboratoriums (in Afrikaans)
Location: On a farm 12-15km north of Pretoria, near the Roodeplaat Dam
Subordinate to: South African Defence Force (SADF)
Size: Roodeplaat Research Laboratories (RRL) was a very large facility consisting of a farmhouse, a laboratory complex with five or six labs, an animal center, administrative offices, security posts, and a separate animal breeding facility called Roodeplaat Breeding Enterprises (RBE)
Primary Function: RRL was the principal BW research, testing, and production facility associated with the covert South African CBW program, Project Coast.

Description:
RRL was a large, sophisticated BW research, testing, and production facility. In November 1983 construction began on the facility, which cost approximately 40 million rand to build and equip and 10 million rand per annum to operate. By 1985 it consisted of a farmhouse, a small three- or four-room lab complex, and some animal cages, but it was thereafter expanded in phases to include a restricted P3-level basement Compression Lab and a security dog-breeding subsidiary (RBE). Plans were also made to build a P4-level facility further north. The entrance to the site was barred by large steel gates and the buildings were surrounded by a double row of electrified fences and armed guards, ostensibly to protect the plant from industrial espionage and "irrational animal rights groups." Like the principal CW research and production facility, Delta G Scientific, RRL was almost certainly classified as a "National Keypoint," which meant that it was controlled by strict legislation in terms of its access and perimeter security and could not be photographed without permission. At its height RRL's staff numbered around 70, including 40 scientists and technicians, and was divided into several scientific departments—Toxicology, Molecular Biology, Organic Chemistry, Physiology, Microbiology, an Animal Unit, etc.—that were supported logistically by administrative, financial, and security departments. Its managing director was Dr. Daan Goosen (who was replaced in 1986 by Wynand Swanepoel), its R&D director was Dr. André Immelman, its Animal Laboratory Services director was Dr. Schalk van Rensburg, and its administrative director was David Sparmer. After it was fully completed, RRL was not only considered to be the finest lab in South Africa, but also a world-class research facility.

Though ostensibly a private company that did commercial contract work for the pharmaceutical, medical, agricultural, and veterinary industries, a "cover" which facilitated its recruitment of top scientists and its acquisition of materials overseas, RRL was in fact an SADF front company that worked primarily on "hard" (military) projects and only rarely (on average, about 10% of the time) on "soft" (commercial) or "in-house" (researcher-generated) projects. Research projects were compartmentalized and managed on a strict need-to-know basis. RRL did in fact do some beneficial work on bovine vaccines, but the bulk of its efforts were focused on three types of military projects: 1) a toxin R&D program headed by Immelman, whose purpose was to develop and test lethal BW and CW agents that were untraceable; 2) a fertility program, headed by Dr. Riana Borman, whose purpose may have been—though this is bitterly debated, even by insiders—to limit the growth of the black population; and 3) a BW program linked to new developments in the genetic engineering field, headed by Dr. Mike Odendaal, whose aim was to research and develop antibiotic-resistant strains of pathogens by combining different agents. Although there was no large-scale weaponization of offensive BW agents at RRL, a plethora of toxic substances were acquired, tested, and/or prepared by scientists working for Immelman, whose own instructions purportedly came directly from Project Officer Wouter Basson. Among these were BW agents like Bacillus anthracis, botulinum toxin, brucella bacterium, Vibrio cholerae, Escheria coli, Clostridium perfringens, Yersinia pestis and/or Y. enterocolitica, salmonella bacterium, HIV-infected blood, and snake venom, as well as CW agents like BZ, mustard, sarin, tabun, VX, and a wide array of other highly toxic chemicals. Access to the basement-level Compression Lab, where the top secret military toxin research was carried out, was strictly controlled. Samples of all the pathogens produced there were later freeze-dried and stored in a refrigerator inside a fireproof and bomb-proof walk-in safe in Immelman's office. He then provided some of these substances, at Basson's request, to members of the SADF's Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB) or the Security Branch of the South African Police (SAP) for targeted assassination operations.

There was a considerable degree of cooperation between RRL and other firms involved in biological and chemical R&D. For example, RRL tested several chemical incapacitants that had been produced at Delta G Scientific, and some of RRL's toxic substances were likewise tested at the pyrotechnic labs at Special Forces headquarters, the SAP's Forensic Sciences Laboratory, or other facilities housed at various state companies, semi-state companies, private companies, and universities. Many of these supplemental BW research and testing facilities have yet to be identified by name, but Basson later testified that there was not "a single university in South Africa that wasn't involved in some way or another" with the BW program. Even though RRL was itself liquidated in 1993, its RBE subsidiary survived as a separate company and RRL's biotechnological component continued to produce recombinant vaccines and botulinum toxin for some time. This latter component may have been incorporated into a company called Biocon, which was located only 2 km from the old site of RRL and was itself liquidated in August of 2000. Three of Biocon's directors, one of whom may have misappropriated company funds, were former RRL scientists James Davies, Stiaan Wandrag, and Jacobus Nieuwenhuis.

Key Sources: "Bio Con Men Stopped," The Snout 7 (Winter/Spring 2001) [Note: The Snout is the newsletter of South Africans for the Abolition of Vivisection (SAAV), an anti-animal testing group.]; Centre for Conflict Resolution, Basson Trial: Weekly Summaries of Court Proceedings, October 1999-April 2002, especially the testimony of Basson, Borman, Davies, Goosen, Immelman, Knobel, Jan Lourens, Odendaal, Van Rensburg, and Wandrag; Chandré Gould and Peter Folb, Project Coast: Apartheid's Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme (Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 2002), pp. 69-101; Chandré Gould and Peter I. Folb, "The South African Chemical and Biological Warfare Program: An Overview," The Nonproliferation Review (Fall/Winter 2000), pp. 10-23; Eddie Koch and Derek Fleming, "Bizarre Experiments at SADF research firms," Weekly Mail and Guardian (15 December 1994); Truth and Reconcilation Commission of South Africa, Hearings, June-July 1998, especially the testimony of Basson, Goosen, Knobel, Jan Lourens, Odendaal, Swanepoel, and Van Rensburg; John Yeld, "South Africa: 'Front firm' cost millions," Africa News Service, 10 June 1998); John Yeld, "South Africa: SADF laboratory churned out death recipes to order," Africa News Service (10 June 1998) [Note: There are many other newspaper articles relating to RRL and the various Project Coast facilities, but most are rather sensational and very few add information that cannot be found in much greater detail in the TRC Hearings and the Basson Weekly Trial Summaries.]

	Updated February 2004