Small quantities of tabun (GA), a potent nerve agent, were produced under the auspices of Project Coast. This was done chiefly at Roodeplaat Research Laboratories (RRL), the main BW research, testing, and production facility, but possibly also at Systems Research Development, a separate company established in part to test CBW protective gear by bioengineer Jan Lourens. However, although there are certain indications that the South Africans may have considered employing tabun as an offensive weapon on the battlefield, there is no evidence at all that they ever actually did so.

At the trial of Coast Project Officer Wouter Basson, former RRL scientist Dr. Stiaan Wandrag testified that his main work for the South African Defence Force (SADF) involved developing CBW antidotes, ostensibly for the protection of VIPs, security force members, and South African agents who might be exposed to CW and BW agents. In connection with this task, he conducted studies on a variety of dangerous substances, studies that invariably included the carrying out of safety tests on animals. One of those substances was tabun. Organic chemist Dr. Klaus Psotta also indicated that he had worked on the synthesis of tabun at RRL. This type of risky work was carried out in the Compression Lab at RRL, a basement laboratory used for highly toxic agents that featured extremely tight security and high compression filtration systems installed by Jan Lourens. The individual responsible for overseeing the planning of this Compression Lab was RRL's R&D director, Dr. André Immelman, who later acknowledged that he had planned it with products such as tabun, sarin, and VX in mind. He added that research on the organophosphate paraoxon offered an ideal cover for RRL's research on those three nerve agents, since the same stringent protection and containment standards were required to carry out work on extremely poisonous substances like insecticides. Basson himself later testified that all research on lethal CBW agents intended for conventional weapon delivery, including tabun, was concluded by 1986 or 1987, although the so-called VIP protection and "anti-terrorism" programs continued. What is significant about this remark is not so much the proclaimed conclusion of such research, but the admission that research was actually carried out with an eye toward using tabun in conventional weapons.

In 1990 President F. W. De Klerk prohibited the carrying out of any further work on lethal CBW agents, and in 1993 Project Coast was officially terminated. The stocks of standard CW agents produced by South Africa were supposedly destroyed in conformity with international agreements, despite the fact that the actual destruction process was never independently verified. Although several chemical plants there continue to produce highly toxic substances for normal industrial and agricultural use, none of these substances appear to be intended for deployment as lethal anti-personnel agents. The current government still has access to the type of technical expertise and the sort of sophisticated R&D facilities that would enable it to initiate a new CW program, but there is little reason to suppose that it has any interest in doing so.

	Updated February 2006