Small quantities of mustard, a chemical blister agent, were produced under the auspices of Project Coast. This was done both at Roodeplaat Research Laboratories (RRL), the main BW research, testing, and production facility, and at Systems Research Development (SRD), a separate company established in part to test CBW protective gear by bioengineer Jan Lourens. However, there are no indications that the South Africans ever considered employing mustard as an offensive weapon on the battlefield, and no evidence at all that they 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 mustard agent, for which Wandrag sought to develop antidotes and protective measures. 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 nerve agents such as sarin, tabun, and VX in mind. He added that research on the organophosphate paraoxon offered an ideal cover for RRL's research on those three agents, since the same stringent protection and containment standards were required to carry out work on extremely poisonous substances like organophosphate insecticides. Basson himself later testified that all research on lethal CBW agents intended for conventional weapon delivery 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 these agents in conventional weapons. Mustard was not specifically mentioned in this context, though.

There are two other interesting references to mustard in the testimony before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission or at Basson's trial. First, Dr. Johan Koekemoer of Delta G Scientific, the principal South African CW research and production facility, stated that on one occasion Basson had formerly requested that he analyze some gray powder that had supposedly been obtained in Angola, which was supposedly (but unlikely to have actually been) a form of mustard. Second, Basson claimed that in 1988 he had observed firsthand the effects of the Iraqi CW attacks at a village called Valapjar (possibly an Afrikaans corruption of Halabja), which probably included mustard, and that the toxic cantharidin made at Delta G was used to simulate the blistering caused by mustard. Alas, both of the Project Officer's claims were subsequently challenged in court by expert witnesses or the prosecutors.

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