Other Names: None
Location: At Strydom Park in Randburg, a town located between Johannesburg and Pretoria
Subordinate to: South African Medical Services (SAMS)
Size: Unknown
Primary Function: Systems Research and Development (SRD) was a SAMS front company established in late 1986 to perform defensive CW research and testing that had originally been entrusted to Delta G Scientific, but a range of exotic assassination devices were later manufactured there in a special lab

Description:
SRD was a front company funded by SAMS (through the administrative front company Infladel) that was originally set up to do defensive CW research, testing, and development. It was established late in 1986 after Dr. Jan Lourens obtained permission from Project Officer Wouter Basson and Philip Mijburgh to transfer Delta G's work on protective CW equipment to a separate facility, and probably cost around 2-3 million rand per year to run. SRD originally comprised a chemical section that concentrated on testing and producing chemical filters and detection apparatuses, and an electronic section that developed surveillance equipment and debugging devices. In 1987 a new mechanical lab section known as the QB Laboratory was created, apparently at the behest of General Lothar Neethling of the South African Police, to help manufacture various specialized mechanical devices. The company's original directors were Lourens himself and two Belgian businessmen who worked on material acquisition projects in Europe, Charles van Remoortere and Bernard Zimmer, but Basson appointed former Delta G managing director Dr. Willie Basson (no relation) to oversee SRD projects on his behalf.

SRD's chemical section worked intensively on body protection, CW suits, gas masks, proximity and long distance chemical detection, and filtration media designed to remove CW agents via activated carbon, as well as testing and quality control measures for these products. One thing that lifted SRD far above its foreign competitors was that its products were tested with actual CW agents, sometimes under realistic field conditions, rather than simulants in artificial environments. This no doubt accounted for the exceptionally high quality CW defensive products that were produced by SRD and its offshoot Protechnik Laboratories, products which were generally considered to be the best in the world. No less important was SRD's QB Lab, to which were assigned specialists such as Bert Hetima, an expert at packing CS teargas into aerosol cans, and Phil Morgan, a former Elektroniks, Meganies, Landbou en Chemies (EMLC: Electronic, Mechanical, Agricultural and Chemical) company employee at Special Forces (SF) headquarters who was instructed to make specialized "applicators" – exotic assassination devices of all sorts that could be used to administer toxic substances in powder or liquid form covertly to designated targets. Among these devices were rings with poison compartments, soap boxes packed with explosives, and walking sticks, bicycle pumps, screwdrivers, and umbrellas outfitted with hidden injectors or firing mechanisms. These were manufactured in accordance with the specifications provided by Wouter Basson, and were then provided to Brigadier Engelbrecht, the SF Technical Director, for further technical evaluation. Some of these devices were then apparently issued to covert operatives in connection with plots to assassinate enemies of the state, and on one occasion – either in the late 1980s or early 1990s – Lourens himself was allegedly ordered by Wouter Basson to bring an "applicator" to London and transfer it there to a member of the SF's Civil Co-operation Bureau, Trevor Floyd, who was in turn to provide it to a hit team whose mission was to murder Ronnie Kasrils or Pallo Jordan, two leading African National Congress activists. This operation was later aborted for logistical reasons.

In 1987, Lourens left SRD to continue work on the Chemical Defence Project, which was being shifted to a new company called Protechnik. At that point SRD's electronic and QB Lab components were taken over by Johnny Koortzen, a SAMS psychologist who had worked with Wouter Basson in the elite Special Operations section that provided medical support to the SF (a unit which later evolved into 7 Medical Battalion Group). However, Lourens continued to interface with SRD's "application" division, although he eventually became so concerned about the possible misuse of these devices that he complained in vain to Army Surgeon-General Niel Knobel.

Key Sources:
Centre for Conflict Resolution, Basson Trial: Weekly Summaries of Court Proceedings, October 1999-April 2002, especially the testimony of Jan Lourens and "Mr. Q"; Tom Mangold and Jeff Goldberg, Plague Wars: The Terrifying Reality of Biological Warfare (New York: St. Martin's, 1999), pp. 261-3; Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, Hearings, June-July 1998, especially the testimony of Knobel, Jan Lourens, and Neethling.

	Updated March 2004