Other Names: None
Location: Originally in Weldegraan, a Pretoria suburb, but since 1986 at the corner of George and Old Pretoria roads in the Midrand area between Johannesburg and Pretoria
Subordinate to: South African Defence Force (SADF)
Size: Delta G Scientific is a large facility consisting of two manufacturing plants, a pilot or pre-production plant, a large laboratory complex, workshops, and administrative offices
Primary Function: Delta G was formerly the principal CW research and production facility associated with the covert South African CBW program, Project Coast

Description:
Delta G is a large, highly sophisticated CW research and production facility. In April 1982 the company was established in Weldegraan to handle certain CW tasks previously performed on a smaller scale at other facilities, above all African Explosives and Chemical Industries (AECI) factories and the Special Forces technical labs operating under the rubric of an entity known as Elektroniks, Meganies, Landbou en Chemies (EMLC: Electronic, Mechanical, Agricultural and Chemical). In 1985 the company was transferred to another location in Midrand, where a new facility had been built and equipped at a cost of 30 million rand. This particular facility was classified as a "National Keypoint," which meant that it was controlled by strict legislation in terms of access and perimeter security and could not be photographed without permission. Security at Delta G was identical to and therefore every bit as tight as that employed by the nuclear industry, especially around its three cylindrical pressure reactors purchased in Hungary, installed on site, and used to precipitate chemical reactions. Members of the company's staff, most of whom had Special Forces (SF) or military backgrounds, were provided with information solely on a "need to know" basis. At its height Delta G's staff numbered around 120, and was divided into several divisions—including Research, Technical, and Production, which were themselves internally divided into specialized subfields—that were supported logistically by administrative, financial, and security departments. Its managing director was Dr. Willie Basson (who was replaced in 1985 by Dr. Philip Mijburgh, the nephew of SADF General Magnus Malan), its technical director was Dr. Gerrie Rall, its marketing director was Barry Pithy, and its administrative director was Dr. André Redelinghuys. After it was completed, the Midrand facility was considered to be one of the finest labs in South Africa, and was said to be capable of synthesizing and producing any chemical it wished to.

Though ostensibly a private company that did commercial contract work for the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, a "cover" which facilitated its recruitment of top scientists and its acquisition of materials overseas, Delta G was in fact an SADF front company that worked primarily on "hard" (military) projects rather than "soft" (commercial) or "in-house" (researcher-generated) projects. Research projects were strictly compartmentalized, so much so that during their tenure there several key scientists learned nothing at all about Project Coast and were unaware of the company's intimate connections to it. Delta G did in fact work on commercial contracts, especially by the 1990s, but much of its effort was devoted to secret military and CBW projects geared toward the preservation of public order, including 1) the large-scale production of well-known chemical irritants used for crowd control, such as the CS and CR Riot Control Agents; 2) the relatively small-scale manufacturing of mind-altering narcotics, several of which—cocaine hydrochloride, dimethyl phenethylamine, methaqualone, MDMA, LSD, and certain cannabinoids—were illegal. (After receiving official authorization to assist Project Officer Wouter Basson, General Lothar Neethling provided quantities of these last four items to Delta G from stocks of street drugs that had been confiscated by the South African Police. Some of these may have been encapsulated on site before being delivered to basement offices at Mijburgh's Medchem Consolidated Investments holding company in Henopsmeer.); 3) a peptide synthesis program, officially headed by Dr. Lucia Steenkamp, one of whose goals (along with developing viral agents to fight HIV) was apparently to enhance the physiological effects of bioregulators; and 4) a CW research and analysis program, which manufactured small quantities of toxic substances on demand for various purposes. Although there was no actual weaponization of CW materials at Delta G, numerous dangerous chemicals were acquired, researched, and/or prepared by scientists working for Gert Lourens, whose own instructions came directly from Wouter Basson or Mijburgh. Among these were classical CW agents like the psychoincapacitant BZ and mustard, and a wide variety of other toxic chemicals, including cantharidin, digoxin, paraoxon, silatrane, and thallium. Perhaps it was the ongoing work on such substances that accounted for environmental contamination near the site and two serious explosions that occurred at the facility during this period.

There was a considerable degree of cooperation between Delta G and various other firms involved in chemical procurement, research, testing, or weaponization, as well as one involved primarily in biological research. Specifically, Delta G relied on the procurement front company Organochem to acquire certain embargoed chemicals overseas, arranged to have some of its own chemical products tested at both the defensive CBW firm Technotek and the pyrotechnical labs at SF headquarters, provided research reports in exchange for funding to a private company controlled by Wouter Basson called Madresco, and shipped synthesized crowd control substances to Swartklip Products and other firms for weaponization, i.e., insertion into delivery devices such as artillery shells, mortar bombs, water cannon, sneezing machines, and teargas grenades. Several of Delta G's CW products were likewise tested on animals at Roodeplaat Research Laboratories, the principal South African BW facility. As such, it is probable that some of the toxic substances produced at Delta G, such as the rodenticide silatrane, ended up being deployed in covert contamination and assassination operations. Another important question is whether any of the illegal drugs produced at the company were subsequently encapsulated or made into tablets so that they could be sold on the black market for a profit, whether for the personal enrichment of Wouter Basson and his cronies or for the secret financial benefit of particular SADF components. Since Basson was himself arrested in a January 1997 South African Narcotics Bureau "sting" while trying to sell MDMA capsules to co-opted drug dealer Grant Wentzel, such a possibility can scarcely be ruled out. In 1993, while in the process of privatization, Delta G was sold to the chemical conglomerate Sentrachem Ltd., which was seeking to upgrade its R&D capabilities. A handful of key company personnel, in particular managing director Mijburgh, seem to have profited considerably from this process. At present, Delta G Scientific "sells a range of fine and custom chemicals to the agrochemical, pharmaceutical and specialty market sectors."

Key Sources:
Centre for Conflict Resolution, Basson Trial: Weekly Summaries of Court Proceedings, October 1999-April 2002, especially the testimony of Beukes, Brandt, Knobel, Koekemoer, Gert Lourens, Jan Lourens, Mijburgh, Neethling, Steenkamp, and Van Jaarsveld; G. C. Gerrans, "Historical Overview of the South African Chemical Industry, 1896-1998," Chemistry International 21:3 (May 1999), pp. 71-7; Chandré Gould and Peter Folb, Project Coast: Apartheid's Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme (Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 2002), pp. 60-7; 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; Peter Hounam and Steve McQuillan, The Mini-Nuke Conspiracy: Mandela's Nuclear Nightmare (London: Faber and Faber, 1993), pp. 157-61; "Profile: Delta G Scientific," Mbendi: Information for Africa website: <www.mbendi.co.za/ca35>; "Profile: Sentrachem Ltd.," Mbendi: Information for Africa website: <www.mbendi.co.za/cose>; Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, Hearings, June-July 1998, especially the testimony of Knobel, Koekemoer, Jan Lourens, and Mijburgh. [Note: There are many newspaper articles relating to Delta G 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 March 2004