EFF wants Mediclinic to ban ‘Dr Death’
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has called on Mediclinic Southern Africa to bar apartheid-era chemical warfare expert Dr Wouter Basson from accessing their premises and practising with them, following public outrage after it emerged this week that Basson has at least two practices at Mediclinic facilities in the Western Cape.
The red berets have also called on Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize to “administer a full and complete investigation against Basson and Mediclinic for being enablers of bringing the esteemed field of medicine into disrepute”.
Basson was dubbed “Dr Death” for his role as the mastermind behind the apartheid government’s secret chemical and biological warfare programme in the ’80s and ’90s‚ known as Project Coast.
He was accused of producing deadly drugs and other substances to be used against “enemies” of the apartheid government by providing security forces with cyanide to help them commit suicide, and providing drugs that would disorientate prisoners.
On Wednesday, Mediclinic’s spokeswoman, Tertia Kruger, responded to the backlash over Basson’s association with the company.
Kruger refuted reports that Basson was employed by the private hospital company. She said Basson worked as an independent specialist cardiologist with admission rights to treat his patients at two of its facilities, in Panorama and Durbanville.
“He consults from his own rooms, where patients choose to consult him. We must respect
each patient’s right to choose the most appropriate medical professional to deliver the required treatment at the facility of the patient’s choice,” she said.
But the EFF is not satisfied with the response from Mediclinic and believes the company should disassociate itself from Basson on ethical and moral grounds.
The party contended that Basson should have stood trial and his licence to practise as a medical doctor be withdrawn for his involvement in Project Coast.
“Although Dr Basson is not an employee of Mediclinic, he utilises their premises, social capital and platform to be a medical practitioner, even following his crimes against humanity,” said
the EFF’s national spokesman, Vuyani Pambo, on Wednesday.
“Failure by Mediclinic to disassociate themselves with this terrorist, a doctor of death, essentially means that they as an institution pay no mind to the safety of black patients and the primary objective to restore life.”
The EFF said Basson, “like many other terrorists of the apartheid era who only sought to destroy the lives of black people and anti-apartheid activists”, were rewarded by the ANC government with the liberty of freedom, jobs and no consequences for their brutal actions.
The EFF also called on the Health Professions Council of SA
(HPCSA) to follow through with concluding and penalising Basson with the remaining charges against him and ensure that he was stripped of his licence to practice as a cardiologist.
Basson was found guilty in December 2013 of unethical misconduct by the disciplinary panel of the HPCSA for his role as the head of the apartheid government’s secret chemical and biological warfare programme.
In 2018, he succeeded in his appeal application in the Supreme Court of Appeal challenging an earlier 2016 ruling by the Pretoria High Court to have two HPCSA members recused from the committee deciding his sentence for unethical conduct.