Apartheid-Era Poison Plot Revealed
South Africa’s apartheid-era government plotted to poison Nelson Mandela in an attempt to inflict brain damage, a scientist testified Wednesday.
Appearing before a panel probing apartheid crimes, Schalk van Rensburg described how his superior, Andre Immelman, told him of plans to give Mandela a toxic substance called thallium, which attacks the nervous system.
“The intention, I understood, was to reduce his level of intellectuality and effectiveness by inducing brain damage,” Van Rensburg said.
The testimony was part of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigation of the former apartheid army’s chemical and biological weapons projects, led by Wouter Basson, who ran the scheme through an elaborate network of front companies.
Van Rensburg said the aim was not to kill Mandela but to disable him.
Though there was no suggestion that the plot was carried out, it was considered in the final years of Mandela’s imprisonment by the white minority government and at least for a short time after he was released in 1990, after 27 years of incarceration, he said.
Mandela led his African National Congress to victory in the nation’s first all-race elections in 1994 and is now president.
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