Explosive Book Alleges Apartheid-Era Plot to Weaponise HIV Against Black South Africans

A new book alleges that apartheid-era security forces explored using HIV/Aids as a biological weapon against black South Africans (image source)

Shocking allegations that apartheid-era operatives deliberately sought to exploit the HIV/Aids epidemic as a tool of biological warfare against black South Africans have resurfaced in a new book that is already igniting fierce public debate.

In Who Really Killed Chris Hani?, retired judge Chris Nicholson advances the deeply disturbing claim that elements within the apartheid state and its security apparatus actively explored, and in some cases allegedly implemented, strategies to spread HIV/Aids among the black population in the final years before South Africa’s first democratic elections. Drawing on apartheid-era documents, testimonies from former security operatives and academic research, Nicholson argues that the HIV/Aids crisis was not merely neglected by the regime but, in certain instances, deliberately facilitated as part of a broader strategy to preserve white political and economic dominance.

According to the book, the apartheid state faced what Nicholson describes as two existential threats: the prospect of Nuremberg-style prosecutions for crimes against humanity and the sweeping economic redistribution envisaged under the ANC’s Freedom Charter. “So desperate were right-wing whites to retain power and wealth that they would consider any solution to avoid these two consequences,” Nicholson writes. He argues that the emergence of HIV/Aids in the early 1980s presented extremist elements with an opportunity to weaken the black majority population without resorting to overt mass extermination.

Nicholson cites testimony from a former security branch policeman, identified under the pseudonym JG Scholte, who recalled a 1983 conversation in which a soldier allegedly spoke of research into making a sexually transmitted disease appear “natural” to the international community. Central to the book’s thesis is Project Coast, the apartheid state’s covert chemical and biological warfare programme led by cardiologist Dr Wouter Basson. Academic research referenced by Nicholson suggests that scientists linked to the programme explored the potential use of HIV as a sterility agent targeting black women, with the aim of reducing birth rates.

The book further alleges operational attempts to spread the virus. Former covert operative Paul Erasmus is quoted as claiming he was asked to procure HIV-infected blood, while other accounts suggest that HIV-positive individuals were allegedly used to infect targeted groups, including sex workers and political activists. Nicholson also references Truth and Reconciliation Commission testimonies and writings by former intelligence officers who claimed that Aids was viewed within security circles as a strategic factor in limiting black political dominance.

While the allegations remain contested and have not been tested in a court of law, Nicholson situates them within the broader historical context of apartheid-era human rights abuses and ideological extremism. At the centre of the narrative is Chris Hani, whose early warnings about the devastating potential of the Aids epidemic now appear hauntingly prescient.

As Who Really Killed Chris Hani? gains attention, it is expected to reopen painful and unresolved questions about the lengths to which the apartheid state may have been prepared to go in order to retain power.