Allegations Surface of Apartheid-Era Plot to Spread HIV/AIDS Among Black South Africans

• New allegations claimed that apartheid-era operatives deliberately sought to spread HIV/AIDS among black South Africans
• A new book, Who Really Killed Chris Hani?, claimed that HIV/AIDS was deliberately used as a form of biological warfare against black South Africans
• The plan was allegedly to reduce the population ahead of the country’s first non-racial elections

Justin Williams, a journalist at Briefly News since 2024, covers South Africa’s current affairs. Before joining Briefly News, he served as a writer and chief editor at Right for Education Africa’s South African chapter.

A new book, Who Really Killed Chris Hani?, alleges that apartheid-era operatives deliberately used HIV/AIDS as a form of biological warfare against black South Africans to reduce the population ahead of the country’s first non-racial elections.

Plan to reduce the population

According to the Sunday World, in his new book, retired judge Chris Nicholson alleged that, in its final years, the apartheid regime and its allies deliberately used the emerging HIV/AIDS pandemic as a weapon to manipulate South Africa’s population. Nicholson supported this claim with apartheid-era documents, testimonies from former security operatives, and links to global eugenics movements, suggesting that the virus’s spread was sometimes actively facilitated rather than ignored.

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Nicholson said that as South Africa approached non-racial elections, some apartheid leaders and their allies wanted to keep power and wealth at any cost. They saw HIV/AIDS in the 1980s as a way to reduce the black population without mass killings. Nicholson stated that this idea was discussed by senior officials. He quoted former security policeman JG Scholte, who recalled a 1983 conversation with a soldier claiming that South Africa was researching ways to reduce the black population while making it seem natural.

HIV as a biological weapon

The plan reportedly included making the disease sexually transmissible. The book links this to the apartheid government’s secret chemical and biological warfare programme, Project Coast, led by Dr Wouter Basson. Academic Robin Jakob found evidence that HIV was being developed as a biological weapon, with one project at Roodeplaat Research Laboratories aiming to use it to reduce birth rates among black women.

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Scholar Jeremy Youde confirmed that the Roodeplaat research laboratories invested significant time and resources into using HIV as a biological weapon. Rumours in Zulu communities referred to a white ‘doctor of death,’ widely believed to be Basson. The book also described claims from former apartheid operatives that the virus was deliberately spread as part of a campaign. Former operative Paul Erasmus claimed in his book that he was asked to obtain HIV-infected blood. He said HIV-positive ‘askaris’ from Vlakplaas were allegedly sent to have unprotected sex with women identified as political opponents.

Immense suffering and derail

Scholte alleged that the Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB) made HIV-positive women available to men in ANC exile ‘transit camps.’ Truth and Reconciliation Commission testimonies back this up. Nicholson also cited claims that HIV-positive men were taken to Hillbrow hotels to infect sex workers, a plan reportedly carried out under Eugene de Kock’s orders, according to CCB operative Willie Nortje. Nicholson referred to PJ Pretorius’s 1996 book SellOut!, which claimed that HIV/AIDS was seen as a key tool to limit black South Africans’ growth. Pretorius also cited a German study obtained by the national intelligence service predicting that by 2010, white South Africans could remain the majority because of AIDS. In the mid-1980s, the secret Afrikaner group Broederbond reportedly conducted population projections showing similar expectations.

ANC intellectual Jabulani ‘Mzala’ Nxumalo allegedly suggested before he died in 1991 that HIV may have been created in military laboratories. Nicholson links this to a 2000 parliamentary speech by former president Thabo Mbeki, who quoted a racist email lamenting that ‘AIDS isn’t working fast enough’ to harm black South Africans, highlighting that racism persisted. Central to this story is Chris Hani, who in 1990 warned ANC members in Maputo that the AIDS epidemic, if left unchecked, could cause immense suffering and derail the country’s progress.

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3 More stories about HIV/AIDS

• Briefly News also reported that a KwaZulu-Natal mother says she was forcibly sterilised after a doctor told her that it was due to her HIV status.
• The new HIV prevention drug Lenacapavir is expected to provide relief to the country after the United States cut funding for HIV-related programmes.
• The Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, clarified where South Africa acquires its AntiRetro-Virals (ARVs).

Source: Briefly News