A former top scientist from South Africa has spoken out about a chemical weapons program designed to exterminate black people in the country.

Head of a military research laboratory, Daan Goosen told of how the weapon was developed to kill blacks only, amidst a culture of fear and paranoia about a possible war that they thought might break out as blacks fought for their freedoms in apartheid Africa.

Goosen told of how scientists were working on a biological agent which would either wipe out, incapacitate or “calm down” the indigenous black population – but would not affect the white population in the country.

They wanted to create a bacteria or disease that would only infect or become active in black people. Goosen described it as “the most important project in the country.”

Although he claims that the substance was never “officially” developed, Goosen said that an unknown European scientist claimed to have developed a strain of bacteria in the early 1980s “capable of killing pigmented people”.

The 80s was a turbulent time for many people across the world, and it was around that time that Aids was discovered.

Goosen added: “It could have been used as a negotiation back-up. A thing like this could have been used to maintain peace. It was a case of being the strongest.”

Scientists also spoke of how they had planned to distribute ecstasy in order to subdue and disorientate the black population. However, one scientist objected to it for the simple reason that he didn’t want to run the risk of “making his enemies happy” by giving them the drug.

Plans to travel to Europe at the time, for a meeting were abandoned because of fears that it could be a trap, but the witness said South African scientists continued their own work on the project, and also looked into methods of making Blacks selectively infertile.

The sinister plans reveal the extent to which the scientists were working on similar projects to the Nazis in 1930s Germany. Indeed, the confessions revealed how many still very much hold the same belief systems, every bit as strongly as they did during apartheid.

In addition, Goosen and his supervisors also discussed the possibility of killing Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo – then President of the ANC – through the use of carcinogens, as well as arranging the supply of snake venom “to eliminate an enemy of the state.”

In other testimony, the former head of the police forensics laboratory, General Lothar Neethling, told the Commission that he had been instructed to supply Basson with confiscated supplies of narcotic drugs such as marijuana, LSD and Mandrax.

The intention, he said, was to extract the active ingredients for insertion into crowd-control grenades.

It was alleged that officials plotted to mentally disable Nelson Mandela with poison during the final years of his imprisonment